I’m the dad of a middle school girl, which means I’m also the dad of an artist. The two often go hand in hand. In my case, she’s an “old-fashioned” artist – wielding paint pens, brushes, and markers as her tools of choice. Recently, she’s picked up a stylus and iPad (which are a bit more forgiving with mistakes), but she churns out more drawings per day than I would’ve thought possible.

#SixFanarts of characters (and their alter egos) from ‘Miraculous’ (drawn by my 11yo daughter)

Even though she’s a voracious reader, she hasn’t really fallen into the manga camp (yet). But she’s obsessed with a lot anime (e.g., My Hero Academia) and anime-inspired shows (e.g., Avatar and Korra), which color her personal sense of style. As such, many of the characters she draws feel perfectly at home in manga- or anime-inspired worlds.

So when I saw a line of How to Create Manga books (from Tuttle Publishing) that purport to be “the ultimate bible for beginning artists,” I knew she needed them… for research.

The series includes a number of different books, each of which focuses on a specific aspect of drawing – such as the human body, facial expressions, clothing and accessories, and action scenes and characters – and they average about 1,000 illustrations each. Which means these are richly designed books that SHOW you how to refine and perfect your drawings so you actually improve.

From ‘Drawing the Human Body’

Tuttle’s books are English translations of Japanese books that first came out several years ago and were written by professional manga artists working in the industry.

Tuttle also publishes a wide variety of art instruction books with a focus on manga, such as Drawing Cute Manga Chibi and Drawing Fantastic Female Fighters, so if you’re (or someone you know is) looking to up your game and improve your art, they’ve made it super easy to assemble a super helpful library.

Let’s clarify a few things. These books are, as advertised, for “beginning” artists… but they’re not for absolute beginners. They’re meant to help you refine specific aspects of your art (such as learning variations of joy or sadness in facial expressions or how to draw realistic hair), but they’re not going to teach you HOW TO DRAW. There’s an assumption that you already have some of the basics down.

And even though the books specifically target manga (and its distinctive style), a lot of the artistic advice here is pretty universal. If you’re having trouble drawing legs and feet just right or if you’re not quite sure how to design a full-length gown so it looks natural, these books have your back. You don’t NEED to be drawing manga for the guidance to be beneficial.

All told, Tuttle has developed an amazingly useful library of Japanese-influenced art instruction books, and if you even dabble in creating art yourself (of if you have a budding artist in the house), you owe it to yourself to add these to your collection.

From ‘Drawing Facial Expressions’