How to draw anime head

How to Draw an Anime Head

The readers of Easydrawingart.com are very fond of drawing anime, and so today we will show you how to draw an anime head. This instruction is part of a series of articles on anime sketching and recalls one of the previous guides on how to draw an anime face. Unlike the above article, here we will pay more attention to the details of the head in general. Otherwise, the process of drawing an anime head differs little from the process of depicting an anime face.

So, what is needed to learn how to draw an anime head. You will need your art set, whether it be a pencil with paper or a graphics tablet, as well as a love of anime drawings.

Step 1

Let’s begin with the rough outlines. In the first stage, it is similar to an inverted egg. Do not use dark and clear lines to make changes and additions easier in the future.

Step 2

Let’s map out the lines to help depict an anime face. But first, create a neck. Then create an upright line with horizontal lines on it. All of these lines should also be as light as possible.

Step 3

Starting from the third stage, we will take care of the details in the anime head drawing. First depict the eyelashes, then pupils (irises), as did the artists of Easydrawingart.com.

Step 4

Now depict the inner part of the pupils in the form of small ovals. Above the eyes, depict eyebrows that may look like in the sketch from the artists of Easydrawingart.com, or have any other look.

Step 5

This stage of the guide on how to draw an anime head will consist of very simple dashes. Use a pair of short dashes to create a nose and mouth. Create folds above the eyes (eyelids) with a couple more dashes.

Step 6

Anime jaw is rarely oval, most often it is angular. Therefore, sharpen the jaw, as did the artists of the Easydrawingart.com in the sketch below. Complete stage six by depicting ears.

Step 7

Now depict hair. To begin with, with the help of a jagged line, depict a bang. By the way, to know more about depicting hair, visit the instruction on how to draw anime hair.

Step 8

In this stage, we need to finish depicting the hair of the sketched person. To do this, depict the upper part, either as the artists of Easydrawingart.com did, or make your own hairstyle.

Step 9

The main lines of the artwork are complete, and it’s time to clean up the image. To do this, take an eraser and clean your artwork from excess lines. For greater clarity, you can trace it with darker pencil or ink.

How to Draw Anime and Manga Male Head and Face

This step by step tutorial shows how to draw an anime or manga male head and face from the front and side views.

Anime male face drawing step by step

In this tutorial we will be drawing what can be the face of a young adult or high school age male anime character.

Manga and anime male characters of this age tend to have larger chins and longer faces with smaller/narrower eyes when compared to their female counterparts or younger males. Though this can also vary based on style.

If you are going to be following the tutorial with pencil and paper be sure to draw light lines until you are done with the facial feature and hair placement steps. You will need to erase parts of the drawing afterwards.

For drawing different types of anime characters using this face see:

For drawing an anime boy’s face see:

Step 1 – Drawing the Head

Front View

Draw a vertical line for the middle of the head to help you see if both sides are even.

Make the top part of the head close to a circle and from there project two lines angled inwards towards the middle of the face followed by a set of curves and two more angled lines pointing further inwards. Join the two sets of lines at the chin. Draw the chin itself with a small curve but don’t make it too pointy or the character will look less masculine.

Side View

Draw the top of the head close to an oval in shape.

Make a small bump around the eyebrow areas followed by an indent that transitions into the nose area. You can see step four of this tutorial for positioning the nose. But do your best to estimate it’s placement at this point.

Also at this stage you can simply draw a straight line from the tip of the nose to the bottom of the chin.

Add the bottom of the jaw by projecting a line form slightly above the oval and then curving it into another line that basically transitions into the chin.

Step 2 – Drawing the Ears

To position the ears draw a vertical line through the middle of the head and another line between that and the chin. Draw the ears with their top and bottom between the two lines.

Anime male ears inner details drawing

You can see the inner details of the ears above but you may want to save drawing these for after you place the rest of the facial features.

For more on drawing anime ears see:

Step 3 – Drawing the Eyes

The bigger and wider you draw the eyes the younger your character will look. In this case the character is a young adult (or close) so the eyes will be smaller then those of a boy.

Draw the eyes with their top portion touching the horizontal halfway point through the face (use the line from the previous step) and leave enough space between them to fit another eye.

Please note that the eyes will only be positioned this way when in their natural state if they are open wider they can go past this line and if shut they will usually go below the line. For now you can simply draw the their basic outline. The details will be added in a later step.

Draw the eyebrows slightly above the eyes. Anime and manga male eyebrows are often drawn thicker then female ones especially in older characters. But it also depends on the style.

Step 4 – Drawing the Nose

Place the details of the nose so that its bottom would be at the halfway point/line between the top of the eyes and the bottom of the chin. Please note that the actual bottom of the nose will not be draw. Show the nose by drawing a small vertical line for the bridge and giving a hint of one of the nostrils (slightly above the placement line).

