A helpful and interesting manga drawing guide. It's a suitable outline with interesting things to put into practice. It's a rather helpful step by step guide.

Certainly not a book for beginners.
The book is divided into 3 parts: Tutorials. Step by Step Creations. And Projects from the Masters. The first part is the basics of how to draw proportions in a manga character and it's good.

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Where it already begins to get more difficult is when it indicates how to characterize the characters drawn. Of course, this is supposed to be practiced with the proportions indicated in the first part. The details of how to indicate a unique character with clothing, accessories is adequate, but still quite outlined.

Where I find that it is quite rushed is the part that explains the use of water colors (Selina Dean). I know how difficult it is to use them, because in a self-taught way I have never been able to do something that satisfies me. . Like the rest of the other techniques, there are relevant tips, but it is the kind of thing to do with a personal teaching, that is my opinion. In the case of color, there are still data about color palettes, and lighting. This is just a pretty simple guide.

In short, it is a book that indicates the first steps for someone interested in drawing manga, but it is not precisely the step by step that it indicates, especially in the movements of the characters.

#DrawMangaSweatdropStudios #NetGalley

A helpful 101 guide. The Draw Manga book contains a large collection of tutorials. The tutorials are well selected and diversified: clothing, accessories and different characters. This guide can be used as an additional material for drawing and creative classes.

Very well done! Better than many how-to draw manga books I've read. Good basic instructions that can be applied to general figure drawing as well as manga. Highly recommended!

Ever since my husband first got me into watching Manga with him, I’ve always wanted to try my hand at actually drawing the characters. Freestyling a character was super difficult for me so I decided to try this book!

I learned invaluable skills that not only taught me how to draw full manga characters but the skills I learned throughout the book transcended into my other art pieces! This book not only teaches you the basics of manga but also some art basics such as adding horizontal and vertical lines to your drawings, feature placement, as well as some tips and tricks for drawing characters of different ages!

And it’s not just for kids… I’m a full grown adult and I thoroughly following along the tutorials in this book! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in manga, wants to draw manga, or just wants to pick up some drawing skills in general. You’ll learn a lot more than you expect as this book goes in depth through hair basics, eye basics, and much, much more.

This was so interesting and fascinating! It has info for everything! It describes in detail all you want to know about sketching, shapes, diferent parts of manga bodies, shading etc! It's awesome!!!

What a fun how-to book! I never imagined making manga art, but after reading DRAW MANGA, I feel confident I can — and have a blast doing it! 140 color illustrations provide easy directions on how to execute these uniquely beautiful comics, with sections on basic tutorials, turning raw ideas into finished comics, and projects from the masters. 5/5 for originality, coolness and elan!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the review copy.

#DrawMangaSweatdropStudios #NetGalley

I liked the color filled pictures, but, along with other Manga books I have seen, there isn't enough step by step detail to really help the newbie artist out. Taking the time to introduce the lines involved in all of the categories would appeal more to me than blazing colorfilled displays of someone else's work..

The title of this book is a mouthful, but it does basically cover what it says that it will do. Various artists from Sweatdrop Studios have collaborated together to put out Draw Manga: Step-by-Steps, Character Construction, and Projects from the Masters. The introduction of the book states that its purpose is to teach the reader how to draw in this unique comic style, and reveals that its target audience is beginners of all ages.


The introduction also explains that the book is organized into three sections, beginning with drawing tutorials (e.g. how to draw eyes, hair, facial expressions, anatomy, proportion, human form, action lines, etc.) in Part 1. Part 2 covers character construction (e.g. showing the differences in drawing a female child vs. a male teenager or female adult). Part 3 contains specific projects which may focus on different aspects to consider while drawing manga, such as the use of watercolours, colouring pencils, markers, etc.


Although the book says that it will show readers how to create manga step by step, it means this more in a general sense of a recipe. There are drawing books that will tell readers each stroke that must be drawn and the order in which these must appear. This is not that kind of book. Instead, this book provides examples of what one can create, and leaves readers to go off on their own to draw their own characters. For example, for the description in sketching the proportions for a shonen figure, the book shows a completed diagram with the rendered circles/balloons in place. However, it does not tell the reader how to draw these circles or the order in which to draw them. Because I have some limited experience in drawing, it isn't too daunting to me to follow the book's instructions. However, if a reader is looking for something more detailed, with more minute-by-minute instructions, then this book does not fall into that category.


There are approximately 140 illustrations in the book, and they form enough of a base for a beginning manga artist to start creating their own work. There are examples of shouju, shonen, chibi, and fantasy figures (elves, vampire) If there is a concern about exposing children to occult figures, I only saw a couple of figures that fit under that category (e.g. a vampiric chibi). As for overtly sexualized images, this book seems to be fairly safe in that area. I recall only one figure showing cleavage because of a low neckline, but generally, the figures in the drawings are dressed (although the females seem to favour miniskirts a lot), except for the illustrations showing proportional dimensions. For these, if the drawings are detailed, the figures are generally covered. There are other illustrations that show proportion, but with the circles filling out space. If you have an issue with roughed in circles showing the curves for balloon figures...well, the book does cover anatomical drawings, so please considered yourself warned.


I tried to view galleys for this title for computer and for Kindle. I don't know if it was because they were galleys that I had problems viewing the PDFs, especially for the computer. I could only view a handful of drawings, and couldn't read any text. For the Kindle format, I was able to view most of the text and drawings, but there were some images under the "Tools and Equipment" section that I was not able to see...I don't know if what I saw were place holders for the final images that would fill those spots, or if there was something wrong with the file that affected what I could see.


I like this book, and think that it does an adequate job in presenting instructions on how to draw in the manga style. However, the illustrations are not exactly the most beautiful looking manga that I've seen. Instead...it's just okay. I do think that the content that the artists are trying to convey is quite valuable, especially to a beginner who wants to create manga.



Disclaimer: I received e-copies of "Draw Manga: Step-By-Steps, Character Construction, and Projects from the Masters" from NetGalley in exchange for a review. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

My art instruction consists of some how to draw books as a child and a couple one drawing classes at Epcot. But my daughter has recently shown an interest, especially in manga characters. So together, we gathered some drawing paper and downloaded this book last night. We then flipped through the pages before spending over an hour drawing different eyes.
As someone looking for manga drawings, she was very happy. The book gave her good instructions on eyes, hair, body proportions, clothing, etc. As a non artist, i really appreciated the beginning section that focused on basics. I would say that if you are beginning manga, this book is a good place to start. However, if you are beginning drawing in general, you might want to get some practice with another more basic starter book first.
i viewed this book both on a laptop and on an iphone. I needed to do some zooming on the laptop. Surprisingly, the sizing was perfect as it was on the kindle app.
thanks netgalley and sweatdrop studios for this book and thanks for a fun way to connect with my teen!

Draw Manga: Step-By-Steps, Character Construction, and Projects from the Masters by Sweatdrop Studios is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. The reason I gave this a low star review is it it advertises itself as a beginner book. This is why I requested it. It is far from beginners. The "first" sketch they assume you can do on your own is a full body with all the details. From there, they help you step by step. This is more an advanced or intermediate book. If they advertised it as such, a full four stars for sure! It is just upsetting for the beginner to get their hopes up to get this book and find it is way above their heads.

I don’t feel as though I can adequately review this book as so many pages in my review copy with empty of composed of one image or a single fragment of a sentence. From what I can see, it seems like it could be useful, but again, I don’t have enough content to decide for sure..