How to draw manga tutorials: Manga eyes

Basically I am going to start by giving some hints about self learning manga, hence I am going to introduce a 'how to draw manga tutorials' series in this blog. We will touch upon eye drawing for this post.

I am a student of drawing manga comics just like many of you, so I'm letting everyone know that I am not an expert in this aspect. However because I have a manga comic teacher, I could check back whether all these online resources are beneficial or not.

However there is one advice: there may be thousands of resources out there providing information on how to draw comic or manga, but without a good mentor, self learning can become tedious and discouraging.

Why do I say that? Simply because when we self learn:

1.We tend to practice what we are comfortable with and we seldom challenge ourselves to go beyond what we should be learning.
2.We don't have professional advice, so we do not know how much we progress or what to improve on in our drawing.
3.We give up easily as there is no challenge to improve when we are by ourselves. Mentors or teachers help us to spur on.
And there are many other reasons why self learning has limitations. However I am not saying this is impossible; it's just a steeper hill to climb that's all.

Moreover some people may not have the luxury to have a good mentor. Either they are not available, or it may be expensive to have one.

So the upcoming advices and tutorials are for everyone. Let's get on with it shall we?:

From my previous doodle art, my manga teacher skipped the aspect of drawing heads in my training. That's because she thinks that I have a decent amount of skill to survive in that aspect, and will further give me more training next time to do different sets of profiles. (I am only currently doing a front view profile as seen here in my previous post.)

How do I know how to draw if I did not have any background for drawing in the first place?

Simple. Like anyone who wants to self learn drawing manga or comics, going to Google and search 'how to draw manga' is just an instinctive reaction.

I chanced upon this video tutorial from my Google search:

Is that all? Just practice what the video suggests?

Nope, that's because by simply copying how he draws, we just become copy cats! This will help very limitedly when you want to make your own comic book, as we need to be original as we can.

There is a general system in drawing eye/eyes. It's not a hard rule, but it certainly helps. Here are the steps in order:

1. Draw the iris of the eye/eyes first. That will give us a rough gauge of the size of the eyes.

2. Include the highlight of the eye/eyes; either a small circle/oval at the top left hand corner of the iris for starters, or at other corners of the eye, but please be consistent to apply it to both eyes. The highlight of the eye determines the direction of light that is shining upon your character generally, so it gives a lively effect. Please do not ever shade into the highlight of the eye.

3. Extend the lines from the top and bottom parts of the iris to draw the eye lashes, thus determining the shape of the entire eye.

4. Draw a line above the eye lashes to indicate the fold of the eye lid. Makes the look real and good.

5. Add the eye brows.

I was browsing other videos of this author and noticed that this is how he usually draws eyes of his characters. (In the above particular video, because he had guiding lines pre-drawn on his paper, he could start drawing from the eye lashes.) I found it to be very useful and applied it consistently in my doodles.

This will be my final hint for this post. More will come in future posts.

I used to think that systematic drawing and creativity are at odds with each other. Basically I believed that having a system to define my drawings would put creativity in a box.

Actually this is not true. Every professional manga or comic artist would need to draw hundreds of eyes, hairstyles and bodies. And these comic artists have a dateline to meet for their publishers. If they do not have a general system to draw characters so as to allow them to draw fast while retaining quality, they will never meet their datelines.

So if anyone is browsing through tutorial videos on drawing, do take note on small details of how the artist drew their work. Every part of a character's body has a system by which we can easily follow to aid our drawing. That is why guidelines existed.

So this is the end of my first post on how to draw manga tutorials. Do come back to check for further updates.

As you can see, I revisited the 5 steps found in the previous post to draw manga eyes. Step 4 and 5 is combined as it is easy to pull off; just follow the gradient of the eyelash and you will be fine.

Of course, this is a basic system. To experiment further, you can try two highlights, make the iris smaller and away from the eye lashes to give a different effect. But generally this is up to your own creativity and style. The example above is more suitable for ladies' eyes.

And pardon me with the pencil and pen explanation. I am not so fluent with my ComicStudio Debut 4.0 and as I am now in my exams period, I have no intention to experiment with it till I have more time.

Notice I did not draw the pupil of the eye nor shade any part of the eye. In contrast to Mike Crilley's YouTube demostration, he draws the pupils and shades the iris.

That is because I want to demostrate to beginners that you don't have to focus on the pupil and shading to make a good eye. In fact, if you take a look at the manga picture at the very top of the post, you will notice that the author did not put in any pupil, while the gradual shading of the eye cannot be really seen there.

The pupil and the shading adds very good details to the eye for the eyes to look realistic. However, I have read many mangas, and some of them didn't bother giving the shade and pupil of the eyes (I supposed they don't have all the time in the world to give so definite details). Therefore for beginners, you can experiment it at your own time by following the YouTube video that is posted before.

This is for beginners: why do we focus so much on the eyes of a manga or comic character? That is because the eyes are truly the windows to the soul; they determine the overall look of the character.

Emotions are portrayed primarily with the eyes, and the secondary effect is the mouth. Hence do a good pair of eyes, and you will have half a battle won for a good looking character.

That's it for 'how to draw manga easily: eye drawing (part 2)'. I know it can be really irritating for people who have drawing background to go through such basics, but for people who had no knowledge of drawing, it may benefit tremendously.

The above Youtube video is by Mike Crilley, author of the Miki Fall series Original English Language(OEL) manga comic. I am not doing any advertising for him, nor have I read his comics, nor do I know him personally, but I do want to recognise his efforts in making these manga drawing video tutorials that helped me greatly.

This blog post is from http://manga-journey.com/ , where it is my blog on my journey to become a semi-professional or professional manga aritst. There are newer updates than this post so please take a look at it if anyone wants to find out more.