Manga Drawing Deluxe by Nao Yazawa

Manga Drawing Deluxe

by Nao Yazawa

Renowned Japanese manga artist, international instructor, and illustrator of the Wedding Peach series Nao Yazawa guides you step by step through all phases of manga drawing, from developing characters to creating a story line and story boards.

With this detailed guide, learn every aspect of how to draw manga, including poses, movement, perspective, and props. Starting with rough sketches, you'll learn to add ink, coloration, special effects, and finishing touches to create dynamic manga characters and stories. You'll also find tips on how to give your characters lively facial expressions and how to create backgrounds with simple perspective.

Learn authentic manga drawing from a manga master.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

5 of 5 stars

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Manga Drawing Deluxe Empower Your Drawing and Storytelling Skills is a new tutorial guide for art *and* storytelling by Wedding Peach creator Nao Yazawa. Due out 2nd June 2020 from Quarto on their Rockport imprint, it's 144 pages and will be available in paperback format.

This is one of the only books on manga techniques with which I'm familiar which includes good, solid, useful, practical tutorials and direction on storytelling in addition to drawing reference. The author manages to provide advice and tutelage in a humorous way without being pedantic or discouraging. (Including advice-giving manga elves). The introduction provides a good background of what manga is, why it's stylistically the way it is, and a very short background history.

The drawing instructions include poses, dynamics, movement, special effects, proportions, and more.There is relevant info available for everyone, beginners to professional artists. The following chapters give similar thorough treatment to drawing the body, pencil rough sketching, inking, proportion and perspective, effect lines, fukidashi (speech bubbles), a really good discussion on composition and storytelling narrative (introduction - development - twist - conclusion), making storyboards, and really everything to outfit the would-be manga artist from putting pen to paper through the finished product.


A very useful book. It would make a good addition to the artist's home reference library, a classroom or other formal instruction setting, or gift (with supplies). Beautifully made and one of the best manga tutorials I've seen.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 29 May, 2020: Finished reading
  • 29 May, 2020: Reviewed