How to draw anime: learn to do beautiful anime drawings [Best 37 tutorials]

Doing anime drawings isn’t easy, and you are probably wondering how to draw anime. In this article, there are quite a few anime tutorials that will help you.

You’re searching online for inspiration and you are finding a lot of anime drawings that are simply amazing.

You need the best and most useful anime tutorials about face, eyes, nose, mouth, colouring etc. And simply searching for “anime drawings step by step” on Google won’t help.

There will probably be a sequel of this anime tutorial collection in the near future as it is not complete and it will never be.

This collection offers the basics of anime drawing. My hope is that you will learn to do at least a few simple anime drawings after going through these.

At the end of this article where there are lots of anime drawing tutorials you will find a few anime brushes.

How to draw anime faces

Anime is one of those drawing styles that makes it fairly easy to change the expressions of the characters.

The key is figuring which features to change to convey the expression and emotion. Figuring this out should allow you to change your characters’ expressions easily.

Learn how to draw anime eyes. The eyes are one of the key ways expressions are conveyed in anime.

They are typically quite large, but there’s a lot more variation than many people assume. Look at various art styles in successful anime and manage to see what kind of eye style works for you.

The surprise will be conveyed by large eyes with small pupils. Closed eyes, when paired with certain positions of the eyebrows and mouth, can convey a lot of different emotions, from happiness, to calm, to annoyance.

Drawing Anime Faces Tutorial by crysa

Author’s comment: “This tutorial is a bit different from my other ones. I put a lot more thought and time into it. I’m sorry I talked a lot more in this one, but there was just no way around it. I hope you like it”

Anime Eyes: Tutorial by ramy

Finally, after countless requests, I made a full tutorial just on how how to draw anime eyes for beginners. It really is simple, after a few tries I think you should be able to do it (as long as you know how to insert layers, etc. in Photoshop.

Anime Eyes Tutorial by kamikaze777

Here’s a tut I made today about drawing different anime eyes styles. The problem with most tuts I’ve seen is that they just show you the eyes but not how to draw them since the basic geometric shape. I chose eyes from different animes, new ones and old ones. I hope you like it and helps anyone who wants to start practicing them. This is an easy anime drawing step by step that you’ll like.

An Anime Eyes Tutorial by joulee

Author’s comment: “By request… and because I had the images lying around from the last lightning bug girl tutorial.

As usual, feedback appreciated. I’d love to hear your own tips and tricks, as well as requests and suggestions for other tutorials. Enjoy!”

Anime Eye Tutorial V2.0 by GuardianYashu

Author’s comment: “A new eye tutorial cuz people keep faving my old crappy one…I figured it was time to upgrade. Now there’s a whole bunch of additional stuff along with more step-by-step eyes. Now it covers basic eye construction, eye placement, coloring, emotions and other stuffs.
This took forever XD and ten sheets of paper.”

How to Draw Anime Hair

How to draw anime hairstyles. This is what you want to achieve. Is it easy? No. But with a little practice, you’ll get a hold of it.

Have a plan in mind when getting ready to draw an anime character’s hair.

Start off drawing your anime hairstyle (no matter how tame or wacky) with a basic shape.

Don’t get tangled in the details, but instead focus on getting a good visual foundation of the hairstyle you have in mind. Until you’ve moved into the coloring stage, it’s best to think of the hair as a solid mass. There’s this tutorial on how to draw hair by BIOWARS, but there are also lots more below.

Anime Hair Shading Tutorial by ramy

Author’s comment: “Anyway, this one was requested a lot, so hope you like it/understand it. This one might be a bit more advanced than the last one, but just follow the directions closely and it’ll all make sense”

Drawing Anime Hair: Bangs by crysa

Author’s comment: “I also wanted to say I’m really sorry if I disappointed anyone with making a tutorial on just bangs. I had 150+ requests for a tutorial on hair and I originally planned on putting curly hair, spikes, buns, Braids (French braids), Bangs, Long hair, Short Hair, Pigtails, Ponytails, Ofuku (Geisha), and Odango in this tutorial. But as you can see I only got to bangs. XD So I must ask everyone, would you like me to continue making another hair tutorial or move on to something else?”

