Part 3 Cleaning up and Finishing the Drawing

1. Erase the guidelines to clean up your drawing. Use either the eraser on your pencil or a block eraser to lift up any guide lines that aren’t a part of the character’s face or head. Carefully work around any of the facial features you’ve drawn so you don’t erase their lines too much. Continue erasing the rest of the guides on your drawing until all that’s left is the face.

If you drew your guide lines too dark, then they may not fully erase off of the paper.

Use a thin eraser to get in detailed areas, like the eyes or ears.

2. Give your character a fun hairstyle. Anime and manga characters can have a variety of hairstyles, so choose one that you think will look best on your character. Avoid drawing every single strand of hair and instead sketch the basic shape of the style onto your character. Work lightly in pencil so you can erase and make changes if you need to. Once you have a roughed-in shape for the hairstyle, erase any parts of the head that the hair covers so it’s not visible.

Anime or manga hair is usually broken up into clumps that end in a point. Look at hairstyles of various characters to get ideas of how to style your character’s hair. Tip: Practice drawing different hairstyles on a piece of tracing paper over your drawing so you don’t have to erase your character if you don’t like the style you drew.

3. Add small details like freckles or wrinkles to your characters face. After you’ve finalized the hair and erased the guide lines, work on adding any details to make your character unique. Give them freckles on their cheeks, moles, or wrinkles so they look more interesting. Sketch in any jewelry or accessories you want in pencil so you can erase them if you don’t like how they look.

You don’t have to add any additional details to your character if you don’t want to.

4. Shade the face with your pencil to give it more depth. Use the side of your pencil to lightly apply a shadow underneath the chin, bottom lip, and hair on your character. Make sure to move your pencil in the same direction for each shadow you draw so it looks consistent. Apply more pressure to the pencil if you want to make your shadows darker.

Be careful not to make your shadows too dark or else they will look too harsh and be difficult to erase.