It is common for us, anime lovers, to wonder how long it takes to learn to draw anime. I started to draw because of anime, and I’ve been drawing for a while now. So, in my experience, how long does it take to learn to draw anime?
On average, learning how to draw anime well takes two to three years. How fast you can learn to draw anime varies depending on the number of hours you practice daily and your training approach. If you draw one hour a day, it can take three years, but it can take one year if you draw 3 hours a day.
Below, you’ll find some examples of anime-style drawings I did years ago, including the amount of time it took to learn how to draw them. This way, you’ll have a clearer vision of what to expect when starting your drawing journey.
How Long Does It Take To Learn To Draw Anime Well? Beginner To Expert
Two to three years work perfectly as an average, but learning to draw anime requires artists to learn many other fundamental drawing aspects, which can take a lot of time to understand. Below are some old drawings I did when I started to learn to draw.
These examples only apply if the person practices drawing at least for an hour every day.
How Long Does It Take To Draw Like A Beginner Anime Artist?
To draw like a beginning anime artist, you’ll need to know the fundamentals, but just at an introductory level. You can achieve to draw a drawing like the one above in four months if you practice daily.
Tip #1: If you just started to draw and want to learn how to draw anime, begin drawing from simple references. You can pick complex drawings, but that could be an overwhelming experience in the beginning. When I started drawing anime, I drew many simple faces, and it helped a lot to stay motivated and improve my skills.
How Long Does It Take To Draw Like An Intermediate Anime Artist?
Here, our knowledge about anime anatomy, proportions, form, shading, perspective, and other drawing fundamentals should be more advanced. It can take from one year to two years to draw a drawing like the one above. Although you will improve your skills by simply drawing, knowing the fundamentals will get you to your goals much faster.
Tip #2: Don’t be afraid of using references when learning to draw. Drawing from references is not cheating, and using them will enhance your knowledge about anime overall. If you think about it, anything an artist draws is a representation of something she had seen at some point in her life, meaning that almost anything we draw comes from a reference.
How Long Does It Take To Draw Like An Experienced Anime Artist?
To draw like an experienced anime artist, you need at least three to four years of practice doing it. Here, the need to know the drawing fundamentals like composition, perspective, value, and line quality, becomes more enticing. Remember that this example assumes you’re drawing for an hour every day, meaning that you may achieve this drawing level much sooner if you draw more hours a day.
Tip #3: Learning the drawing fundamentals may seem like a tedious activity, but trust me, they are worth it. Learning these fundamentals will improve your drawing skill levels by a lot, as you won’t be making too many mistakes figuring how things should look like in your compositions. Also, one great way to make this learning process and more enjoyable experience, you can look for drawings that include these fundamentals and practice them as you draw them.
How Long Does It Take To Draw Like An Expert Anime Artist?
To be among anime expert artists, you need at least 7-10 years of experience drawing anime. At this point, drawing anime should be so natural you could draw it using little to no references. All anime fundamentals, like expressions, anatomy, and different styles, are things you understand and draw at an outstanding level. Achieving this level of proficiency requires not only drawing practice but also a lot of theory. Here, the way you improve how your drawings look is more related to your overall skills than to your experience drawing anime.
Tip #4: As you already know, all these examples assume a person is drawing every day, and if you want to achieve such a high drawing level, this is the only way you can do it. When you see fantastic anime drawing artists, we tend to focus on how well they draw, but not on the amount of time they practiced to achieve their mastery. Don’t feel discouraged if your drawings don’t look like you expect them to look; every great master had the same drawing level a beginner would have at some point in their lives. Drawing is a skill, not something you’re born with and don’t have to practice.
Now we know how long it takes to learn to draw anime, but how long does drawing an anime character take?
How Long Does It Take To Draw An Anime Character?
It can take a beginner artist from 30 minutes to 24 hours to draw an anime character (including shading). The time it takes an artist to draw a character strongly depends on the complexity of the anime character he wants to draw, the drawing size, and experience drawing.
To make this a little clearer, let’s take a look at some examples of anime drawings I’ve done and how long they took me to complete.
If you want to learn to draw, patience is something you will need a lot. You will need to be patient when learning to draw and also patient when completing drawings.
Time It Takes To Draw A Simple Chibi Anime Character
This chibi drawing took me 30 minutes to complete, and there are various reasons why it was so fast. They will be listed below:
- I drew this chibi on a small scale, so things like shading and outlining were pretty fast to do.
- The complexity of the drawing isn’t that high. It’s something someone with four months of experience drawing anime could achieve to do.
- I’m not an expert anime drawing artist, but I already have some experience drawing anime, so it was easier for me to draw the chibi in general.
Let’s move onto something a bit more complex.
Time It Takes To Draw An Anime Face
A drawing like the above would take from 2-3 hours to complete. I drew this drawing on a larger scale, but it isn’t too complex to draw. I would say any beginner drawing artist can draw under that time, and more experienced drawing artists can probably get it done in an hour or two maximum.
Time It Takes To Draw A More Complex Anime Character
When you add more detail, the amount of time it takes to complete the drawing is naturally longer. For a drawing like the one above, you can expect to complete it in 7-9 hours. If you have more experience drawing, it can take much less. I remember that drawing took about that time.
Time It Takes To Draw A Full Body Anime Character
Both drawings above took me around 12-14 hours to complete. There are many reasons why drawings like these take longer to complete, but I think the main one is the artist’s expertise. As a beginner/intermediate artist, finishing detailed drawings in 12-14 hours is usual. For an expert anime artist, it can take less.
