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Patient Question:
I have been drawing anime/manga for a while now, and feel that my art is not progressing. I don't seem to be getting better, and sometimes lack for ideas and inspiration. Could you please look at my gallery and come up with suggestions for helping me improve?





Staff Advice:


Yours is a common problem among the anime/manga artists here at the Hospital. There seem to be a good number of them who feel that they are not improving, despite steady work on their images.

Most of the artists who are feeling stilted seem to be drawing anime/manga figures portrayed against a single-color, or simple, computer-generated background. A number of these artists are also engaged in the making of "fan-art", which is the depiction of copy-righted figures in new settings or poses.

The end result, in either case, is a stagnation of both content and style, which would make any artist uncomfortable.

A determining factor in the nature of these galleries is that these young artists grew up watching anime cartoons, and feel at home with the highly-stylized characters, and their depiction against plain backgrounds. For many of them, it is the type of art they learned how to do first, and now they feel unfulfilled. In addition, many of these young anime artists have yet to attend an art school, or even intend to do so.

It is this lack of classical training and education, I believe, that lies at the root of their art problem and its frustrations.

Anime is a very stylized, formulaic art which dictates the general appearance of characters overall: large, over-sized eyes that dominate the face, especially when paired with the tiny, almost non-existent anime nose. The mouth is also relatively small, as are the chin, jaw-line, and ears. The torso is usually impossibly slender, and even in the male characters the arms and legs are long and thin to the point of femininity or androgyny. The hands are portrayed with long, slender fingers as well, and the rest of the hand is featureless; little or no creasing of the palm, or the inner pads of the fingers.

The long slender clothing shown on the anime figure does not really follow the realistic model either; the longer piece of clothing will drape and fold differently from the shorter one, due to the sheer weight of the material involved.

All-in-all, anime imposes basic rules upon the artist and is itself in turn imposed upon by them.

Having learned by those rules, young artists are stymied when trying to move beyond them; anime does not prepare them for other art forms. The styles and formulas of anime do not strictly follow the laws of proportion, texture, or realism.

Only by moving past the rules of anime/manga might an anime artist progress even within their chosen art form. Just as photographers must know the basic rules of painting, as painters must know the rules of drawing, anime/manga artists must know the rules of other genres before they can perfect their own.

One of the main concerns that effect anime/manga is color theory. The careful use of color can create moods, depth, and energy within any art piece. The warmer colors (red, yellow, orange) rise from the image as heat rises from a flame, and their use draws the viewer's eye. The colder colors (blue, purple, green) can anchor the warmer colors in place, to keep them from dominating the image unintentionally. In any case, the careful use of color can make or break an image, and the use of single-color backgrounds is a tricky business. Too warm a color can overwhelm a depicted figure, while too cold a color can inflict a calm, soothing mood not suited to the character.

But the main factor in overcoming the anime/manga formula is that of simply being able to draw ANYTHING. Someone who learns to draw by doing anime will always have trouble moving beyond it, while someone who learns how to draw anything realistically will not be bound by their own art. It's similar to driving a car; learn how to drive with an automatic transmission and that's all you'll be able to drive. Learn how to drive with a manual transmission and you can drive a car with an automatic transmission by default.

Many anime artists at the Hospital site have trouble with basic anatomy; anime does not represent actual anatomy, and so there are problems. One of the best ways to learn how to draw basic anatomy is to learn how to draw your own. If you are having trouble drawing hands, draw your own, non-art hand. It's as simple as holding your hand out in front of yourself and drawing it, over and over if necessary. This will help teach you the basic rules of proportion, texture, and shading. You will eventually note that the hand is rather wedge-shaped, with the thumb and the pad of the thumb being rather different than the rest of the fingers. You will also note the lines of the tendons which make the fingers themselves work, the texture of the creases on the palm of the hand, and the shadows cast by fingers upon the other fingers or upon the palm. Similarly, one could learn how to draw faces, and hair, by working from photographs or web-sites, or even from drawing a self-portrait from a mirror. This kind of real-life drawing will teach you about proportion and texture in a way that anime simply does not possess.

The unrealistic proportions of an anime face to not show you that the nose can cover, in a linear manner, 1/4 of the face. Nor will it show you that the proportions between the mouth and jaw-line of the female are slighter than those of the male. Nor will it show you that the ear-line and the nose-line roughly correspond to each other and form the basis of the face. The huge eyes of the anime figure do not tell you that the proportion of the eyes to the eye-brow ridge can set the entire tone of the face, or that the eye-nose-mouth relationship can do so even more.

In addition, the fully-clothed anime figure will not prepare you for the representation of the body as it is in life. The exaggerated limbs, slender torso, and muscle-less arms and legs of the anime figure won't tell you that the length of the body is basically 8 times the length of the head, top to bottom. Nor will it tell you that the center of gravity, physically and visually, is located at the chest-line for males and at the hips for women. Another alternative is to attend "life drawing" classes at an art school; nude models will teach you about anatomy as will no other method, although "figure studies" of nudes are available on-line, for the shy types.

Only by mastering the rules of realism can one expect to progress beyond the lack of factual information possessed by anime.

Similarly, here is a drawing exercise straight from the Old Masters, the classical painters of centuries past whose work still exemplifies the perfection of the art.

With nothing more that a pad, pencil, and eraser (nobody's perfect), sit at one point of a familiar room and draw that entire room, as it appears in real life. The goal is a grey-scale, photo-realistic picture of the room. What better way to learn proportion, texture, and shading could there be? The need for detail will in and of itself teach you these things. Similarly, drawing from still-life constructions can teach you too, but only in a manner limited by the items of the still-life itself.

In any case, the end-goal is practice, practice, practice. Only by practicing the use of proper proportion, texture, and shading can one expect to master it and then use it to advantage. Anime/manga does not follow those rules, and until they are known, practiced and mastered, art itself does not progress. Move beyond the formula of anime, and one can then return to it with a skill that the form itself will not teach.



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