How to Draw an Anime Girl in a Mask Step by Step

This tutorial shows how to draw an anime girl wearing a surgical face mask along with a hoodie in fifteen steps.

A face mask can be worn by anime characters for several reason. Sometimes they can be sick and wear it to help prevent spreading germs. Other times they may do it to hide their face, especially celebrities such as idols (common in anime). Sometimes “punk” or “delinquent” type characters can also wear them to appear more intimidating.

For this particular tutorial the character will be more of the regular girl or “idol” type. If you want to draw a delinquent style character you can find examples on one in the following tutorial:

How to Draw Male Anime Characters Step by Step

A good clothing item to match the mask for this character is a hoodie as they are likely to wear one both when they are sick (as its comfortable clothing) and for when they might need to hide their face (with the hood).

In addition to drawing the mask and hoodie this tutorial also provides instructions on drawing some of the facial features as well as the hair. You may be familiar with these if you’ve done other similar tutorials here on AnimeOutline.

If drawing on paper start the tutorial in pencil and make light lines because will need to erase parts of some of them as you go through the steps.

Step 1 – Draw the Top of the “Mask Girl’s” Head

Start by making a straight vertical line through the middle of your page or drawing area. This will be used to help you see if both halves of the head/face are relatively even in width. Make sure that this line is actually straight. If it isn’t the rest of your drawing can be off as well.

Towards the top of the center line draw a circle that will represent the top part of the head. Also be sure to leave a little bit of room above this for the hair and a good amount below it for the neck and shoulders.

Step 2 – Draw the Bottom of the Head

Going down from the circle add the lower part of the head. As this is an anime character it will be quit small. You can see the breakup the shape shown with the little line segments in the example above.

First the lines defining the lower part of the head will be pretty much straight with just a bit of a curve on each of their their bottoms. They will also be angled inwards towards the middle of the head. Next there will be a pair of curves and then another set of straight lines (angled even more inwards) that join together with the little curve of the chin.

Step 3 – Draw the Neck & Shoulders

Anime girl in mask neck and shoulders drawing

Down from the lower part of the face draw the neck and shoulders. You can again see the breakdown of their shape shown with the line segments.

The lines that define the neck will be almost straight with just a tiny bit of a curve to each of them. These should then transition into the shoulder muscles with a pair of curvy segments followed by the curves of the shoulders.

Step 4 – Draw the Eyes

To position the eyes you can divide the head in half horizontally and draw them right below this halfway point.

For this stage of the drawing leave out any of their smaller details. These will be added in a later.

Space the eyes roughly far apart enough so that you can fit another one in between them.

Step 5 – Draw the Ears

For this particular character the ears will be drawn fairly low down on the head. You can place them by drawing two similar curved lines with one going down from the same halfway point used for the eyes and the second one from the point halfway between this and the chin.

Draw the outlines of the ears between these two curves. As the ears will be almost fully covered by the hair you don’t need to draw any of their inner details.

For an alternative placement of the ears as well as drawing their inner details see the following tutorial:

How to Draw Anime and Manga Ears

Step 6 – Draw the Eyebrows

A little bit above the eyes draw the eyebrows. In this case they will be thicker towards the middle of the face.

For other types of eyebrows also see:

How to Draw Anime & Manga Eyebrows

Step 7 – Draw the Mask

As the nose/mouth will be covered up there no need to draw them.

For drawing anime style moths and noses you can see the following tutorials:

For this stage of the drawing add just the basic outline of the mask and afterwards as well as the straps that go around the ears. The lower part of the straps will not be visible but you can give the main shape of the mask a pair of small bumps near it’s outer bottom corners to show that it’s being pulled there.

Step 8 – Draw the Hair in Front

This character will have a fairly short hair. As anime hair is somewhat detailed and can be a bit confusing to draw adding it will be split into three steps/stages.

For more on this approach see:

How to Draw Anime and Manga Hair – Female

Start by drawing the front section of the hair as shown in red the example. There will be one large clump hanging down with a split near it’s bottom. The rest of this part of the hair will be swept to the sides.

