Introduction: How to Draw Shounen Manga Character

Hello and welcome to my instructables on how to draw Shounen manga character, I will be showing you how to draw the character above. At first, you have to know the difference between 2 different type of manga character, Shounen and Shoujou. Shounen is manga aimed at guys and a typical theme is fighting and Shoujo primary audience is girls and it usually has romance. This instructables mostly shows the steps and the working process of my own Shounen manga character and I hope you will like it.

Have fun!!!

Step 1: Materials

Drawing a manga character didn't require much tools or materials. Simply get some :

Paper (A4 onward, prefer A4)

Pencils

Color pencil

Copic marker E00 (Skin white)

Step 2: Start Off Your Drawing With Basic Character Figures

For a beginner, drawing the outline for the character is really important, it gives you a brief idea of how your character stand and the pose of your character. The outline needs to be erased right after you finished drawing the body of the manga character, so, don't forget to draw the outline lightly to prevent marking on the drawing and ruin the whole picture.

Let's start!!

We start the drawing by drawing the main important part of the manga character, the head.

Firstly, lightly draw a circle. Use a compass to draw your circle, or simply trace around the bottom of a round glass, it is also possible to draw it freehand, but it looks better with a tool. (See picture 1)

Second, Sketch a light cross in the middle of the face. Do it so that the two lines intersect in the middle. However, if you want to draw a character that is facing towards the other direction than upfront, curve the two intersecting line as if the two line is facing the direction you wanted. (See picture 1)

Third, draw a spade like shape from the middle line of the circle and that will be the chin of the anime character, usually, the chin of anime characters are sharper than usual. Then add neck for the head.

Step 3: Draw the Body Outline

Lets move on to the next important part of the drawing, the body, just like the head, you have to slowly build up the body of the character, you have to first draw lines and circle that represents the limbs of the manga character. Uses circles to represent the part where two bones connect with each other and uses lines to represent the actual arm, leg and triangle for the palm and the feet.

Remember: draw it lightly so that erasing it won't be hard to do :)

Step 4: Draw the Limbs

Now, we will move to the next step, which is to draw the limbs of the anime character, when drawing the limbs, make them buffier by drawing oval shapes instead of straight lines. Just by adding some cylinders to represent the limbs and circles for the joints, the chest, and mid-section, our character comes into view much more easily.

Step 5: Draw Clothes

Now, you are done with the limbs and body, it is time to draw the clothes of the character.

In the case of this figure and his naturally fitting clothes, we can't see the outline of the chest, and most of the rest of the body is lost to folds in the clothes. As you can see, this character’s outfit of choice is not particularly tight, this clothes is basically school uniform so it shouldn't be as tight as the other type of clothes.

After drawing the clothes of the character, it is time to draw the pants of the character. Simply just add lines beside the legs and maybe add more details to the pants.

Step 6: Finally, Draw Hairs and Facial Expression

After drawing the clothes and complete the body for the character, now, draw the hairs and then facial expression of the character, there are large varieties of hair that is available in the manga world. The easiest way to get a hairstyle is to find on the internet some ideas. When drawing hair, don't forget to insert some space between the hair and the head.

The eyes of a Shounen manga is usually sharp and smaller, it is normal for the character to look a little angrier because of the eyes.