If you are drawing the side view of the nose you will want to draw the bottom of the nose and the mouth at the same time as they basically transition into one another.

For drawing different styles of anime noses see:

Step 5 – Drawing the Mouth

Finally position the mouth by drawing a line between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin. This line will give you the position of the bottom lip. Draw the top lip just slightly above this.

You can give a hint of the bottom lip with one short line. Draw the mouth itself with a light curve and a small break int the middle. Also please note that generally adult or older teenager male anime and manga characters tend to have wider mouths then females.

For more examples of anime mouths see:

Step 6 – Drawing the Hair

Draw the hair over top of the head. The reason why you want to draw this way instead of just drawing the hair right away is because being able to see what the head looks like will help you position the facial features (as done in previous steps). It will also help you place the hair itself as you can see exactly how it sits on the head.

For a more detailed explanation on “see through” drawing and other anime drawing tips see:

To get that “anime hair” look draw the hair in fairly large pointy clumps.

Anime male hair drawing breakdown

To help you better understand how to draw the hair it can be very helpful to think of it as split into three parts (front, side and back/top).

Viewing the hair this way can be especially helpful when drawing when drawing hair that’s being pulled or blown in different directions. For more on this see the tutorials below:

You can draw the inner details of the ears (shown in step 2) either before or after drawing the hair.

Step 7 – Drawing the Details & Finishing the Line Drawing

Erase the parts of the head hidden by the hair and add the smaller details of the eyes such as the pupils and highlights. Afterwards you can also go over your drawing with darker lines and add black fill or pencil shading (depending on what you are drawing with) to parts of the eyes and eyebrows.

For the full step by step breakdown of drawing male anime eyes see:

After you finish this step you should have a clean line drawing of the face. You can leave it at this stage or move on to the next step if you want to add shading.

Step 8 – Add Some Shading

For some very basic anime style shading (also known as “Cel Shading”) add it in places where shadows are most likely to occur in general lighting conditions.

For some simple shading with no gradients you can add the following:

Also darken the hair and the irises of the eyes but leave the highlights in both areas white.

For drawing different types of hair highlights see:

For examples of drawing an anime face in different lighting conditions see:

Conclusion

Male anime heads and faces can vary depending on style but generally the older the character the more they tend to differ from their female counterparts. Younger characters usually have faces very similar to females while older characters are often drawn with longer faces, smaller eyes and better overall defined facial features.

For drawing a similar face in 3/4 view see:

For a similar tutorial on drawing a female anime face see:

For drawing the facial expressions of similar faces see:

8 Step Anime Woman’s Head & Face Drawing Tutorial

This tutorial explains how to draw an anime woman’s head and face step by step. The focus is on creating a middle aged looking female in the anime/manga style with proportion and facial features common to that type of character.

Anime woman drawing step by step

The age of the woman in this tutorial can be anywhere from late 20’s to late 30s.

If you are going to be following along drawing on paper try and keep your lines very light as you will need to erase parts of the head in some of the steps. If you are drawing digitally then you may have a lot more options depending on the software you are using.

For the pros and cons of drawing with a pen tablet see:

Step 1 – Structure & Draw the Head

For a middle aged female anime character’s head draw it “taller” (longer vertically) than you would for a younger person. Kids generally have rounder faces than adults therefor a longer face will automatically make a character look older and more mature.

For the front view you can first draw a shape close to a circle. Draw two lines going down from that and two more lines going down form those meeting in the middle to form the chin.

For the side view you can draw the top of the head as an oval and then add the bottom section onto that. This can get a little tricky as you will want to indicate the nose right away. As suggested earlier you can do a rough drawing with light lines first and estimate where the nose should be and correct your drawing later if needed. For placing the nose see step four of this tutorial.

For now draw the area between the tip of the nose and the chin as a single line. The details of the mouth and bottom portion of the nose will be added in later stages.

For more on anime heads and faces see:

For drawing anime necks and shoulders see:

Step 2 – Place & Draw the Ears

Please note that the ears will actually be covered by the hair in later steps so drawing them can be optional. However it can still be a good idea to at least show their outlines (even if you erase them later) as it can help you judge weather or not your character looks right. Drawing the head without the eras can just look odd. It’s also a good to know how to position them in case you want to draw a different hairstyle.

For placing the ears draw a horizontal line through the middle of the head and then a line between that and the chin. Draw the ears between these two lines.

For more on drawing anime ears see:

Step 3 – Place & Draw the Eyes

Bigger and wider eyes tend to make characters look younger. For an older anime characters draw the eyes vertically narrower and with slightly smaller irises/pupils in relation to the rest of the eye.

To position the eyes you can use the horizontal line made though the middle of the head in the previous step. Draw them directly below it.

For the front view draw the eyes roughly far enough apart that you can fit another eye in between them.

