Hello, everyone! Today I wanna share some quick tips to draw your character’s head from the side, with a manga look! I remember how frustrating it was every time I was trying to draw, and the final result wasn’t close to what I was expecting.

 

I felt like there was always something missing, but today, I’ll share with you a couple of quick tweaks that can make a lot of difference in the visuals. Let’s go!

Alright! To start, we’ll draw a circle. I’ll be using different colors for each part, so it will be easy to see. It doesn’t need to be a perfect circle.

Then we’ll draw two vertical lines: One at the border of the circle and another one at the middle, or as close as you can to it. You don’t need to measure these lines; they just need to be there to aid us in the next step!

From here, we’ll start shaping the face. Starting from the forehead, we’ll draw a diagonal line, and then, we’ll break inside and move outside, trying to make a round shape, but also keeping some point edges.

Now comes the most important part! We’ll draw this shape. It is a mix of two vertical lines. The shape is similar to a tilted letter “J”.

We can go downwards from here and try not connect the jaw line to the ear. Leaving a gap there will give a softer look. Try not make this part of the face too long, because it will help with the look we are going for this character.

We can draw the ear using the center line we did earlier and get the eye in position! The size of it is up to you. For this drawing, the eye will be between the forehead and nose.

Before we continue, the shape of the eye changes a little if you wanna make the character look straight forward. The shape gets a little narrow. Also, try to make the upper portion wider. It gives a nice manga look to it!

 

For the mouth, we can add a little fang there; it’s pretty cool!

Going to the hair, the shape will be around the initial blue circle that we drew. There are many options for hair. A suggestion is to try to copy a design you like, then change it a little to fit the character you’re making.

Changing the expression is also an option! You can make big changes, just by changing the eyebrow and the shape of the mouth!

Also, if you think there are too many lines inside the shape, delete them. I think it’s easy to see the shape by focusing on the movement, rather than adding many lines side by side.

 

Below, we added a simple shape for the body as an extra, but with this information, you can already make a face looking at the side! Try to make this one. You don’t need to apply ink at this time. Do a couple of sketches and i’m sure you’ll be able to draw your character in this angle!

Now, I’ll show some steps of the inking; it is optional. I’ve used the default Real G Pen, with Anti Aliasing at Week, Stabilization 80, so i can draw slowly and control some line variation.

 

You can try fast lines as well, but to me, slow lines make me hit undo less times. Give it a try! You may like it as well.

You can lower the sketch lines oppacity, I did it for around 43%. You can also pick some points to fill with ink. It will help with the depth of the drawing. Also, don’t forget to add blushies!

It’s also possible to add screentones, with the lasso tool, make a selection around the hair and click the tones option. You can change all the numbers later, but i did it with Frequency 50% and density 30 for the hair.

You can fill the entire area and then later erase a couple of parts with your brush, or with special brushes. For example, at the Hatching brushes, you can select one marked as tone scraping for it!

Another tip is, if you want to make a smooth transition between the lines and tones, you can add a new empty layer(raster) and call it “Fill”. You can then add more black spots to help the transition.

Here’s what i drew in this fill layer.

And this is it! I really hope this quick guide can help you to make your characters! Thank you very much for reading, and have a wonderful day!