Peter Gray - The Practical Guide to Drawing Manga

F rom its origins in Japanese comics, manga has become one of the most visible drawing styles across the world, in animation, computer games, advertising, and design. The style is characterized by dynamic and glamorous character design, fast-moving action, and polished draftsmanship.

This book aims to concentrate on characters how to draw faces and figures with accuracy and personality, how to achieve that particular manga look, and how to create new characters of your own.

Designed as a course, each new subject follows naturally from the previous one. Step-by-step demonstrations will teach you the most basic principles and then gradually lead you to greater sophistication. With some application, even the complete beginner should soon be able to produce satisfying results.

Try to resist the temptation to simply copy pictures from the book. Work through from the beginning and do all the exercises so that you can build up to creating your own dramatic drawings with confidence.

O ne of the great things about any style of drawing is that you need very little equipment to get started. Beginners often make the mistake of buying all kinds of expensive materials, but these do little to improve your skills and only confuse the issue of learning to draw. To start with, youll only need pencils and a pencil sharpener, paper, and an eraser.

Pencils
Although any pencil will do for mastering the basics of drawing, its worth splurging on a few decent artists pencils. They are graded from H (hard) to B (black) with a number prefix indicating the degree of hardness or blackness. A useful starting set would be H, HB, and 2B.

Pencils lose their points quickly, especially soft ones like 2B, so sharpen them regularly. Or you could use a mechanical pencil, say 0.5 mm, which produces a constant line without needing to be sharpened.

Eraser
An eraser is a vital part of your kit. Theres absolutely no shame in erasing mistakes and rough guidelines; they are an important part of the drawing process. There are dozens of varieties on the market, but they all do essentially the same job.

Paper
A cheap sketch pad would be good to get you started, but virtually any paper will do fine. I did most of the drawings for this book on scrap photocopier paper. For the beginner, expensive paper only inhibits your freedom to make mistakes.

HANDY HINT

Buy pencils of different grades with different-colored shafts so that you can identify them at a glance.