Anime art lesson Hair by mayshing

Author’s comment: “Hair is another big thing in anime…
no matter what… most of the time ppl go for looks of the anime character, usually look determines an anime characters’ popluarity… there is only a few exceptions…”

Heads, mouths, colouring

Tutorial: 3quarter view by xandria-tchebbi

Author’s comment: “Hmmm… I’ve been asked by several if I would be willing to do a tutorial on how to draw my style.
I thought I’d start of with something simple… For me.. If this is too hard please let me know and I’ll start people off with the basics… Actually I think I will do a basic sheet as well as this one. more”

Chibi Tutorial by kakashi107

Anime Female Body Tutorial by Taylor-the-Weird

Author’s comment: “tee hee… I did this very fast, while we were coming home after evacuating Hurricane Katrina
You can never have enough tutorials
…
Please ignore the sketchiness of it, I was sitting in the back of a van driving on the backroads of Arkansas (sp?)”

Colouring Tutorial by Risachantag

Author’s comment: “Click to download; sorry about the large file size.

I promised I’d do a tutorial or two a while back, but never got around to it. ^^ …so here’s a little colouring tutorial using step by step pictures from Penguin: Nathan

It’s recommended that you have a pressure sensitive tablet, and Photoshop 7 or higher to follow this tutorial.”

Anime Background Tutorial by Risachantag

Author’s comment: “To download, click the download to desktop button. Unzip the file and open the ‘index.html’ file to see the tutorial.

This is a tutorial for drawing and colouring anime/fantasy backgrounds on Photoshop; it would also apply to Painter and Paintshop Pro. I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners, although I imagine anyone could learn something from it. Having a drawing tablet is recommended.

^_^ Hope you guys find it useful! I put a lot of time and work into it. Any comments/suggestions are very much appreciated.”

Anime skin colouring-tutorial by lilyorina

A Digital Coloring Tutorial by joulee

Coloring Anime Tutorial by kokure

Author’s comment: “this is my 1st tutorial in This Cyberworld…. this tutorial is make special to whom dont know how to use
adobe photoshop (any version) it`s a simple version ( coz its for begineer ) … you must use adobe acrobat reader to read these files. thanks to all who helped me in this tutorial… Please tell me if somethin goes wrong ( no matter you dont know or if i wrong )”

Digital Painting Tutorial by ramy

Author’s comment: “Basically I decided to make a tutorial which got me photoshop CS2! Thank you SO MUCH. But you don’t need that program to use this tutorial. Really, it can be used in any program from photoshop 5-CS2. You can easily adapt it to other programs too if you need it. Anyway, I hope you find this useful. I didn’t want to give away the final picture completely, which will be posted soon”

Background Lighting Effects by ramy

Author’s comment: “wow HUGE HUGE HUGE tutorial, and I hope you find it useful. I included the tree tutorial that I promised in this one Basically the intention of this tutorial is to help you paint backgrounds quickly and painlessly. The techniques are fairly easy and give nice results I think, and I really hope you can put them to good use. I always tend to get lazy towards the end of the cging process and rarely have the energy to do a full background, so here are some of the ways that I still put together a background when I don’t feel like spending too much time”

Drawing Clothes And Folds by Crysa

Author’s comment: “Sorry for the big image and everything being so crowded together. This took a really long time, but I got practice coloring clothes from it…lol. So if you don’t learn anything from it at least I did XD A couple of people requested one so here it is I don’t know if I’ll ever make another tutorial I guess it depends. Hope you like it”

Drawing Clothes And Folds 2 by Crysa

Learning How to Draw Anime Male Characters

Anime male characters can be a challenge to draw. The big-eyed style and the sheer cultural prevalence of female characters can be hard to make an anime character seem masculine. There are a few basics steps to take.