Time It Takes To Draw Two Anime Characters
If you’re a beginner/intermediate anime artist, you can complete a drawing like the one above in around 16-20 hours. Although there are ways you can do it faster, it is best not to rush things unnecessarily. When you rush a drawing, you can notice the difference in quality.
Now you have a much clearer vision of the amount of time it takes to learn to draw anime, but not the best approach to learn it. Below is the method I recommend when starting to draw anime.
Tips To Speed Up How Fast You Learn To Draw Anime
Learning to draw anime, comics, cartoons, real people, or anything else uses almost the same principles. So, for the most part, the same things you need to learn to draw realistically apply to anime as well. Every drawing fundamental you can understand and illustrate will improve your drawing skills so vastly you’ll wish you started from there. Below are the most crucial things that will make you improve your drawings.
1- Draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, and draw.
Have you ever seen the amount of drawing books and sketchbooks the artists you admire the most have? It’s incredible when you see it. For me, and for most artists I’ve ever known, consistent drawing practice is the fastest way to learn to draw anime or anything. And the more you practice, the faster you’ll achieve your goals. Determine a drawing routine and start this fascinating journey with an open mind!
2- Learn How To Draw Shapes In Perspective
Now that you have determined a drawing routine, it’s essential you draw with a plan. Everything we see in life is simple shapes and forms that get complex depending on where we’re looking at them. Since the mediums you’ll use to draw are in a 2D format, you must know how to make your compositions resemble the 3-dimensional aspect they should have. I know this may seem like a tedious task, but I’m sure you’ll start loving it over time!
Tip #5: Do consider these basic guidelines when you start to learn to draw. Just as you can learn to draw the right way to do things, you can also learn the wrong way of doing them. In my case, I ignored the drawing fundamentals and jumped into drawing for the sake of it, and I had to unlearn a lot of things, which delayed my improvements by a lot.
3- Learn Anatomy
Most beginner artists focus only on drawing eyes and faces when learning to draw for the first time, which is not bad. Still, it’s essential they also practice the rest of the body, poses, and many other anatomy factors. You don’t need to know everything there is about anatomy, just the basics. It is when you understand how things are constructed when you actually learn how to draw them.
Tip #6: When you’re studying and practicing, try not to focus too much on the details but on the main shapes and forms that construct the subject you’re illustrating. When learning to draw, your main goal is not to create fantastic pieces of art but to understand how to create them. If you’re patient and practice regularly, results will naturally show as time passes.
3- Learn About Value (Light and Dark)
Everything we see in life is light that is reflected into our eyes to create what’s in front of us. For a drawing to be dynamic and unique, it needs to have value (light and dark). Just as anatomy, you don’t need to know everything there is about value in art, just the basics so that you can get started.
Tip #7: If you don’t have much experience drawing, I recommend you start drawing with pencils only, not colors. Learning how to shade with only graphite pencils is enough of a challenge for a beginner artist. Once you think you’re skilled enough, you can start learning color theory, which is much more vast and complex because it includes what you learned about shading and adds that to all the colors.
4- Practice Mindfully
You can always draw for the sake of drawing, but if you want to improve your drawing skills as fast as possible, you need to draw mindfully. Mindfully drawing means you’re doing it with a purpose, and you’re trying to understand a particular aspect. For example, if you’re drawing poses, you focus on understanding how the lines you stroke give form to those poses, see what you do wrong compared to your references, and constantly analyze your sketches to find what you can do better.
If you do this, you will have a complete overall understanding of the subject you’re drawing, and you’ll be able to draw them in the future with little to no references.
Tip #8: One great way to see what you can improve in your drawings is to analyze every aspect individually. For instance, if you focus on only the proportions on your drawing and ignore the rest, you’ll be able to catch some things to improve. If you then focus on only the perspective of your drawing, you’ll see other things. By looking at your drawing piece by piece, it will be more accessible to find improvement opportunities.
5- Draw From References
I know I’ve mentioned references throughout the blog post, but I consider it something crucial when learning to draw. For some reason, many people in the art community think drawing from reference is cheating, but it is not. To learn to draw, you need to understand the subject you’re drawing, and if you never take a look at it, how will you know if you did it wrong or right?
Masters like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Picasso, and many others used references when studying anatomy, faces, animals, and anything else. To give you an example, Leonardo Da Vinci drew The Madonna Of Yarnwinder using Virgin Mary as a reference.
Now, if you draw using references and then claim that drawing is yours entirely, then that’s a different story. But if you share that you drew that from a reference, then great! As an artist, you can draw for any reason you think is valid.
Tip #9: If you can, find an art teacher or an artist you respect to review your drawings. It is easy to miss potential things we can improve in our drawings when we are so involved with them. Having the advice of someone who has been through a similar learning-to-draw experience is very valuable and can help you improve in a snap.
And finally, one question many ask me about when they want to learn to draw anime.
How Hard Is It To Draw Anime?
At first, anime may seem like an easy drawing style, but it is not as easy as it looks; anime drawing is rather hard. Anime is hard to draw because it requires the artist to have proper knowledge about anatomy, perspective, value, and many other drawing fundamentals, which aren’t easy to master.
However, just as with any drawing style you want to learn, constant practice and dedication are more than enough to achieve an excellent anime drawing level.
As a final thought, I want to encourage you to start this learning-to-draw journey and feel in love with this fantastic art expression. Right now, the content available on the web to study drawing is immense, and you have access to all of it. In this blog, I share everything I learn about drawing to make that available content even bigger so that more people can learn to draw.
Happy drawing!