Anime Face Painting – This tutorial explains how to draw a person’s face in anime or manga style. Includes step-by-step drawing examples and a set of measurements to achieve the anime look of an older male character.

Adult anime characters (especially males) tend to have better-defined facial features, and their faces tend to be closer to real people.

In this case, we will be drawing a man in his 30s or 40s. We will also use a standard measurement set when drawing real faces.

It will be a muscular character to have a strong neck and large trapezius muscles.

Please be careful to make precise lines when drawing using pencil and paper as you will need to erase between different steps.

Step 1 – Draw Head Shape

Start your drawing by first drawing the overall shape of the head. The top of the charge will be closer to the circle in the front view and closer to the oval in the side view. Please note that older male anime characters tend to have longer faces than more minor characters with round faces.

In the lower part of the face, the view draws two vertical lines from the top circle and the top angle to the other and combines to form a chin.

The younger anime characters usually have very “sharp” beards but, in this case, draw a broad beard to make the surface look older.

For a side view, draw the lower part of the face without the slightest detail of the nose and mouth. Do not simply draw a line from the tip of the nose to the chin.

In this first drawing, you can measure the location of the nose (it will be covered in future steps).

Step 2 – Position & Draw Eyes

To set the eyes, draw a horizontal line in the middle of the face and draw the eyes directly to that line.

Anime characters usually have their eyes drawn under the horizontal surface of the face, but by drawing an older man like this in this lesson, you can set your eyes the way you would if you were drawing real people.

For a preview view, keep a distance of one eye width between the eyes.

Step 3 – Place and Draw Eyebrows

This part can be a little tricky. Before drawing the eyebrows, you need first to estimate where the hairline should be (slightly descending from the top of the head) and then fall from the hairline and divide the face into three equal parts.

Draw eyebrows in the next row down from the hairline.

Step 4 – Stop and Draw the Ears

Draw the ears in the middle of the three sections in the previous steps.

Step 5 – Stop and draw Nose

Draw a nose with a tip near the bottom line of the middle section.

Anime noses are usually painted with a line or a dot, but in this case, we will draw the tips of the nose and one side of the nose.

Step 6 – Stop and draw the Mouth

Draw the mouth with the lower lip between the lower and lower nose and the upper lip.

Step 7 – Draw Hair

For “back” hair, as in this example will show a hairline so that you can use the “hairline” point created earlier as a reference.

Draw small “teeth” in the hair area to look natural.

Step 8 – Line Drawing

At this point, you can clean your drawing and remove any guidelines you have created in the previous steps and small details such as wrinkles around the eyebrows and under the eyes.

You can also override your drawing with black lines if you need to.

Step 9 – Color

Fill in each drawing area with a color that should start with large rooms.

Leave white eyes when you color the paper or add them at the end when you color digitally.

Step 10 – Add Shading

This tutorial will apply basic shading to areas that are often sewn.

In this case, the main shaded areas will be:

• One neck (shade from chin)
• Inside the ears
• Under the nose (voluntarily and slightly on one side of the nose too)
• A small shadow under the lower lip
• Small shadows around wrinkled areas

Conclusion

Anime characters can have very different dimensions based on age and style. The tips in this tutorial should help you achieve an anime/manga style look for an older male character drawn in a more sophisticated manner.