Female bodies tend to have an hourglass kind of shape, curving in at the stomach and flaring at the hips. Accentuating this is an easy way to make it obvious a character is female. The male torso does not curve in very much by contrast.

A male’s legs should also be blockier shapes for more muscular men and skinnier, straight legs for less muscular ones.

Male shoulders are also typically broader. Very muscular men might have their neck expand into their shoulders. Take a look at existing male anime characters and note how they are artistically different from females.

Learn How To Shade Anime Drawings

Shading can make two-dimensional objects look three dimensional. Proper shading will need some study and thought.

You’ll have to see where the light reflects off of different objects in different lighting conditions. Environment, time of day, light source, and whether all affect how shading will look.

Like with perspective drawing, practice this by drawing simple objects and practicing shading techniques. You’ll begin to get an almost intuitive sense of how shading works.

Learn How to Color Anime Drawings

Effective use of color is quite simple, really: simply apply what you know about the color wheel.

Warm colors, cool colors, contrasting colors…experiment with them to get the effects you want. Warm colors convey heat, danger, and passion. They tend to be very dramatic.

Cool colors are calmer and often used for water or ice. However, depending on what’s around them, the feeling can change.

Contrasting colors, for instance, always draw the eye. Always be mindful of anyone who might be viewing your art and what mood or action you want to convey.

Anime Photoshop brushes

Anime eye Brush by Squex

Anime eye Brush set 2 by Squex

Female anime eyes updated by sakura13

Anime angels brush by arxontisa

Anime hair brush by orexchan

Anime hair brush 2 by orexchan

Going further about anime tutorials

Anime style drawings are increasingly popular as Japanese manga (comics) and anime. The style is both beautiful and fairly simple to learn, with a lot of room for creativity and personal touches, making it a favorite for both young and old.

The steps of learning how to draw anime are fairly simple. As with all styles of drawing, start with simple shapes like circles, squares, and rectangles. As you will see as you sue this guide, anime characters are composed of lines, circles, and squares.

Remember, practice will help you perfect your anime drawing technique. This guide will help you get started to begin creating easy anime drawings, but only repetition will allow you to master the style.

A Few Core Basics

Study Real Anatomy

You may think the often odd proportions and simplified elements you see in anime and mange mean you don’t have to know real anatomy, but that is absolutely untrue.

Stylized art requires artists to understand how the real human (or animal) body is put together.

Joints work in certain ways. Certain proportions look better to the eye because they are what we naturally expect them to be.

Once you know how living things really function, then you can start exaggerating in aesthetically sensible ways. It’s easy to slip from exaggeration to seeming like you have no ideas what you’re doing.

Use References

References can be hard to use because finding good ones takes a bit of extra time.

However, good references will teach you a lot about how to draw something you haven’t drawn before. They will make a lot of difference in your art.

You should look up poses, props, environments, anything that you have not mastered drawing in the style already.

These references will help you figure out how the subject should look and allow you to make sure the proportions and physics look right in your own drawing. You will miss vital details if you just try to draw something out of your own head without any references.

Use Guidelines

Guidelines may seem annoying, like drawing with training wheels, but they are very helpful.

Take a look at professional anime drawings and you can see how they’re used. Guidelines help you quickly create the pose.

Guidelines help you compare body types and sizes without too much work and save you time later.

You’ll find you’re less likely to make anatomy errors if you use guidelines, as well.

Professionals always use guideline skeletons for their drawings, even if they have drawn the same character a million times before.

Start out using guidelines and get into the habit of taking advantage of them.

Do Not Simply Copy Your Favorite Artists

Studying the work of other artists is one thing and copying other artists is another. Copying other artists is limiting in a lot of ways.

You end up deliberately copying their flaws, for one. It also strips a lot of the personality out of your own work, preventing you from being as skilled and creative as you can be.