Anime woman eyes drawing step by step

You can see all of the drawing steps for the eyes in the example above however you should finish the entire drawing of the face before adding color. You can simply come back to this example if you need to when you are working on the last step of the tutorial

For more on drawing anime eyes you can see:

Step 4 – Place & Draw the Nose

When placing the nose you can again use the lines in the previous step. In this case it’s bottom will be on the same line as the bottom of the ears.

For drawing the bottom portion of the nose in the side view you can see the next step as it’s pretty much tied into drawing the lips.

When drawing the front view of the nose you can show it as two vertical lines. The little gap between these will indicate the tip. Make a shorter line for the bottom part of the nose (below the tip) and a longer one above it.

For more examples of anime noses see:

Step 5 – Place & Draw The Mouth & Lips

Anime mouths are usually drawn as a single line (often broken up in the middle). The lips are generally not shown at all or just hinted at. However older characters tend to sometimes be drawn with more pronounced facial features so in this case the mouth will be slightly better defined. The woman will also be wearing lipstick which means that the lips can be shown as well.

Position the mouth so that it’s bottom lip is halfway between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin.

You can see a close up drawing of the mouth and lips with all the details in the example above. Again wait until you are done with the entire line drawing of the face to add color.

For more on drawing anime lips see:

For drawing more traditional looking anime mouths see:

Step 6 – Draw the Hair

For this hairstyle draw the top part of the hair somewhat tracing the shape of the head. As the hair goes down you can draw it splitting into various clumps with some light curves/waves in them.

For more on anime hair see:

Step 7 – Clean up the Drawing

Once you finish the previous steps clean up your drawing and erase any guide lines as well as the parts of the head covered by the hair. You can then trace over your lines to darken them. However do not trace over the outlines of the highlights and shadows in the eyes. Leave those lines light so that they pretty much blend into the color/shading added in the next step.

Step 8 – Color the Drawing

To color and shade your character first fill each area such as the hair and skin with a solid color and add the darker shadows afterwards. You can either leave the highlights like the reflections in the eyes, hair and lips white if drawing on paper or draw them in later if drawing digitally.

For some generic shading darken the areas that normally tend to be away from the light. In this case most of the shadows will be located in the following places:

For more on coloring an anime character see:

Conclusion

For older looking anime characters draw them with a longer faces and narrower eyes than you would for a younger ones. If you look at few photos of real people generally kids tend to have rounder faces and larger eyes (in relation to their head) than adults. As anime characters are fairly stylized these difference can be even more exaggerated.

For drawing a younger looking female faces see:

How to Draw an Anime Head

We decided to create another anime drawing lesson. We pay so much attention to the correct construction of the face and head because in the style of anime it is one of the most important things. So let’s start a guide on how to draw an anime head.

Step 1

First of all we start to draw face contours. This is a very important stage because the deformed facial contour can spoil the whole drawing. The contour of the face looks like an inverted egg with a pointed lower end.

Step 2

Let’s use regular straight lines to make landmarks for drawing facial features. In fact, the eyes are the most important part of drawing anime. Therefore, in this step you should be especially careful. The transverse line should also divide the face into two halves. Draw another transverse line well below the first line.

At the end of the step we draw a thin, elegant neck.

Step 3

We draw large almond-shaped eyes. You may notice that in our example the bottom contour is missing. If it will be easier for you, you can draw the entire outlines of the eyes and then erase the bottom edge.

Pupils should be located slightly closer to the center of the nose than the conditional middle of the eye. It’s just two circles on each side. Be especially careful with the location of the pupils.
If after a couple of steps you look at your drawing and see that it looks weird, the problem is most likely in the location of the pupils.

Also in this step, we will draw eyebrows that narrow in the lateral direction.

Step 4

Only after you have checked the previous step and made sure that everything is drawn correctly you can move on.

Ideally, the upper edge of the ears should coincide with the upper edge of the eyes, and the lower edge of the ears should coincide with the tip of the nose. In our case, you can see a slight deviation from this rule.

In the anime, the mouth and nose are usually drawn very simply. You can notice the contrast between very difficult and expressive eyes and the rest of the facial features that are drawn very simply.

Step 5

So we continue the drawing tutorial on how to draw an anime head. And now we draw contours hairstyles. As with everything else except the eyes, we do not need a large amount of detail in this action. In this step, we denote the outlines of our anime guy’s hair with short wavy lines.

Step 6

We erase all the extra lines from the portrait of our anime boy. We clean the entire picture. Erase the lower edges of the eyes if you have not made it a few steps back.

Step 7

First of all, paint the pupils with hatching, leaving a little glare in the lower half of each eye. After that, using the hatching, add shadows as shown in our example lower. You can add another layer of hatching to make the shadows thicker.

It was pretty hard, right? In fact, it was very important to focus all attention on the shape of the face and on the eyes. These two things are the key to success in drawing anime. And this applies to drawing any character, regardless of age and gender.
So we hope you got a very pretty portrait. Do not forget to write to us if you have any difficulties in drawing!

