How to Draw Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist

Step 1

Step 01: All of the blue or green lines you see in this tutorial are only construction lines and we’ll be erasing them later on. So, it’s important not to press too hard on your pencil when drawing these lines. You’ll see our final lines in black towards the end of the tutorial.

We’ll start with a fairly large circle in the middle of our paper. As it can be quite difficult to draw a perfect circle I recommend going around with your pencil a few times very lightly to get an outline of a circle and then draw your actual circle on top of that. It always helps to have a guide ^_^.

Next, we’ll draw our center and eye lines. Since Roy is looking at us straight on, we don’t need to worry about shifting our lines. So, our center line will cut the head circle in half and extend both above a little and below a lot of the head circle. The horizontal green dash you see near the bottom of the center line is to mark where Roy’s chin will be. It’s a good idea to mark it. After that, draw your horizontal eye line about a quarter of the way up the head circle.

Step 2

Step 02: Next, we’re going to draw Roy’s jaw and eyes. Let’s begin with the jaw. We need to draw two lines from each side of the head where the eye line touches down to the flat dash we made for Roy’s chin. Once you’ve got that, we’ll add the eyes. Using the eye line as the bottom line of our eye shapes we need to draw diamond like shapes for the eyes. The points of the diamond shapes will point to the outside. Before moving on let’s add the mouth line as a flat line half way between the chin and the bottom of the head. Just above that we’ll make a short dash for nose placement.

Step 3

Step 03: Ears. neck and top of the collar in this step, mangakas. Let’s start with ears. We’ll start with the ears by drawing a “C” shape on either side of the head starting on the head circle just above the eye line and stopping on the first jaw line. Next, we’ll move down and draw the two short vertical lines for the neck starting on the second jaw line. Now for the collar we’ll draw a “<” and “>” shape that starts on the neck lines we just drew and meets at a point on the center line just above the chin line. When you’ve got that, we’ll move on.

Step 4

Step 04: Hair and more collar work in this step. Let’s start with the hair shape. We can draw this shape by drawing the lower line first and then drawing the upper/outer line with the “m” shape at the top and finally connecting the two lines near the ears. As you draw the lower line you’ll see it starts in the middle of the ear on the left and stops at where the eye line meets the head circle on the right. Then, draw the larger outer line with the “M” shape on the center line, connect them and we’re on to the collar. Here it might be easiest to start by drawing the “M” like shape in the center, noticing that the inner legs of the “M” are a little squiggly. Then we can finish the shape by drawing the lower straight line and then the bent vertical line to connect it to the outer points of the “<“”>” shapes we drew in the previous step.

Step 5

Step 05: We’ll zoom in on the face to do some work on the features here. Let’s start with the eyes. Inside each eye we need to draw a flat horizontal line for the lower lid just on the eye line. Then, we’ll draw two “(“”)” shapes for the pupils. In the upper left corner of each pupil we need to draw a sideways “U” shape for the reflection spot in his eye. Above each eye we should draw a bent line for the upper lid and immediately above that we’ll draw the eyebrows. The brows should have some thickness to them tapering off towards the outer ends and they should be at an angle down towards the center line. When you’ve got the eyes all done, draw the two wavy “C” shapes inside each ear for the inner ear. Lastly, we’ll add the tear drop shape to the left end of the nose line and add some upcurving little dash at the end of the nose and mouth line on the right. Great job, let’s move on!

Step 6

Step 06: We’ve got a little hair work to do in this step. We need to add spikes to Roy’s hair. Starting at the top of the left arch of the “M” shape at the top of the head and going left, we need to draw two hair spikes. On the right side of the hair shape we need to draw just one hair spike. Then, on the sides near the ears where we have a flat line we need to draw the zig zag line to make hair spikes at the ends of both sides of Roy’s hair. Then, we’ll move to the bangs where we will draw six hair spikes, three on the left and three on the right of the center line. The tips of those spikes can overlap the tops of the eyes just a little bit. Lastly, back up at the top of the hair, on either side you notice the irregular shape. You should draw these to include the reflection spots in his hair.

Step 7

Step 07: Now that we’ve done Roy’s hair, let’s move down to zoom in on the collar. Here we’ll start by rounding off the upper edges of the collar. Then we can move inside the “M” shape to draw the shirt. It doesn’t have to be perfectly symmetrical. Next, we can draw the seam on the collar starting at the top of the “M” shape and extending all the way to the outer end of the collar where it ends in a small half circle. Add the small and then the larger rectangle on the left half of the collar for his insignia. And lastly, the two lines under the arches of the “M” shape should finish off the collar.

Step 8

Step 08: Now, take out your eraser and lighten all of the lines we’ve drawn so far. We’ll use our pen to trace our final lines in this step. One place to pay attention to is the eyes. When you trace, the eye shouldn’t be completely closed but there will be empty spots on the bottom, only trace the bottom line under the pupil. The upper lines that make up the eye should be thicker so they stand out more. You can also fill in the pupils now, except for the “U” shapes reflection spot and also fill in the eyebrows. When you’ve finished tracing your final lines we’ll do some filling and shading in the next couple steps.

Step 9

Step 09: When your ink dries, just use your eraser to completely erase any remaining construction lines that you can see.

Step 10

Step 10: Using our pen we’ll fill in Roy’s hair completely in black except for the irregular shapes for the reflection spots. We’ll also fill in in black the underside of his collar. You can do any touch ups to the eyes you’d like to do and don’t forget to fill in the tear drop shape for the nose.

Step 11

Click here for more FMA tutorials

Step 11: Using your pencil or a grey marker, we’ll do a little shading in the step. I’ve shaded in the reflection spots in his hair, the upper part of the collar leaving the seam white. And I’ve done some areas around the eyes, under the bangs, the ears and under the chin.

When you’re all finished, take a step back and look, you’ve drawn Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist. If your goal is to become a great mangaka make sure to draw Roy again from memory. Then compare the final drawing with the original and correct any mistakes you might have made. Try once again from memory. This is the best way to build a huge library of shapes and get the tracing experience necessary that you can use in the future for your own manga characters.

Draw with passion! -_^

Hiroshi