How to Draw Anime/Manga: The Female Body

This tutorial was written by me. All images were also hand drawn be me. For more tutorials like this, please visit my site.

Drawing the female body can be a difficult and frustrating task if you do not know where to begin. So here is a short, but hopefully helpful, tutorial on drawing the female body. Hope you enjoy it.

The Female Body is a daunting figure. It is arguably a lot harder to draw the female body than it is the male body, which was what the last tutorial was based on, even though it had a different name (Basic Anatomy). Well maybe it is for me because well I'm a guy, and I don't study life drawing, so basically I have nothing to study (which kind of sounds suspicious if I'm the female body).

There are certain differences that separate the men from the ladies. The obvious ones are, well they're obvious so I don't really need to tell you, do I? (Fuller breasts and different genitals in case you're wondering).

But there are also other differences in the physique that when drawn, help readers determine whether or not the character is female or male. These include:

- Less broad shoulders
- A thinner waist (The male waist is roughly equivalent to the shoulders, while the females curves in)
- Higher hips (Also means the legs start further up)
- Less muscle definition (This is not to say females can't be as strong as males. I'm not sexist, don't worry =) )
- Smaller Facial features (mouths, eyes, nose etc)
- Curves

An example of all these are shown in the example below, except for smaller facial features. Also notice how the elbows are located in the same line as the navel.

When drawing the female body from the back, notice how high the legs start up. This is because the hips of a female start up pretty high, are are located higher up than a male's hip bone. When drawing the female body from the side, the major important feature to include is the curved back. This is far more curved than a male's body, and is a very important part when drawing females side on. You can even say the female body curves like the letter 'S' to some extent.