How to draw Luffy from One Piece.

Drawing Luffy is a lot of fun, he’s really easy compared to a lot of other manga characters but still has his own peculiar crazy look. ^_^ If you're interested in other One Piece manga tutorials just click on the One Piece tag in the tag cloud on the right side of the page. Let's get our materials ready and begin our Luffy tutorial.

Step 01: Start by drawing the main head circle, but make sure to keep enough free space around since you’ll need it. Don’t push too hard on your pencil as all the blue lines are just construction lines and will be erased later.

Step 02: Draw a curved center line slightly to the left of center of the main head circle with bottom part going over the edge of the circle. This is where we’ll put his chin. 

Step 03: Draw the eye line perpendicular to the center line and slightly curved, a little lower than the “equator” of the head. 

Step 04: Next, we’ll draw the face lines. Notice that the line on the left has a slight inverted ‘S’ curvature. The line on the right is wider and touches the eye line. 

Step 05: Time for the ears, go ahead and draw two ears. The top part of the ear on the left sprouts from the point where our face line and head circle meet but is mostly hidden from view (overlapping 3D principle). His ear on the right touches the face line and the point where it intersects the head circle. Now we get to draw a big smiling mouth parallel to the face angle. Add in a simple teeth line. 

Step 06: Time for his eyes. Draw two big eyes ^_^, the one on the left is squashed (a little more ovular) as it is viewed from an angle (our Squashing 3D principle). We should put both pupils on the eye line. I guess these are pupils as they would be too small for Irisis ^_^. Now draw a simple wedge for his upturned nose, originating just above the eye line. The nostril is quite delicate and touches the center line.

Step 07: Now draw Luffy’s neck with the line on the right touching the ear (since the ear muscles actually start behind the ears). Drawing his hair can be a little tricky as there are many untidy spikes, just look at the picture and use the head circle as a guideline. Notice that the top of the visible hair doesn’t overlap the head circle as that’s where we have to put Luffy’s straw hat. This straw hat was lent to him by the legendary Pirate captain “Red-Haired Shanks” while Luffy was still a boy and he almost never takes it off.

Step 08: We’ve arrived at the hat. Draw a big lopsided ellipse for the hat rim. Next we’ll use this step to put in some more of Luffy. Draw his shoulder under the neck and give him two eyebrows above his whacko eyes. Again, notice the eyebrow on the left is much shorter (3D squashing principle) compared to the eyebrow on the right.

Step 09: Now that we have all the main features in place it’s time to add some details. Draw in the ear detail and wave lines for his gums (he’s obviously been to the dentist recently ^_^). Add some details to Luffy’s hat and draw the scar under his eye on the right. This is the scar that he got after cutting himself as a kid in the first chapter of One Piece manga to persuade “Red-Haired” Shanks that he is tough enough to join his pirate group. Finally add the line under his chin to mark the shadow on his neck.

Step 10: Almost there. Now we have to get rid of all our help and erase all the construction lines with a kneedable eraser so they are barely visible and draw the final lines on top of them. If you are drawing in Photoshop make a new layer and draw on it. The black lines should be quite delicate so don’t select a brush that is too thick!

Step 11: This is our final step, so you can breathe easy. Go ahead and fill in the black in his hair and pupils, then we’ll fill in the shadow on his neck and add some thickness to Luffi’s nose. Take a step back and have a look. He looks pretty good right? ^_^ Make sure to post him in your gallery here. And as always try to draw him again from memory and fix up the mistakes afterwards. This way will the shapes stick in your head and you will have more building blocks in your virtual shapes library to draw your own characters.

Draw with passion! (-_^) Hiroshi