Hey Kinan. Sorry I took so long to reply. I really wanted to give this a proper response. Here’s some basics. Keep in mind that I’m just a student, not a professional- but as long as you’re not building any truly fundamentally bad habits (such as bad line weight, really awful proportions, etc) you can’t really go wrong with practice.
So, anime actually follows a lot of the same rules as realistic drawing (which is why I told you that you might benefit from trying realism in terms of learning basic anatomy if you get a chance). The facial structure is similar, the head is just bigger in proportion to the body, the waist is sinched, the hips are sometimes pushed wider (really depends), boobs are almost always wildly bigger or wildly smaller than real life size (no b cups in general tbh), and the eyes are bigger, nose smaller, etc etc. But the positioning is almost always the same.
Here’s some ‘semirealistic’ cartoons that kind of meet anime and realism in the middle. I like this style because it allows me to comfortable push contours and shading without looking too heavy handed, but since you want to learn anime we’ll move onto that in a sec.
In real life, you’ll notice eyes almost always fall a little over the center of the face. In anime, they fall almost exactly in the center of the face or a little below. This leaves lots of room for eyebrows and bangs.Keep in mind that if you’re looking at someone from below, something called ‘foreshortening’ occurs. This is when the angle you’re at creates the illusion of part of the face being shorter. In this case, the eyes would appear higher. I’ll clarify this a bit more later.
You’ve probably seen the "four lines technique’ before. After you draw an inverted teardrop shape (with a few little joints for the jawline), you can do one line down the center, another horizontal through the middle, and two more below at equal distances between the chin and the middle line. I don’t really use this technique anymore, but I drew it on mine for you.You draw the eyes on or directly under the middle line (whichever you feel is better for your angle), the nose on the second, and the mouth on the third. Feel free to not listen to these lines. Guidelines. Not rules. Do what your head tells you to, not what procedure instructs you to.
Here’s a step by step of a very simple and straightfoward anime face. Don’t worry if you cant read my writing. I’ve included almost all of it in the description since its messy, haha.
Quick clarification, what’s happening in the second pic is the features are beginning to come in. Im thinking about the character I’m drawing (Kyoko from yuru yuri. not shounen, but same style as a lot of shounen gals!) and so Im drawing in some relatively large eyes, a wide mouth, and a small nose. Honestly, the spacing between the eyes will come with comfort. It’ll be easier for you to first master the straight on face look.
Also, I have different eye types on the side of the second picture. You can use whatever one you want. I switch it up. I sometimes invent them. It’s whatever. If you’re having particular troubles with this, say the word.
I’m really not sure how “advanced” you are (yuck I hate that word), but if you feel comfortable moving on to different poses for the head, here we go. Notice that the lines are tilted in some places, spaced differently, etc. This is all intellectual. What if they were a real person? Would their eyes be higher up or shorter up based on the angle you want to draw them? Don’t worry about making the pose blatantly obvious, know you’ve got the rest of the body to work with later on to explain the pose and perspective.
I dunno if these helped at all. O’ll post a body tutorial later on if this is helpful? I drew most of these on the bus getting to work, so they’re not very good. If you want, I can post a finished ink drawing later so you know I’m not a total novice, haha (even though I obviously have a long way). Is this the style of girl you want to draw? Here’s a sparknotes of everything I went over:
*4 guideline lines: one in the middle, one in the center, 2 inbetween the chin and center line. Don’t worry about following them perfectly, sometimes they’re not perfect.
*Realistic people and anime are pretty similar. Just a few small cosmetic differences. If you don’t know something, reference real life.
*Different angles mean different positions for eyes, mouth, nose etc. Look at real life! Think about it! Reference it!
*There’s a lot of different eye types you can use. I don’t use a specific one, but if you have a favorite, make it yours and use it. Your thing.
*Please don’t sketchy line. Sure there can be lots of lines. But don’t successively draw small lines in order to draw one big line. Bad habit.
If you have big issues with anything, let me know and I’ll clarify and draw for you! If you have any favorite characters, I’ll draw them for the body tutorial.I hope this wasn’t completely useless, haha.
