EVERYTHING You Need To Start Drawing Manga: Supplies and Tips for Beginner Mangaka

Even if you’re very good at drawing manga characters and scenes with pencil and paper, learning how to create an actual manga is an entirely new process and can be scary.

Especially as a beginner, it's important to learn the right way to start drawing manga, so that you don't pick up bad habits that will delay your progress more than necessary.

In this article I’m going to go over everything you’ll need in order to start creating manga. From manga creation guides to the actual art supplies necessary to lay ink on a page and create professional looking manga pages (panels and all!)

Don’t be discouraged by the size of the list. This is the entire list a professional would need. Beginners and hobbyists will not need all of these things, however as you learn you can add more and more tools to your arsenal and pick up more supplies to experiment with.

To start drawing manga, the supplies you will need are:

• G-Pen Nibs (end of dip pen)
• Nib Holder (for the nibs)
• Pen Ink
• Pigma Inking Pens
• Brush Pen
• Whiteout / Correction Tape / White Ink
• Manga / Comic Book Paper
• Mechanical Pencil (0.5)
• Mono or faber Castell soft erasers
• StaedtlerPencils
• Ruler
• Screentones & Exacto Knife

While that is a long list, you can start off small. You can even make do with just white paper and a mechanical pencil if you want.

Essentials

If you want to start off strong, though, then I’d say the essentials are:

G-Pen Nibs & Nib-Holder or Dip Pens

Drawing with a real Dip Pen is very important when becoming a manga artist, so that’s why I recommend getting some nibs and some real manga paper as soon as you feel comfortable drawing characters and are ready to take the full leap into drawing full-fledged manga.

Manga artists use many different pens, for a variety of reasons. I'll give a basic rundown in this article, but if you're interested in learning more, you can read about the different pens that manga artists use, and what they're used for here.

You can get your own nibs and nib holder or you can just grab some dip pens. A single holder will be higher quality, but less convenient, while a set will give you more holders (and nibs), but with a slight drop in quality. I’d personally recommend both - one good nib holder for my main inking tool and a set of dip pens for changing up my lines when necessary.

You’ll mostly use G nibs or mapping nibs for your characters, since these nibs can get the finest lines. However, each nib will have an “appropriate” use when it comes to creating textures and certain lines.

• Recommended Nibs: MyLifeUNIT Tachikawa Comic G Nib
• Recommended Nib Holder: Tachikawa Comic Pen Nib Holder
• Recommended Dip Pens: Gerioie Dip Pen

Pen Ink:

Your pen ink is as important as your dip pens. Manga is drawn with solid black lines, so having a deep, dark, rich black ink is very important. Your ink should always be black, but your lines can vary in size and texture based on the pen you’re drawing with and what you’re conveying in your manga panel (glossy hair, jet black room, etc.)

• Recommended Ink: Pilot Drafting Ink

Drawing Pen

Your drawing pen is going to be more precise and fine than your dip pens and you’ll use it for drawing uniform lines with precision (mostly when drawing your straight panel frames.) Trying to draw panel frames with a dip pen would be a nightmare because of the ink, shape of the pen, and trying to work in a ruler. A drawing pen is perfect for drawing frames because you can get millimeter precision from them. They can be used for some actual character / object drawing too, but you’ll mostly stick to your G Nib (and other nibs, if you feel fancy) for that.

• Recommended Drawing Pen: SAKURA Pigma Micron Fineliner Pens

Brush Pen

The Brush Pen will help you fill in large areas and add color / gloss to hair. While the whiteout / white ink will be used for highlighting, getting rid of errors, and removing anything that goes out of frame. Learning to use your brush pen effectively to fill in black areas will be crucial to making your mangas look crisp and professional.

• Recommended Brush Pen: Kuretake Bimoji Brush Pen Set

Mechanical Pencil

I recommend 0.5 mm led, but other than that you can really use any mechanical pencil you like. Mechanical pencils are very personal so everyone is going to have their own preference. Shape, price, etc really won’t make much of a difference. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. With that being said, I do have a solid recommendation if you want a pencil that will last years.

• Recommended Mechanical Pencil: Staedtler 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil

Whiteout / White Ink / Correction Tape

Any brand of white out or correction tape will work. Keep in mind some white ink can be colored over, while others can’t. If you’re a beginner you can get whatever because you’ll be making a ton. Once you get more serious, though, you’ll want to spring for something high quality and professional.

You’ll basically be using your white ink or white out to get rid of any ink that falls outside of your frames. When a character’s head is cut-off by the panel, for example, you’ll simply erase the top of their head with correction tape. White ink can also be used for adding highlights to hair!

• Recommended White Ink: BIC White-Out

Manga Paper

If you’re using ink, you’ll also want really good manga / comic paper because it will hold the ink best and prevent running or bleed-through. It’s also just really fun to draw on and will immediately make you feel like a real manga artist.

