Draw a Realistic Anime Face – This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to draw female anime that looks very different from the usual anime styles.

Drawing an anime face that looks realistic is a little more challenging than drawing a “normal” or manga anime-style face. While the painting process itself is not very difficult, balancing realistic facial features and maintaining an anime look is the challenge.

To help with that challenge, this tutorial provides intricate details of the drawing process. Includes a description of how to paint the head and each facial feature to achieve a more “realistic” look.

Be sure to make clear lines for the first stages of the drawing so you can easily erase the parts later. The lines in the examples are easily black to see them. You can pass your drawing with black lines after you are sure everything is in the right place and after deleting all the guidelines and facial parts hidden by the hair.

Step 1 – Drawing A Semi-Realistic Anime Theme

Anime characters usually have round faces. The lower part of the anime’s face is usually drawn with two lines, one running from the top of the head to the area around the mouth and the other from there to the chin. The chin itself is usually drawn sharply or with a slight curve.

To get a realistic look of an anime, draw the head in almost the same way but with a flat and wide chin (close to the real chin). You can also choose to make the head a little “longer” (longer straight up).

Start the drawing with a straight line to help you make sure both sides of the face are the same size. Next, you can draw a circular shape on the top of the head and highlight the lines of the lower part of the head as described.

Also Read:-

• How to Draw a Katana Step by Step
• How to Draw Anime Wolf Girl Step by Step

Step 2 – Eye Painting

Take a look at how you can come up with traditional anime characters (as suggested in other tutorials here on AnimeOutline). Do this by drawing a horizontal line in the middle of the face and drawing the eyes below that line. Please open your eyes so you can put another eye in between them.

Draw eyes slightly smaller than normal anime eyes but larger than real eyes. Make irises circular (anime irises and readers are often straightforward).

You can leave small eye details like student and eyebrows later after ensuring all other facial features are properly aligned.

Step 3 – Drawing a Realistic Nose

Although traditional anime spaces are usually just dotted (in preview) to get a style that looks realistic, you can draw a very close nose with real shape and proportions.

Stop the nose the way you would in a traditional anime character with the bottom of the nose between the chin and the center horizontal face. (and similar to other courses here on EasyAnimeDrawings).

Every realistic nose design can be divided into different curves. Draw two small curves in the nose, the other two curves to give the sides of the nose. Advertise the tip of the nose with one small curve and finally show the nose bridge with one long curved line. Be sure to draw only the last line on one side of the nose. Your drawing will look weird if you add both sides.

Step 4 – Drawing Ears

Draw ears as well as you would with many other anime styles. Draw the top of the ears to align with the top of the eyes and the bottom of the ears to align with the bottom of the nose.

Please note that the ears in this tutorial will eventually be completely covered with hair and wiped with the last steps, so painting yourself is an option.

Step 5 – Drawing Mouth and Lips

Anime lips are usually pulled out of the lips, but you can add them if you want a mouth that looks real.

Keep the mouth and lower lip in the middle of the lower part of the nose and under the chin.

Draw the mouth like a comma in the middle where the lines bend slightly downwards. You can also draw it wider than other mouths of traditional anime.

Step 6 – Drawing Simple Anime Hairstyles

Anime hair is usually styled into straight pieces. To get hair that looks real, you can still look at it as a clump of clumps but without straight ends. Instead, leave the clump “open” end and draw certain lines in these spaces to give the appearance of hair strands. This will create hair that is easy to draw but looks realistic.

To better understand how to draw hair, it can be very helpful to think that it is divided into parts of the tree (as shown in the example above):

• Red – Front Hair
• Green – Side Hair
• Blue – Back / Top Hair

Keeping the above in mind, start with a real hair drawing by defining its overall shape and adding open ends clumps as described above. Do not add small sections yet.

Once you have finished painting the big hairstyles, you can go ahead and add a little split between the big clumps to give a little detail.

You should have a drawing like the one above when you are done.

Also Read:-

• How to Draw Anime Poses Step by Step
• How to Shade Anime Hair Step by Step

Step 7 – Cleaning the Drawing

In this short step, you can erase the parts of the head and face covered with hair. You should have a clean line with all the facial features in place when you are done.

