Art Tutorial: How to draw an anime face

If you want to draw anime characters but aren't sure where to start, this guide is for you! In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to draw the most important part of a character: the face. Keep reading to learn how to create perfect facial proportions from any angle. 

To follow along with this guide, make a new Magma canvas. Then, choose whether you want to draw a female face or a male face, and open up the links to have examples up while you draw. 

Drawing an anime face from the side

No matter what you’re drawing, remember that your subject can be broken down into basic shapes. This is especially important for anime art, where proportions and symmetry are key.

For this reason, you’ll want to begin by sketching out shapes and lines that will guide your drawing. We'll show you examples for a female face, but the same steps apply to a male face.

First, draw a circle and then draw a smaller circle inside of it. To make your circles perfectly even, you can use Magma’s Ellipse tool and hold the Shift key on your keyboard. Then, draw two perpendicular lines going through both circles, using the Brush tool and holding Shift to make your lines straight. 

Tip: You’ll use these circles to guide your proportions, so it’s helpful to draw them on a separate layer and toggle the layer’s visibility while you draw.

Make a new layer. Draw the outline of your character’s nose and jawline in the bottom-left section of the intersecting lines, and draw their ear on the bottom-right side of the smaller circle. The ear and jaw should be positioned diagonally from each other.

Now, it’s time to draw the outline of your character’s eye, which should be placed at the side of the face and directly in the center of the horizontal line. Draw the top of the eye above the line and the bottom below it.

Define your character’s nose, chin, and lips, drawing their mouth directly in between the nose and jawline. Add detail to the eyes and ears, then add eyebrows!

Let’s move on to the final part of your anime face: the hair. Start by outlining the general shape of your character’s hairstyle, add in lines to define strands, and color the final product. You can add highlights in a lighter color to show the reflections of light. 

Drawing an anime face from the front

Now, let’s move on to drawing an anime face from the front. The images in this example are of a male character, but the tutorial is equally applicable to drawing female characters! 

Draw a circle and make a vertical line going through its center. Then, add a horizontal line intersecting this line approximately two-thirds of the way down the circle. Like before, we recommend drawing these guidelines on a separate layer from the rest of your artwork.

Create a new layer and draw your character’s jawline below the circle. Then, draw a trapezoid shape above the horizontal line.

In the trapezoid you’ve just created, draw three touching circles. The right and left circles will be your character’s eyes, while the middle circle will represent the empty space in between their eyes. Add details like pupils and lashes to the eyes, then add eyebrows! 

Draw a nose below the horizontal line, and add a mouth at the bottom of the circle. Then, draw ears at the side of your character’s face, in between their eyes and nose. 

Now, add the outline of hair that frames the face. Add individual strands and shade in the hair, keeping in mind the face’s overall proportions. 

Congratulations! You’re all done with your front and side profiles. We hope you enjoyed this guide and are on your way to creating amazing anime characters!