Manga Faces in Colored Pencil

If you're just starting out drawing your favorite Manga or Anime characters, this tutorial will show you how to use sets of 3 colors - bodycolor, highlight and shadow - to draw the face in colored pencil.

Remember to keep your pencils sharp - a blunt pencil will sit on the surface of the paper texture and give you a spotty, rough look. To get the smooth clean look of a Manga drawing, you need a sharp pencil that will fill the paper surface well.

Try to have the color you want in the pencil rather than using a darker pencil lightly, so that you have a good solid coverage. If you need to get a lighter color, blend with a white pencil or try overlaying light colors to mix them. Use a good drawing paper - no point in doing a great picture on a lined exercise book! The surface of good quality paper will give you a much better result.

Don't give up if your pictures don't work out first time. Keep trying. Keep your first efforts so that later you can see how much you've improved. Sometimes it can take many tries to get the drawing just right - I did pages of drawings for my example, and I'm still not happy with it!

For more on basic colored pencil technique, read this tutorial on Colored Pencil Basic Strokes.