Step 8 – Drawing Small Eye Details

After you have a basic line drawing of the face, you can add small eye details.

Although the eyes of the subject are slightly different from those in the model, the same drawing steps are still applicable. Just adjust them to make them look more like those in the example above.

It was also suggested at the beginning of this study to make simple lines of its first steps. Once you reach this point, you can bypass your drawing with black lines.

Step 9 – Finishing the Drawing By Applying Shading

To complete the drawing, you can add very basic shading.

Normal shading without a single clear shade of light source areas may be shady. These photos will usually be:

• It is applied to the hair on the forehead
• With eyelids
• Under the nose
• Above neck area (thrown head)
• Inside / Back of hair

Make sure you leave room for the highlights of white hair and a small area prominent for the lips.

Conclusion

It would be a little tricky to find the right balance between anime and reality when trying to draw an anime character that looks real. Although this tutorial provides guidelines, there is no set way to draw these characters. You can test yourself by adding realistic or styled facial features and see what kind of effects you come up with.

Draw Anime Kissing Lips – This tutorial explains how to draw refreshing anime lips and faces from two different head views with different angles.

This tutorial focuses on showing the “refreshing” look in a woman anime, but it can help you if you are looking for an easy way to draw ahead with different angles.

Drawing Kissing Anime Lips

Anime characters are usually drawn without showing their lips. However, some speeches and intimate scenes of facial lips may be shown in full or partial.

For refreshing anime, lips draw the mouth slightly open with the upper part shaped like an “M” flat and the lower part similar to the “U” flat shape. Give the upper lip one small curve and the lower lip with two large curves intersecting.

With a side view, you can draw anime lips similar to natural lips but leave them as silhouettes without showing internal details.

Above and below, you can see the size of the face used for this study.

You may already be aware of this once you have seen some of the lessons here on EasyAnimeDrawing.

Finally, you can see how facial features change when you make a “refreshing face” compared to normal speech.

Also Read:-

• How to Draw Anime Poses Step by Step
• How to Shade Anime Hair Step by Step

The main changes are:

• Eyes closed – the upper eyelashes will change until the end of the eyes
• Open mouth – lips painted as described above and jaw slightly lower

You may also notice some green added to the cheeks. You can paint the blush with just a few stripes.

For reference, you can see what this character would look like with his usual head-to-head and face-to-face speech.

Anime Girl Face – Side View

You can also see an example of a side view diagram above.

Drawing Face Anime Face – Preview

Draw a “refreshing face” in the front view area and draw face features as described earlier (eyes closed, slightly open mouth, and blink).

Drawing Face Anime Face – Side View

Above, you can also see the same face painted “refreshing expressions” in a side view.

This pattern can be used to draw a character who kisses someone underneath him. For example, he kissed his little sister/brother on the forehead. But often, the head is tilted upward when kissing on the cheek or lips so that the above example does not always work.

Drawing A Refreshing Anime Face With Lifted Head – Side View

On the side, view head tilted, it is easy to draw. You can replace the previous face painting.

The only tricky part is drawing hair. Draw the upper part of the hair around it and the head and short clumps of slightly angles in line with the inclination. Keep long sections of the hair hanging down like the previous example.

If the hair is long, it is more likely to fall out. Very short hair will go around the head, and medium hair will bend down but not fully hang like long hair.

Finally, the most challenging example of this study.

Drawing a pre-raised head can be very difficult because all face features and scales will change. However, you can use the method below to make drawing an angle head much easier.

Also Read:-

• How to Draw Anime Skirts Step by Step
• How to Draw an Anime Elf Girl Step by Step

Removing Lines From One View to Another

If you are struggling with drawing a raised head (lowered metal) in the preview, a good strategy is to draw that same head with a side view. Next, project a set of lines from each major facial feature. These lines will give you the placement of that same head angle facial features in the preview!

Please note that you do not need to do this every time you paint, but it would be a good practice until you get the hang of how to paint a face at different angles without additional help.

You may also notice a slight bump on the left side of the face. This is an option but can help show that the head is tilted upwards.

Conclusion

Drawing refreshing anime lips is easy, but painting the whole face (especially from different angles) can be very difficult. We hope the tips and suggestions given in this tutorial will help you better understand how to draw these.