How To Draw Manga

Okay so here's some advice before we get into drawing:

Wash your hands! Some papers are very sensitve and absobant, just having oily hands can make your white paper turn into a brown or golden mess!
Make sure you have enough lead and erasers. If you're super poor, pink erasers will do. However throughout the years I found that white rubber erasers (I use the ones made by Staedler) erase better and leave less marks.
Make sure you're in A mood. What I mean is, I have to be super concentrated to do anything. I put on some music (usually to the mood of the art like a fight scene I put on some hard rock, or a kiss scene I put on happy music etc...) If you need to be angry to do your art, cool, but make sure you want to draw. If I don't feel like drawing, I don't. If you force yourself, I believe, the art won't flow naturally.
Do it in a place you won't be bothered. Go to a book store, or the park, away from people you know. I can't draw in large groups. I go to Powell's or Borders, or the Park Blocks, or Portland State University Library.

Ready? Great!

This here my friends is lesson one. You start out with a very basic, stick figure outline. Since today we will be drawing a female, the hips should be round, thus the torso is round. The joints such as the elbows, the hands, arms, legs, etcetera will have circles also. The shoulders should be bigger than the elbow, and the elbow bigger than the hand. For women are delicate and tend to have a smaller bone structure than that of a male. Did everyone get this? Excellent. Let us continue...

Lesson One

This here, ladies and gents, is step two of seven. Now this doesn't seem quite important but believe me, it is. By creating a lot of circles connecting the torso and arms, it gives the stick character more...well character. It smooths out the lines, and gives it a silhouette and figure. This is most important for the next step!

Lesson Two

In lesson number three I will teach you exactly what you need! Smooth out the lines, connect the dots,put on some details such as hands and feet, fingers, and ears. Voila! A very blank elf/human etcetera. Now the detail can get in!

Lesson Three

Lesson: Four: Tits, a little hair for realism, the eyes, nose, and mouth, and of course some fingers. Yahoo! Now if this was a porn cartoon (aka hentai) we would just leave it like this, but this is manga (bishoujo=pretty girl, bishonen=pretty boy) and we like them clothed (most of the time!).

Lesson Four

This lo and behold is step five. It's a small step and you wonder, what the hell? Why draw the outline of the clothes and not on the silhouette lines? Because, even when wearing biker shorts they cover the OUTSIDE of the body. So it's important to draw them on the OUTSIDE of the silhouette lines. Plus, it helps you to see exactly how you are dressing your character!

Lesson Five

Lesson Six

Unfortunately due to my stupidity and this crappy Macintosh I cannot put up the sixth step. Well this is the sixth step but this paticular picture was supposed to be the seventh. Anywho, to complete this, just erase the inside lines, smooth it out, and put shadows where they should go and you should be fine. This little lesson took me a long ass time to put up, and perhaps soon I shall add more here from lessons to Mech, to gory effects.

Thank you for listening to me and enjoy!
SN

New Update! References on drawing the male and female body types!

References:

Hikaru Hayashi: Female Characters

The Society for Study of Manga Techniques: Drawing Couples, Bodies and Anatomy.