Sketch to Finish: My Manga Art Process

So, when I was younger I used to think that artists had one try to make their art beautiful, and if it wasn't, it wasn't. That is a complete and utter LIE. I admit, sometimes I feel great and the art spills out into the page fully formed and gorgeous, but 99% of the time, it does not. Most of the time I start with a sketch of my manga art and then trace it onto another paper, and go into a little more detail and clean up with a pen and eraser. Here are a few start to finish projects I've done recently.

Here I wanted to capture the innocence of this little girl standing before an on stretching graveyard. I wanted the reader to be touched, and though it's cliche, it's real. I traced it onto another paper and inked it with my technical drawing pens.

Here I sketched out a young school girl, and though at first I added a pencil and her book, in the inked version I took them out because they clutter the picture too much and her hands were wacko and I couldn't figure out how to get them un-wacko. It ended up as a much smoother composition.

This is a manga character that's been stewing in my mind a long time. I call her Jairshon. The first was drawn roughly around midnight and I was tired, but I really wanted to get the I idea down. I scanned it in and added it into Manga studios 4ex. here, I made the necessary changes to my manga character, and discovered the filters in manga studios, which helped Jairshon look more real.

So no, sometimes it takes several tries to get our manga or anime art right, but something that you should keep in mind is that it doesn't need to be 'right,' just right enough.