It is easy to see when an artist is directly copying another, and if you intend to display your work publicly, whether for profit or not, you can embarrass yourself by copying well-known artists.

Break down what it is about other artists’ work that you like and figure out why exactly you like it. Integrate those elements into your own style.

Learn To Handle Criticism

This is a hard lesson to learn for any creative endeavor. Artists often say they are just fine with criticism, but in fact, they are not even absorbing it at all.

Even the most impolite critiques are valid and deserve to be listened to because that means your art had something about it that made someone feel they had to point it out.

Saying “it’s just my style” is not a valid answer. Your style might, in fact, be wrong.

You don’t have to do something about every critique, but you need to take the time to really listen to them.

Do Not Listen to Friends and Family

Your friends and family will always tell you that your artwork is perfect and you are a master.

They are lying to you. Even if the piece they’re complimenting is objectively very good, they are lying. Why say this?

It’s all too easy to get stuck in a positive feedback loop and stop trying to improve your artwork.

The support of your loved ones is always appreciated and you should enjoy it, but don’t rely on it as criticism.

Look for people who will give you honest feedback and not let their affection for you to cloud their artistic judgment.

Avoid Using Shortcuts

It’s tempting to simply avoid drawing parts of the body or poses that you don’t want to.

This will leave you constantly hiding hands or only drawing characters from the waist up. This will begin to become creatively limiting quite quickly.

Anyone who looks at your work will start to notice that you’re clearly unwilling or afraid to draw a certain part of the body.

Challenge yourself and draw it anyway. Every time you do, you will get a chance to improve. Ignoring or avoiding something you have trouble with is not going to make you a better artist at all.

Avoid Drawing the Same Kinds of Characters

Everyone has a certain subset of characters they want to draw- -big tough guys, pretty girls, or handsome young men, to name a few common examples.

You should learn how to draw all kinds of people, however. This expands not only your skill at depicting different people, but also keep you from self-restricting your creativity.

You might find one day you have an idea for a really amazing character design that’s outside of your norm, or you may find yourself trying to take commissions for a kind of character you’ve never drawn before. Learn how to draw everyone and anyone.

Don’t Become Discouraged

It’s so easy to get discouraged, especially when you’re just starting out and learning how to draw.

The ideas in your mind will not be easy to transfer to appear right away, or a drawing you spend a lot of time and effort on can turn out badly.

It can be really hard to look at the work of artists who are better than you, especially if they are younger.

No matter what it seems like, remember that everyone had to start somewhere, no matter how great they seem now. Use their evident progress as inspiration instead of a way to be hard on yourself.

Follow These Steps

Learn the Basics

One of the most important things to know when learning how to draw in any style is that all drawings are made up of basic shapes.

Practice drawing basic shapes and straight lines. You can do this while you are practicing how to draw anime characters.

Just set aside a few minutes to draw these basic shapes and lines. These are the building blocks that make up more complex images.

Learn Perspective Drawing

Perspective means that objects get smaller when they are further off. When you use perspective drawing, you are applying the principle in your art.

You depict three-dimensional object so that the further they are from the point-of-view, the smaller they get.

Practice doing this by drawing simple three-dimensional objects like cubes and cylinders from different angles. This will help you with anime characters and other more complex pictures later on.

Use References!

This can’t be emphasized enough. Using references will improve your art. It will give you something to go off of if you are trying to draw new poses, expressions, or body types.

It will give you an increasing knowledge of anatomy, too, as you begin to see and draw images of different kinds of people in different poses.

You can use photos or even other drawings. Look at what other anime artists have done, too, to see how certain things are conveyed in the art style.

Don’t Give Up

Learning how to draw requires practice and work. You will not start out great, but with practice, you will get better.

Sometimes it will seem as if you aren’t making much if any progress, or ideas will simply keep not working out when put on paper.

Be patient with yourself. As infuriating as these kinds of setbacks can be, you need to keep practicing and making the effort to get better. Find other artists and talk to them.

