How to Draw Anime for Beginners
Anime is the most beginner-friendly style there is: clean lines, clear rules, forgiving proportions. Here's how to draw your first anime character — and where to practice until it clicks.
What makes a drawing look 'anime'
Anime style follows a consistent recipe: a rounded skull with a small pointed chin, large eyes set low on the face, a tiny simplified nose and mouth, and hair drawn in bold clumps rather than strands. Because features are stylized, small inaccuracies disappear — which is exactly why anime is the perfect style for beginners.
Step by step: an anime face
- Draw a circle, then add a shallow V under it for the jaw and chin.
- Add a vertical center line and a horizontal eye line in the lower third — anime eyes sit lower than realistic ones.
- Block in two large eye shapes, half an eye-width apart. Add tall irises with 2–3 highlights each.
- Mark the nose with a tiny wedge or dot halfway between eyes and chin; the mouth just below.
- Draw the hair as 5–7 big shapes flowing from a whorl at the crown — think banana clumps, not spaghetti.
- Ink the final lines with confident strokes and erase the construction.
Learning anime style in DrawUp
DrawUp's tutorial library is full of anime and kawaii subjects: anime girls and boys, expressive eyes, chibi animals, cat-ear characters and more. The lessons mirror how manga artists actually work:
- Construction first — the app draws the skull circle, center line and eye line with you, step by step.
- Hair is broken into individual clumps, each one a single guided stroke. This is the fastest way to internalize how anime hair flows.
- Accuracy scoring keeps your line confidence honest — clean, single strokes are the heart of anime line art.
- Then the fun part: color your character with cel-style flat colors and highlights, and export a speedpaint video of the whole process to share.
💡 Tip: after finishing an anime tutorial, redraw it in free-draw mode without the guides. Comparing the two attempts shows you exactly which proportions you've internalized and which need one more rep.
