Alright, on to the 1:6 ratio character. Hopefully this guide can be finished in one sitting. I have a few hours to write this how to draw tutorial. Alright! Let’s go!

To keep this all from getting boring, I’m shifting from a realistic cartoon style back to the manga style. I decided to draw my first faerie ever. I was thinking about what faeries usually represent to me when trying to figure out how to draw my new character.. My associations with faeries are: magic, sensuality, nature, childlikeness and cheerfulness. Most faeries I can think of are rather cheerful Tinkerbell-style pixies or the fuller, more sensual sylph type faeries. I went for the former in this case. I bought How To Draw Manga: Ultimate Manga Lessons Volume 6: Striking The Right Note. The book is basically on how different features and physical characteristics can be used to depict certain personality types. I wanted the character to be cheerful, so I followed the book and separated her bangs down the middle, which is supposed to make characters appear cheerful in manga.

Draw 6 circles. One of the circles will be roughly the size of the character’s head.

How to Draw the Face

To draw the eyes, draw ovals that are longer on the upward and downward parts of the eyes. Draw a horizontal line that cuts off the oval at the bottom, making that part of the oval flat. Within these ovals, draw lines that travel horizontally across the middle of these ovals and curve sharply downward. Above these ovals, draw horizontal lines that curve upwards. These are eyes that are opened very wide, showing plenty of excitement.

For the eyebrows, draw lines above the eyes that travel horizontally and curve upwards. Use somewhat darker lines.

In between the eyes, draw a few lines that travel downwards and curve to the right or to the left to indicate the bridge of the nose. Towards the middle of the face, draw a line that slants downwards and to the left and then slants upwards a little bit upward and to the left.

Draw two curving lines that meet above the face. These curving lines curve upwards and away from each other. This will form the top of the head. For the mouth, draw a slightly curving horizontally line that curves upwards. Draw two slanting lines that travel downwards and towards each other, meeting and connecting. Below this, draw a horizontal line that curves downward.

To the right and the left of the eyes, draw two lines that travel vertically and curve outwards away from the eyes. These form the ears and you can add extra lines to make the ears more detailed.

With the hair, you can get as creative as you want. For this character’s cheerful bangs, the easiest way to draw them is to draw lines that curve away from the center of the forehead, with every two lines connecting to each other. You can vary the size and curvyness of the lines and you can throw some straight triangles in if you want. You can also have some bangs resting together in clumps. Have fun.

The lower parts of the hair vary depending on the type of hair the character has and the length of the hair. Also, things added to the hair can change the hair, like with this character’s hair barettes, which cause the hair to artificially clump together. This hair wants to curl at the end, causing yet more curves. But the curves are not hanging loosely and are instead clumped together because the barettes are forcing the hair together again, just has the hair is close together by the bangs.

How to Draw the Body

Near the chin, draw two curving lines that curve towards each other. These lines will travel downward, forming the neck. As these lines curve more outward, they will start to slant downward and away from each other while curving downwards and towards each other.

From this point, come up with an outfit. I tried to come up with a kinda assymetrical cut that seemed more nature-like for me.

Decide how much skin you would like to show, but try to keep the character’s personality in mind. I wanted this character to be free-spirited but not sexualized in any significant way. This outfit seemed like a nice and cool summer outfit.

Draw the arms by drawing two lines divided into two sections that curve away from each other slightly (or more greatly if the character is bigger). Decide whether or not each finger is straight or bent. Straight fingers are slightly curving lines that are connected by a perpendicular curving line that curves away from the rest of the lines (the tip of the finger). Bent fingers are two sets of curving lines that come together at whatever angle you want (I’m really, really, really sorry if this is too much of an oversimplification and this website needs to create a really detailed guide on how to draw hands). For the pants/skirt, decide whether or not you want this piece of clothing to connect to the shirt. The clothes will wrap around the waste and hang from the hips. Skirts hang mostly loosely, while pants hang away from the legs depending on how tight they are.

Draw two curving lines underneath the skirt. These lines will grow closer together as they arrive at the feet. If the foot is facing directly at the camera, all that is needed is a rounded out bottom with a curving line above it that indicates the shoe. You can repeat this for the other leg or draw the one leg behind the other leg. If you decide to turn the shoe to the side, you will have to decide how exactly you want the shoe to look.

How to Draw the Wings

For the dragonfly wings (butterfly wings are possible too), draw curving lines that curve away from each other and grow wider apart as the lines travel farther and farther away from the faerie’s body.

How to Color

Find skin tone for the character. Then color the non-clothed parts of the character with that skin color. If you’re using a graphics program and you have a picture that has a color that you like, you can upload that picture and then use the eyedropper tool to select the color.

Choose colors for your character’s clothes, hair and eyes. If you can’t pick colors that work together well, use something like the color scheme generator.

That’s it for this tutorial. The next one, I’ll be covering the 1:7 ratio character and eventually the 1:8 character ratio.

Alex