It is always helpful to have graphite pencils of a variety of densities. Make sure your pencil kit includes a light shade (2H), a medium shade (HB), and a darker shade (2B–6B). A popular choice for many mangaka is a mechanical pencil, which allows for different lead thicknesses and colors. Try different pencils and see what works best for you.

Inking is an important part of the manga process, both as a major part of illustrating manga comics as well as the preparation stage for coloring. Manga artists like to use fine-line pens or dip pens for this stage. When using liner pens, make sure to have a variety of thicknesses. A great nib thickness range is from 0.03 to 0.5 or above, plus a brush pen. Many art supply stores sell these in ready-made sets to make starting your collection easier.

Traditional manga illustrators use dip pens with interchangeable nibs. The most popular nibs for manga artists are the kabura pen for straight lines, G-pen for diverse thick and thin lines, and maru pen for extremely thin lines. If you are a beginner at inking, try liner pens first, and then move on to dip pens once you become more confident.

Four popular coloring media for manga are alcohol markers, watercolor, gouache paint, and colored pencils. Alcohol markers are a popular choice among mangaka for their superior blending and color range. Use watercolor for backgrounds and light, transparent elements. Gouache is more opaque than watercolor and can be used for any part of an illustration. White gouache is often used for highlights and finishing touches. Colored pencils are the perfect finishing layer on top of paint and markers to add deeper coloring blends and textures to your piece. Experiment with them and see what you love!

Choose your paper depending on the medium you are using. Unless practicing, avoid using generic printer paper. Wet media such as watercolor or markers will need thicker paper, as opposed to dry media such as colored pencils. Mixed-media paper is a great all-round option if you aren’t sure what you need. Use bound sketchbooks for practicing. For in-depth illustrations, use sketchbooks with easy-to-tear paper so you can display your completed drawings.

You can draw manga digitally as well. Generic-use tablets with pens can be used for digital drawing, with more and more drawing apps becoming available at a low cost or even for free. Many web-based manga, such as webcomics, are created digitally, so it doesn’t hurt to be versed in both traditional and digital options.

If you’d like to invest in higher-quality digital drawing tools, there are many to choose from. Graphics tablets that connect to computers are very popular, but before investing a lot of money in a graphics tablet, research your options and test some out to make sure the tablet you buy is right for you.

The word shonen translates to “young boy” in Japanese. This style is called shonen because it is commonly used in manga that are aimed toward young teen males. They tend to have male lead characters with lots of action, and the drawing style is usually sharper with bold and bright colors.

Similar to shonen, the word shojo translates to “young girl” and is the manga style used in stories marketed to girls and young women. This style is much softer both in the drawing application as well as the colors chosen. These stories are often based around themes such as romance and have strong female leads.

Although not a dominant style in manga art, slightly stylized realism is commonly seen in genres for older audiences, particularly in horror and action. This style can now be found throughout all genres, as more manga artists have emerged who prefer the realistic style.

Chibi translates to “small” or “short” and is a fun style common in comedy manga or stories for younger children. It is characterized by exaggerated proportions, with large heads and eyes accompanied by small bodies. The faces are very expressive.

Fantasy is a hugely popular genre in all media, and manga is no exception. You can have fantasy creatures, people, vehicles, and even entire worlds. A manga creator’s world-building creativity can shine in this genre!

The slice-of-life genre is all about the beauty of everyday life and features normal people in believable situations. The reader can’t help but root for the main character and whatever they want to achieve. This genre is usually paired with romance or comedy.

A branch of the fantasy genre in manga is magical girl or guy. These plots are usually a marriage of slice-of-life and fantasy genres. Powers are bestowed upon normal characters who then become fantastical beings. These characters achieve amazing feats such as saving the world.

Romance is a theme often central to slice-of-life manga stories. However, a good romance story can be found in almost every genre.

Thrilling action, both of a fantastical or believable nature, is a staple found in many popular manga series.

The comedy genre is usually set in normal, everyday life. These stories revolve around comical, weird, or crazy situations and tend to have highly stylized art to assist its comedic and lighthearted nature.

Many successful and interesting manga stories have based their characters and plots around different sporting activities. Volleyball, basketball, soccer, and swimming have been the basis of quite a few manga and anime series.

Line art is the stage after sketching in which you use a liner pen or dip pen to outline the lines of the drawing that you want to keep. After applying line art, you erase your sketch and are left with beautiful, clean lines minus all the guidelines used when first sketching. This is then taken into the coloring stage or the inking stage.

Inking is used when creating black-and-white manga panels with blocked-in shadows and dark colors with solid black. This is to enhance the depth of the drawing when color cannot be used to do that.

Here is a breakdown of this line art and inking process.

When choosing color palettes, have a color wheel handy! Knowing the colors’ relationships to one another can help inform you how and when to use them in your drawing.