8 Step Anime Boy’s Head & Face Drawing Tutorial

This step by step tutorial explains how to draw an anime boy’s head and face. It shows how to draw facial features in common anime proportions and how to place them on the head. There are also some basic shading and coloring tips.

Anime boy drawing step by step

The example of the boy used in this tutorial can be around 10-15 years old. But when it comes to anime older characters can sometimes be drawing look much younger. So this type of character could also be used for drawing a high school student.

Please keep in mind that there is no one clearly established way to draw anime characters. The proportions and placement of the facial features vary greatly based on style and the artists preferences.

What this tutorial does is provide general guidelines for drawing anime or manga facial features that can be very helpful if you are trying to learn to draw in the style.

If you are going to be following the tutorial using pencil and paper be sure to draw very light lines for the initial steps so that you can easily erase different parts of the drawing if needed.

If you are drawing digitally your options will depend on your software.

You may also want to read:

Step 1 – Structuring the Boy’s Head

Since we are drawing a boys head we will want to draw a fairly round face as longer face make a character look older.

To draw the head in the front view first draw a vertical line to help you insure that both sides are equal. Draw the top of the head close to a half-circle and from that draw two downwards lines going towards one another. Draw another set of lines from those lines that will meet to form the chin.

To draw the side view of the head draw the top of the head close to an oval in shape and then draw the nose/jaw area on top of that.

When drawing the side view of the boy’s head avoid drawing lips for the initial sketch. You can also simply estimate where the nose should go. For correctly placing the nose you can see step four of the tutorial.

For drawing different kinds of anime heads see:

Step 2 – Drawing the Boy’s Ears

To place the ears draw a horizontal line through the middle of the head. Between this line and the chin draw another horizontal line. The ears will be roughly as tall as the distance between these two lines.

Please note that real ears are farther up in the head but since we are drawing an anime boy and not a real one we will use different proportions.

Step 3 – Drawing the Boy’s Eyes

To draw the eyes you can once again use the horizontal line through the middle of the head. Draw the eyes directly below this line.

Again note that real eyes are typically drawn directly on this line or above it. Anime characters generally have their eyes drawn much lower down on the face.

Since we are drawing a young boy the eyes should be fair wide (tall). Bigger and wider eyes give a character a younger appearance.

Draw the eyebrows slightly above the eyes. You can also draw a hint of the eyelids between the eyebrows and the eyes.

For more on drawing anime eyes you can see:

Step 4 – Drawing the Boy’s Nose

To place the nose draw another horizontal line between the horizontal line halfway through the face and the chin. Draw the nose above this line.

Yet again note that real noses are higher up on the face. However anime noses can be drawn even farther down if you are drawing characters with really big and tall eyes.

For more on drawing anime noses see:

Step 5 – Drawing the Boy’s Mouth

To draw the mouth draw yet another horizontal line between the line used for the nose and the chin. But instead of drawing the mouth directly on this line you will want to draw it slightly above. The reason being is that this line will actually give you the placement of the bottom lip which in anime is very often not drawn at all.

For more on drawing anime mouths see:

Step 6 – Drawing the Boy’s Hair

While there are many ways to draw anime hair generally it tends to be drawn in fairly large clumps. In this case we will draw a fairly messy hair style.

For more on drawing anime hair see:

Step 7 – Cleaning Up the Drawing

Once all of the facial features are placed and you finished drawing the hair clean up all of the guidelines and erase the parts of the head that are hidden by the hair. You may want to go over your drawing with a thicker stroke or darker lines as well.

Once you are done you should have a nice and clean outline drawing of an anime boy’s head and face.

Step 8 – Anime Style Color & Shading

The shading technique used for anime and cartoons in general is called “Cel Shading”. In short it’s a form of shading where there is no gradient but a hard line between the normal and shaded areas.

For the sake of this tutorial we will apply very generalized shading. Meaning that we will shade the areas that in most normal lighting conditions tend to be dark. In this case it will be the neck and bottom ends of the hair that curve inwards towards the face.

You can also add some drop shadows form the hair, eyelashes and a shaded area on one side of the nose (generally this will be opposite of where the light is coming from).

The brightest areas will be the reflections in the eyes and the highlights in the hair. You may want to leave these completely white or just very lightly shade them in.

To color and shade the drawing first fill in each area with it’s respective color and then apply the shadows over top. If you are drawing on paper leave the highlights/reflections white. If drawing digitally add them after you’ve filled in everything else.

For drawing the body you can see:

Conclusion

There are many ways and styles to draw an anime character but as mentioned this tutorial provides you with some guidelines to help achieve a more common anime look for a young male character.

For drawing the faces of older male anime characters see:

For drawing a female anime style faces see: