If you love watching anime shows or reading manga (Japanese comics), then the thought of learning how to draw anime-style may have crossed your mind. Whether you’re gifted in drawing or not, trying to draw our favorite characters is something we want to attempt at least once. So then, if you want to draw anime-style art, where can you go and learn it?
Anime Art Academy
Image Credit: Anime Art Academy
If you’re interested in drawing professionally, especially in the manga industry, Anime Art Academy is the place to go. They even offer their first lesson for free to get aspiring artists started.
The company itself is based in Akihabara and their teachers for their lessons are professional manga-ka artists. So you know that you’re getting the best education you can get on this style of drawing. Moreover, if you’re really serious in pursuing a career in this industry, they’ll support you in creating one in Japan itself.
Pixiv
Just like Anime Art Academy, Pixiv is another company based in Japan. However, unlike Anime Art Academy, it’s not an e-learning platform. It is actually an anime community for both artists and fans. Aside from learning how to draw, you can also have your art funded and enter art contests.
If you’re interested in getting lectures (plus a clip studio paint), you’ll have to sign up and pay 550 yen (about $5). Since Pixiv is an anime community, you can also post your works and receive feedback from other people as well. This does not only encourage interaction between people of the same interests, you can also vastly improve on your craft that you wouldn’t learn in a lecture or course. And since it’s a popular website both in Japan and internationally, Pixiv is also a great place of making your art seen.
Another thing to note is that while Pixiv is a Japanese company, they also have an English website. So you don’t have to be afraid of getting lost in their site!
Anime Drawing for Beginners
Udemy is a famous e-learning platform that offers courses in every subject imaginable. And it includes anime drawing.
Their Anime Drawing for Beginners course is offered by Pluvias, a self-taught anime artist. The 2-hour and 39-minute long course has 31 lectures separated into 5 sections. You’ll first learn how to draw the face and head, next is the body, and lastly the clothing. The course also includes extra lectures such as drawing facial expressions, chibis, and hairstyles. If you’re interested in learning, all you need is a pencil and a paper; and $55 for the course fee.
AnimeOutline
If you have no money to spare, you can head on over to AnimeOutline that provides over 80 tutorials on anime and manga drawing. Their tutorials do not only include drawing faces or bodies or hairstyles. They actually cover a variety of topics; from drawing explosions, anime weather, hand poses, and even making anime hair look wet. By the time you’re done with their tutorials, you’re ready to make your own manga!
They describe their website as something that started to help people who want to learn how to do anime-style drawing. With that, their guides “strive to provide a very detailed breakdown of the drawing process that even beginners can follow they also give some more serious drawing advice. A large portion has suggestions on good overall drawing methods that can help you improve as an artist. A few of the tutorials are almost fully dedicated to this while at the same time showing how such practices can apply to drawing in the anime style.”
Manga Drawing Books
If you prefer learning from something not digital, there are a lot of manga drawing books available. They say that one of the best introductory books for manga drawing is The Master Guide to Drawing Anime by Christopher Hart. The books has templates and guides to teach you about facial expressions, posing, and drawing tips. Another book by Hart that you can check out is The Manga Artist’s Workbook. This is for those aspiring artists who want to improve their skills.
Other books you can check out are The Manga Fashion Bible, Basic Anatomy for the Manga Artist, The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Manga Art, and more!
Video Tutorials
Another resource you can use in learning how to draw anime-style art are video tutorials. There are tons of tutorials to be found on YouTube. It can cover topics from beginner guides to mistakes to avoid to how to draw poses and manga eyes. If you’re not sure where to start, you can check out ConceptArtEmpire’s list of free video tutorials on the anime and manga art style.
Lastly, the most important thing you have to do when you want to learn is to practice! Daily, if possible. You can have all the resources you want, but drawing is a skill that improves with practice – even if you’re naturally gifted with it. So never forget to practice even if you feel like your skill is good enough already.
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