by Harold Sink

Created on: July 31, 2011

You will often hear that the way to improve your manga drawing is to practice daily.  This is very true because no matter what you do in life, you will improve at it over time with more practice.  Of course, this is not all you need to do to improve your manga drawing skills.  Drawing is actually not all that difficult, but techniques in drawing are so varied that one could get lost in mastering just one of them.

Most people in general who may not draw think of manga drawing as the style of people made up by the Japanese.  The Japanese have their own style of drawing vehicles, buildings, etc, too.  So if you want to focus on just people, you may do that.  Since Manga is a book done with Japanese stylized art, Anime is the short accepted term for Japanese animation.  Try not to get the two confused.

The majority, but not all Manga is usually done as black and white pages with the cover typically done in color.  With that in mind, try not to worry too much about color unless that is the path you want to take.  Inking skills can always be improved.  If you are still not using different thicknesses of pens for your drawing then maybe it is time for you to spend that extra money and do so.  Line thickness can make a world of difference and can be changed dramatically and quickly with a felt tip calligraphy pen.

Spend time practicing line quality on cheap paper before making the final draft on smooth Bristol paper.  Also, get over the fear of drawing noses, eyes, hair, ears, hands, feet, or anything else that you are putting off.  Tackling your most feared subject mater over and over again will bring you to new heights in your manga drawing.  Try not to forget that there are also many styles of manga drawing such as childish looking characters to realistic looking ones as well.  That decision is up to you.

Shading comes in so many styles these days in Manga drawing.  Manga has brought back the use of transfer stencils that seemed to be a lost art used only by professional cartoonists and rendering architects here in the United States of America.  These stencils give patterns to shading in very little time, which would normally take hours to perfect by hand.  Cross hatch shading is more prevalent than one might think.  When done well, it can drastically improve an image.  Another style of shading is gradient line development.  This is when you either work from thin

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