Manga Watercolor

Learn how to create manga art from pencil sketch to finished painting with this comprehensive guide. Begin by exploring a wide range of techniques, including how to draw manga faces, poses, hair, and eyes. Then, dive into background textures, colours, and more. Finally, complete 12 step-by-step painting projects to perfect your manga art skills.

Simply magical manga in watercolour! Learn how to create beautiful manga art from pencil sketch to finished painting with this comprehensive guide. As the popularity of manga art continues to soar, manga and comic book artist Lisa Santrau shows beginners how to create subtle and beautiful manga pictures using pencil and watercolours—the simplest of art materials.

Lisa explains the materials and tools needed and then explores the fundamentals of how to draw manga, from colour theory and breaking down drawings into basic shapes to body proportions and faces for both classic manga and chibi manga figures.

You will learn how to sketch, create depth in your work with shading, and utilise a range of watercolour techniques, including washes, wet-on-wet, and layering, as well as special techniques involving masking fluid and an innovative 'film' technique for creating texture and patterns.

The exercises that follow the basics explore a wide range of techniques, including manga poses, hair, and eyes. You will also learn about backgrounds, textures, gradients, and more. Finally, there are 12 step-by-step painting projects to perfect your manga art skills, with downloadable templates available if you want to skip the drawing and get straight to the painting.

This easy-to-follow book by the creator of the popular Mechanical Princess comics contains all you need to successfully paint your own watercolour manga art.

Author: Lisa Santrau is a graphic designer with a focus on illustration and has worked for over 15 years in the German manga and anime scene. She has published her successful manga series Mechanical Princess since 2012.