Stylin' with manga

Hello artists of the world, I hope everyone in Australia is having a great school holidays!

Last Monday I went to a manga class taught by Matt Lin. I was really nervous at first because I’d never drawn manga before.

Manga is a style of Japanese comics. Manga actually means 'comic sketches' in Japanese.

You would know the style if you have seen Astro Boy or Kimba the White Lion. One of my favourite animated series is Avatar: the Last Airbender and I also watch K-On!. 

Before I went to Matt’s class I had a go at drawing manga from a book. It was ok but I like Matt’s way of drawing characters because he uses shapes. For example, in the book they say to draw a line skeleton to show where the hips, shoulders, head, arms and legs go and then draw the body around it. Then, draw the clothes over that and rub out the in-between lines of the body. It was a bit too complicated for me but I can see why it would be a good way to draw action figures because the angles of the hips and shoulders always change as we move. 

My first go at drawing manga (from a book)

But with Matt’s type you start with a shape (like a circle) and then put other shapes behind and in front (like triangles for the legs) and then rub out the lines in between. 

Before we got onto the human characters we started with some cool and wacky monsters. Have a look at my very first character from the class. See how I drew the circle for the start and added triangles for the legs? Then I added details like facial expression, a spiky tail, and stripy horns.

My first manga monster

A page of manga monsters

Then we moved to human faces and positions. First we learned how to draw a child’s head. We started with a shape which looks like this

We added ears with details

Then we did the face. First we drew the eyes and the eyebrows. It depends on the emotion where you draw the eyes.  If your character is bored then the eyes are in line with the ears but for happy then the eyes are just above the ears. 

Next is the nose and the mouth. Draw a curvy smile shape then draw a semi circle hanging down from the smile shape and finally a little semi circle inside to show the tongue and colour inside.

Add hair or a headband.

Add colour if you want to.

Above is a ninja that Matt taught to us. I’m not going to show you how to do it because you should all book into one of Matt’s workshops. He’s a really good teacher. Or have a go at following a book on how-to-draw. 

Catch ya next week, S.