Paper

In most cases Printing or Cartridge Paper is sufficient, but sometimes artists prefer to use the real deal and buy materials from shops.

The important thing is to get yourself comfortable, if you can't get enough peace and quiet (or your favourite music on) then don't start drawing, you'll only get frustrated. Once you get practiced enough it won't be so much of a problem.

Have all of your materials within easy reach and know if you're just drafting/sketching or you're going to be inking/painting today. Get rid of the tools you don't need so that it doesn't clatter up your desktop. Have a bright light (Not glaring though) on your desk and use it even on cloudy days. (Close your blinds).

Make sure your seat is designed ergonomically so that you don't get a cramp or whatnot. Your eyes should remain around 30cm away from the paper itself. (I know artists like to bend over their work, just keep it in mind.)

The work surface should be tilted, the lower end towards you, the higher end away, this is to reduce the discrepancy in the art since if it lies flat, the result will be that you start drawing longer than you realize near the top portion of the paper. (You can make your own drawing table or buy it, see Tools & Materials.)

Manga is a highly stylized art form. In the tutorials I'll be using the site manga's characters for teaching. This might conflict with a number of drawing styles, but we can add those later. The following series is drawn by mouse, so please bear with the roughness.

Step 1: Start with a round shape for the head, this technique is used in most sketching and painting of people. Some people prefer to start with the neck, I add it afterwards in figure 2, whichever works best for you is fine.

Step 2: Draw in the lines that will guide you as you go. A line for the eyes, a line for the top of the nose and the bottom of the nose, a line for the mouth. Some people like to start with just three lines, some people like to use 6, either way is fine. But make sure the line for the eyes is almost halfway down on the face.

Now follow the draft lines and make a face, the shape slightly indented as you come to the eye line and keep it indented till you're past the bottom nose line.

Step 3: This is personal preference of course, I like to add the neck in, following the previous lines, and add a small triangle of shadow just below the chin. The eye goes in next. You'll notice that the beginning and ending of the stroke falls on the line and matches the middle. This is a 3/4 face, we'll talk about it more later.

Step 4: The underline of the eye goes on next, notice it is tilted upwards, the angle slightly exaggerated, but the line itself is not longer than the top (in fact if you drawn down from the left end of the top line to the bottom line, there is a tilt that goes down and right), and when the pupil is drawn it is pushed towards the right to face the front.

Step 5: Add the round area of light that's classic in manga drawings. Note in the site manga's style the light area is a tilted oval that covers about 1/3 of the 3/4 view eye and accented with heavier black underneath and to the side. Carefully draw in another line for the eyelid, then add a thicker line for the brow. (Most eyebrows will be 'hollow' but it's hard to do with a mouse, so you don't see that here).

Step 6: Draw in the nose, using your guidelines, this is easy. But make sure the line coming down is longer than the small stroke going almost horizontal. The other eye is added, and the lines still follow the guidelines drawn before, but this eye is bigger, its tilt is not as pronounced and there is more detail in the pupil. The light is 1/3 in length but almost half in width. The accented black is given more detail and an iris can be seen.

Step 7: Add the mouth and ears, the starting edge of the ears should be near the guideline for the eyes, the lobe should start around the end point for the nose. The mouth has its own guideline of course, but should be no lower than half way between the chin and nose (this rule is sometimes negated by style). The detailing of the visible ear is added next. (More on detailing later.)

Step 8: The fringe is added. I like to start with a couple of lines that just about shows me where the hair will go, try to make sure the hairline is about halfway between the eyes guideline and the top of the head. Add more detail on the fringe, in this style it comes to a point, and small strokes are added in the arch to give the effect of lifted strands of hair.

Step 9: After the fringe is complete add other parts of hair that balances out the picture in relation to height. Then add the 'part' of hair (The patch of hair where the strands spiral and focus, we all have one), and a few more, making sure you keep the lower end (the end that is supposedly attached to the head, is parallel to the circular guideline for the head.

Step 10: Draw in the rest of the hair, be it flat, spiky or plain long, always keeping where the stroke begins to a parallel with the head circle. After all that rub out the guidelines (in this case hide the guideline layer). And there you go.