How to Draw an Anime Boy | Tips and Drawing Inspiration
We partnered with our good friend and co-editor Rachel Lammey who runs a drawing website called Arts and Craft Supply to get some tips on something we've wanted to get better at.
Apparently, drawing is easy and I've just been holding myself back all of these years. I feel like I loved drawing anime in middle school and then peaked and never got better.
Rachel explains that you have to practice new techniques, angles, and poses in addition to facial expressions and hair styles to master Drawing an Anime Boy / Anime Guy.
Maybe your a Yuri on Ice fan, Haikyu nerd, or Ouran High School Host Club simp? Well if so send me a friend request and count me in, let's draw some boys together.
Table of Contents
How to Draw an Anime Boy
Are you an anime lover? Or does anime have a special place in your heart? Or you're someone who loves to draw just about anything? If you are any of those, then keep on reading.
Anime is a Japanese cartoon in animated form. Many people love watching this because of its distinctive look, complex anime characters and interesting storylines. But whatever your reasons are for adoring anime, we'll let you decide on that.
Having watched an endless list of anime, you might start to wonder - How do they make anime? Or rather, how do they draw one? Well, you won't have to think about it much more because we've already got that covered for you.
Here are some ways you can draw an anime character. Moreover, an anime boy.
Why Draw an Anime Boy?
While there are plenty of tutorials out there which you can use to draw anime, these tips and guides we've prepared for you will surely help you kickstart your artistic journey.
If you love to watch anime online, then you probably already have a general idea of how easy or hard drawing anime characters could get. But of course, that's only a portion of the entire task.
Now, why choose to draw an anime boy? Well, there's really no heavy reason why you should start on drawing an anime boy instead of an anime girl. But illustrating an anime boy could have its perks. One, anime boys are drawn to look like girls so it'll be easier to transition from drawing a boy into a girl. You can just draw an anime boy then turn him into a girl by defining his figures more to that of a girl. You get the point. Two, they can be easier to draw because you won't have to give him more details like flashy clothes (unlike that of a girl).
How to Draw an Anime Boy
There are many types of characters for anime boys but we will focus on the average guy type of character. This is the usual character that you'll see in anime movies or anime series.
Before going to the specific anime character that we will be showing you how to draw, it's good to learn first the general characteristics of how an anime boy looks. Large eyes, small noses, simplified mouths with no lips, average body figure and average to casual clothing. These are the simple breakdowns of what composes an anime guy.
For the face:
To put it simply, to draw an anime face, you can use three shapes: a circle, inverted isosceles trapezoid and triangle.
For the body:
As for its body, you can start by drawing a vertical line to see if the two sides are symmetrical. This is the default body for most characters so we should also be able to use this when drawing the average guy character.
For this body, it should be at least twice as big as the head.
The arms should be as long as the body and longer if the hands are added.
For the legs, draw them as long as the head and body combined.
You can use the illustrations below as a reference.
The Average Guy
This character is usually the one to which viewers or readers can relate. Most of the time, they are the protagonist or the lead characters but depending on the storyline, they could be the second lead characters.
To start with the drawing, we will be using these proportions.
The face:
To begin with the drawing, outline the head first then draw a vertical line in between to make sure that both sides are proportional. Then draw a horizontal line through the middle of the head. This will be your guide when drawing the brows and the eyes.
For the eyes, draw them just below the horizontal line.
Anime Eyes can take many shapes like demon dog boys from Inuyasha to normal slice of life men like Wotakoi.
For the nose, you can make another horizontal line below the horizontal line you've drawn earlier. The distance should be about 1.4 inches or at least enough to make it look proportional to the entire face.
And for the mouth and lower lip, just draw it between the bottom of the nose and chin. You can refer to the figure above to make it a lot more easier for you.
You can draw the ears using the two horizontal lines you've drawn earlier as a guide. Lastly, after drawing the entire face, you can proceed with drawing the hair of your anime boy.
The body:
We've already shown you above how to draw the body of an anime boy so you can just use that guide for your anime boy's body.
Once finished, you can remove the vertical and horizontal lines, as well as the circles you used as a guide to sketching the entire body and face. The last step will be to add details and clothing to your anime boy.
Drawing Inspiration
Browse these Anime Boy Drawings for some inspiration!
