The Female Figure

This book is an excellent resource for artists interested in learning how to draw stylized, mature-themed manga characters. It strikes a great balance between artistic fundamentals and genre-specific techniques, making it both educational and inspiring. The anatomy lessons are especially strong—the author does a great job explaining proportions, poses, and expressions in a way that feels natural and easy to follow. There’s also a lot of attention to detail when it comes to body language, composition, and conveying mood, which really helps bring characters to life. What I appreciated most is that the book focuses on skill-building rather than just copying images. It teaches you how to think like an artist, so you can create your own original characters with confidence. The illustrations are high quality, and the step-by-step breakdowns make even complex poses feel manageable. Whether you’re a beginner looking to explore this style or an experienced artist wanting to refine your work, this book is definitely worth picking up.

Very excellent for learning poses and strategies for drawing the female anatomy in the manga style. My only advice is learning about drawing more difficult areas before trying a project large . It starts by showing a rough outline to a finished product. Then the face and body proportions. Don’t try and draw the whole thing. Just practice the general body outline. The face section is excellent. Has a diagram of just about every angle you’ll every need. Great examples of eyes too. Further into the book you’ll get a better grasp on certain details. Work on those detailed areas and get a good idea of how they work. Then slowly start practicing putting them together. Did not realize there was outright nudity, but it actually works in its favor. Not overly lewd and very respectful. You’ll probably need another book for coloring/shading, as well as drawing hair. They don’t have any sections on that in this book. This is purely for anatomy and the intricacies of manga styled women.

Each person both has Yin and Yang energy, regardless of gender and each person expresses and balances these energies differently. Some people and cultures and even seasons have more masculine energy, some more feminine. (Summer is masculine while winter is feminine) Feminine energy tends to be more introverted. Even in extroverts yin turns in. Feminine energy is intuitive and introspective and characterized by a sense of being. Feminine energy is about feeling and perceiving and relies, particularly heavily upon body knowledge. Masculine energy is more extroverted, even in introverts. Yang energy focuses on output, expression, and productivity. Masculine energy is cerebral, logical and rational. Wait, am I saying women are naturally more emotional and men are more rational? Nope. Remember this is about energy not biological sex or gender. But also note the hidden bias here in the question -the logic (masculine) is superior to emotion (feminine). We’ll get to that later. For now, I’d like to focus on the practicalities of how these two energies support our creativity. Because creativity is feminine energy. That’s right. Creativity requires incubation, nurturing, and birthing, all feminine energies. So if you want more creativity, you need more feminine energy. How do you do that? Balancing out all of the masculine energy that likely consumes much of your energy with more of the feminine. •Nature •Rest •Play •Beauty •Solitude •Being Masculine energy is a giving energy, so when you are participating in masculine-energy activities like promoting selling producing marketing and quarrying, you are likely burning up and giving out a lot of your energy. When you balance that exertion by turning in and tuning in with feminine-energy elements and activities, you are receiving universal Yin energy, creativity’s life blood. We all need both masculine and feminine energy. For many of us, the creative cycle is only complete once we’ve sent our product out into the world. We’ll never be in perfect balance, but we become truly powerful creatives when we can accept both our Yang and Yin traits and energies fully and learn to harness both. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• This is a great and interesting book to help you on your creative journey of being an anime and manga artist.

Probably the best practice book I’ve ever read. I’ve been through 5-6 books now and this is by far the best especially for beginners. Most of the books I have read doesn’t have an actual step by step guide like this one does. Highly recommend

I'm a small artist and i bought this book and i'm so glad i did! so many pages and helpful tips for drawing i recommend this for artist looking for help on there art progress

The size of the volume (somewhat bigger than 10-3/4" by 5-1/4" by 5/8" thick) makes it easy to handle and the type and illustrations are sharp and clear. The detailed instructions on drawing very small areas of the body lead to much better accuracy with the whole figure. I would have liked to have seen a few paragraphs about author Yukino Onishi as I so appreciate her excellent instructions!

Consistent with the whole Manga University series, this book is authentic, contemporary in the character styles, and packed full of actual instruction, not just example artwork. There is a lot of attention to small details in these books about how body shapes change with pose, how clothing moves, etc. that is absent from most beginner how-to-draw series. Overall, a top-tier book. It's worth noting for parents and teachers, that the target audience for this book is adults, it's not an erotic art manual, but it's not a how to draw Goku for kids book either. Breasts are covered in full detail, including how they deform, and even how to draw them being groped. Genitalia are not drawn, but countours through clothing are shown in places, and the latter chapter of the book on clothing includes BDSM harnesses and the like.

All the information here is very useful. The section on heads is great. How to draw hips and joints is universally applicable. The problem is that the anatomy lessons are split up with lessons on how to draw pornographic poses. Then every time the vagina is mentioned it is called “the perineum area” which is silly. Stuff like that. It’s so weird because it’s not allowed to be a purely anatomy book because of the pornographic stuff, but he only goes halfway on the anatomy because he doesn’t want to be too pornographic. A non-sexualized book that can actually cover every body part and normal poses would be ideal because he wouldn’t have to hold back or use euphemisms. Also half the book is on breasts which is the single most detailed art lesson I have ever seen. This man has a near religious worship of boobs. Also the book I got was used. Someone was clearly going through this and the cover was creased in the middle like they were holding it with a hard grip. Some pages were dog eared too.

Pretty good for beginners to learn some of the basics to stylize figures into anime. You still need to know the fundamentals, as the book doesn’t go super in depth into proportions or perspective, though it does cover them. Overall an excellent book if you want to start stylizing your figures.

This book is very helpful. My only real critique is that, because the bodies are ones suited to H, it's cringeworthy seeing the cutesy little girl faces on nude, voluptuous bodies. I prefer how other figure books just have featureless faces. However, it's quite useful overall, so I'm not going to mark against the book for that.

This book is great for showing you how to draw various figures and clothing styles

This book is great, it has a TON of information, and is very easy to comprehend. The art style is gorgeous, and the book itself feels quite high-quality. One of the best "how-to manga" books I've ever purchased. Highly recommend.

Excellent livre (en anglais) sur le dessin anatomique façon manga, centré sur le corps de la femme. Un must have.