They probably share your frustrations, even if they seem to be incredibly skilled. All of them have been where you are when they were just starting out.

Every artist is trying new things creatively and they all have issues when they are just starting out Refuse to give up, and you are going to see a lot of improvement, even if it takes time.

FAQ about drawing anime

What materials do I need for drawing anime?

Well, you know, you can actually start with the basics. Just grab yourself a pencil, an eraser, and some paper. If you’re feeling a bit more ambitious, you might want to invest in some inking pens, colored pencils, or even markers. For those who prefer digital art, a graphics tablet and software like Clip Studio Paint or Adobe Photoshop can work wonders.

How do I draw anime eyes?

Anime eyes, they’re so expressive, right? To draw them, first sketch an oval or circle shape, then add a curve on top for the eyelid. Next, draw the iris and pupil, keeping in mind the light reflection. Finally, add some eyelashes and eyebrows to complete the look. Remember, practice makes perfect. So, keep experimenting with different shapes and styles!

What about anime hair?

Ah, the famous anime hair! First, you’ll want to start by sketching the head and hairline. Then, imagine the hair as a series of connected shapes and draw the basic outline. Add details like strands, highlights, and shadows to give the hair depth and life. Don’t be afraid to go wild with the style, since anime hair is known for being unique and gravity-defying!

How do I draw different anime expressions?

Capturing emotions is key in anime! Begin by understanding the basics of facial anatomy, like the eyes, eyebrows, and mouth. Then, tweak these features to convey different emotions. For example, raised eyebrows and a wide-open mouth can show surprise, while lowered eyebrows and a frown might show anger. Experiment and have fun with it!

How can I make my anime characters unique?

Personalizing your characters is a blast! You can create uniqueness by combining different facial features, hairstyles, and clothing. Also, think about their personalities, backgrounds, and hobbies. The more you develop your character’s story, the more distinctive they will become. And hey, don’t forget about those tiny quirks that make them even more memorable!

How do I draw anime bodies and poses?

Drawing the body can be challenging, but you got this! Start by breaking the body down into basic shapes and guidelines. Learn about proportions, anatomy, and gestures to make your characters look more natural. Then, practice drawing different poses by using references, like photographs or even yourself! The more you practice, the easier it will become.

Should I start with traditional or digital art?

Honestly, it’s all up to you and your preferences. Traditional art is great for beginners because it’s more tactile and helps you develop fine motor skills. On the other hand, digital art offers more flexibility, like the ability to easily correct mistakes and experiment with colors. Try both and see which one you enjoy more. There’s no right or wrong answer here!

How can I improve my drawing skills?

Well, my friend, practice is the name of the game. Draw every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Study anatomy, observe people and objects around you, and use references when needed. Don’t be too hard on yourself and remember that every artist has their own journey. Keep learning, experimenting, and most importantly, have fun!

What are some good resources to learn anime drawing?

There are plenty of resources out there! You can find online tutorials on websites like YouTube or DeviantArt. Books, like Mastering Manga by Mark Crilley or How to Draw Anime by Christopher Hart, are also super helpful. Additionally, joining art communities and forums can provide you with valuable feedback and inspiration. Never stop learning!

How do I develop my own anime drawing style?

Finding your own style takes time and experimentation. The key is to study different artists and styles, then incorporate elements you like into your own work. Don’t be afraid to mix and match different techniques or add your own flair. Over time, as you continue to practice and grow, your unique style will naturally develop. Just be patient and enjoy the creative journey!

Conclusion on how to draw anime

While learning how to draw anime can be very frustrating, it is fairly simple. The only thing you need to do after you master these basic concepts is practice, practice, practice!

If you liked this article on how to draw anime, you should check out these as well:

How To Draw Chibi: 33 Drawing Tutorials
The Best Drawing Tutorials: Learn How To Draw
How To Draw Manga: Characters, Body, Face, And More
83 Anime Desktop Backgrounds (Wallpapers)

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