There are a few different types of paper that can be used for manga. A3, A4, B4, etc. Some are used by professionals, while others are used by self-published artists. Choosing the best paper for your manga will be essential once you’re comfortable drawing and ready to share your work, but don’t be discouraged if all you have is printer paper!

If you don't want to read all about manga paper, then you can just grab my top recommendation!

• Recommended Manga Paper: Lion DELETER 201-1032 Comic Book Paper

Ruler

Any old ruler will do, but getting a ruler with an ink guard will help avoid accidentally smearing ink. You’ll basically be using your ruler to create your panel lines. You want your lines to look straight and professional, so a ruler is 100% a necessity. Your ruler, of course, can also be used for creating the actual illustrations when applicable (buildings, perspective, measuring heights and limb lengths, etc.)

What’s Nice To Have

Screentones & Exacto Knife

If you Google “Screen Tones Manga” you will see exactly what these are. Basically, screentones are an easy way to add shading and texture to your work, and they’re extremely common in manga and comic books.

I say these aren’t necessary, but they are a really easy way to make your manga look crisper and more professional!

Light Table

A light table is basically a little flat table with a built-in light that you will use to ink your drawings. Basically, you will draw your manga out with a mechanical pencil on paper, and then you will ink it with your various pens.

A light table will make tracing your original pencil lines much easier because you will be able to see the lines much clearer. While a light table isn’t necessary, they’re extremely useful and help ensure that your final, inked lines are clean.

• Recommended Light Table: A4 Silver LED Trace Light Pad

Drafting Table or Drawing Top

Now we’re bridging into the really nice to have but far from necessary territory. A drafting table will make drawing much more convenient, however it will also skyrocket your budget (especially for a nice one.)

Having a smooth consistent surface with an adjustable angle while drawing is heavenly and you will notice a positive impact on your work. A drafting table will also give you a large enough area to work on and make drawing more comfortable. You’ll also have a more “true” perspective of your drawing. It won’t be skewed by your sitting angle.

You can find decent tables on Amazon (I will link one below) or even Craigslist / eBay if you don’t mind getting a used one (they are usually really good for the price.)

Alternatively, you can pick up a drawing top, which accomplishes almost the same thing as a drafting table for half the price. You will need your own table to put the drawing top on, though.

• Recommended Drafting Table: Yaheetech Height Adjustable Drafting Table
• OR Recommended Drawing Top: Falling in Art 5-Position Wood Drafting Table Easel

Alright, that’s everything you will need to start drawing manga. Using G Nibs will take some getting used to, but they’re one of the most rewarding drawing tools you can learn. Being able to vary your line width via the pressure you apply will allow you to create beautiful, professional looking lines.

I hope you’re able to grab at least a few things on my list and start your journey to becoming a manga artist!

You can make manga even if you can’t draw. Many very popular manga exist that have purposefully simple or crude art. Making manga is much more about the character design, story telling, and world building than it is about the art. Drawing characters well is not a hard requirement for making manga.

Below, I am going to recommend some how-to books. The very first book I will go over is a guide to creating manga. This isn’t a “How to draw” book. I chose this book first because, in all honesty, if you know how to layout a manga page, capture good angles, and lay out your panels in an organized way that conveys the emotions and story you want to convey, then your drawing ability really won’t make a difference. You can always draw fun, less-detailed characters while still keeping the manga style.

I won’t spend a lot of time on this, because learning how to draw manga could be a complete article on its own and I know many readers are already going to know how to draw, or will at least know how to learn to draw.

One thing I want to say is that there’s more to making manga than drawing the characters. Laying out panels, text, etc are all skills that will need to be learned for making full-fledged manga (and even comics.)

Learning More Than Manga Character Drawing

Learning More Than Manga Character Drawing

Luckily, there’s actually a really good Shonen Jump Guide To Making Manga book available that will teach you everything you need to know about drawing full manga stories. Whether you like Shonen Jump manga or not, you cannot argue that they know how to layout a page and do all of the little things necessary to create captivating stories from laying out panels to showing what needs to be shown on every page.

Learning Anatomy

Of course, if you’re a complete beginner, there are plenty of books available for learning how to draw manga characters. If you want to be a really skilled illustrator, you can start with books explaining how to draw the human figure. I recommend Michael Hampton’s Figure Drawing book.

Learning To Draw Manga

If you want to jump straight to anime / manga drawing, that’s also fine. Just keep in mind that the best way to get better is to focus on learning human anatomy and how to capture form / shapes in your drawings. Ben Dunn has a really good, thick, How To Draw Manga book that covers a ton of techniques and will teach you a lot.

There are also great Youtube channels available, such as mikeymegamega that do nothing but draw manga and teach viewers how to draw them. These videos are nice because they put you in the mind of an artist, they don’t just throw steps at you. Mikey tells you why he’s doing each step and explains the logic, which is necessary if you want to draw your own manga someday.