Step 9 – Draw the Hair on the Sides

Add the side sections of the hair shown in green. These will be two large clumps that somewhat “hug” the head curving around it. The longer ones will then curve outwards near their tips. Draw these sections right over top of the head/ears/mask outlines.

Step 10 – Draw the Hair in the Back

Finally add the background/top section of the hair shown in blue. Draw it slightly farther away form the head near the top and a bit closer to it on the sides. Near the bottom it should “fan out” into a bunch of fairly small clumps. Try and draw these of slightly varying size and curving in random directions to make the hair look more natural.

Once done adding the hair you can erase the parts of the head that are covered by it.

Once done with this part of the hair yo can erase all of the outlines of the head/ears/mask where these are covered by the head.

Step 11 – Draw the Small Details of the Face

At this stage make sure your overall drawing looks good and if so add the smaller details of the face as well as the mask.

For the face these will be:

A hint of the eyebrows just a bit above the eyes
A couple of individual eyelashes for each of the eyes (you can fill in the eyelashes with black and add these)
Inner details of the eyes (pupils/highlights)
A tiny hint of the inner details of the ears with small curves on their upper parts

For the mask outline the area around it’s sides and add several folds that surgical masks tend to have.

Step 12 – Draw the Hoodie

In this picture the hood of the hoodie will be down. Draw it’s bottom as two curves that then transitions into a few simple folds on each side followed by downwards curves that go behind the neck.

Draw the opening with a shape that looks somewhat like a heart.

Close to the center of the hood add the drawstrings. You can erase a tiny bit of it’s outline when adding these. In this case the strings will pretty much just be hanging straight down.

Around the base of the strings add the outlines of the eyelets. These are usually round but as they are pointing somewhat downwards and are being viewed on an angle draw them as a pair of ovals.

On the ends of the drawing strings add the tips. Make these slightly narrower than the strings themselves.

Step 13 – Draw the Hoodie Details

To make the hoodie appear less flat add some more folds. Add several of these running through the middle of the hood and a couple just below it between the strings.

Once done with this step you can darken your lines by tracing over them but don’t darken the outlines of the highlights in the eyes.

Step 14 – Add Color

For this fairly simple step just fill in each area of the drawing with color.

In this case the girl will have purple hair, eyebrows and eyes with a yellow hoodie. The mask will be a light blue (as surgical masks often are).

Be sure to leave the highlights of the eyes white (you can also erase the outlines around them). You can also add a few highlights into the hair. Either outline them before coloring or simply create them you color. Optionally you can also add these in over top of the color if drawing digitally or by using a white correction pen.

Step 15 – Add Shading to Finish the Drawing

To finish the drawing give it some basic shading. However, before doing so it’s a good idea to think of the lighting conditions the character will be.

In this case as with many other similar tutorials here on AnimeOutline the girl will be drawn as though she is in a fairly common lighting setup such as a well lit room or daytime outdoors. Generally in such a setup most of the light will be coming form above. This means that the shadows will tend to be on the bottom or in areas that have have some sort of an inwards curve or an indent (where less light tends to reach).

You will also want to darken some areas of the drawing regardless of the shadows. In this case these will be the eyebrows, pupils and upper parts of the irises.

The shadow will be distributed as follows:

Around the eyelids
Along the upper part of the eyes below the eyelashes (cast by the eyelashes)
From the hair (below middle and on the sides)
On the neck (cast by the head)
On the inner side of the hoodie
Around the folds of the hoodie

Once done shading you should be finished with the drawing.

Conclusion

As mentioned at the start of the tutorial, anime characters can wear face masks for several reasons (sometimes not medical related). The mask itself is not particularly complicated so a large part of the tutorial also covers drawing other things such as the facial features, hair and clothing.

Hopefully you’ve found this drawing guide interesting and the instructions easy to follow. For more similar tutorials also see the following: