Draw an Anime Police Girl (12 Steps)

Posted on by animeoutline

This guide shows how to draw an anime police girl wearing a service cap and and a uniform shirt with a tie using easy to follow step by step illustrations.

While police officers are fairly common in anime and manga, usually, they have minor roles. This guide shows how to draw a young female police officer in the anime style. However, the goal is to make her look a more interesting than these generic characters (more like a protagonist) while at the same time maintaining the appearance of a cop.

The girl is drawn “portrait style” down to the shoulders. The examples demonstrate a “layered” or “see through” approach to drawing. The guide first shows how to outline the head followed by the neck and shoulders. It then illustrates how to proportion the face and add the facial features. Afterwards, the hair is added overlapping the outline of the head as though it’s see through. The same method is used when adding the clothes.

Doing things in the above described way makes it much easier to see where the various parts of the character should be placed and can help you avoid mistakes.

For some examples of drawing errors see:

Common Mistakes When Drawing Anime & Manga

If you are going to be following along, you should start this drawing in regular pencil (unless working digitally). Make fairly light lines that wont leave marks when erased as the “layered” approach requires some clean up in between it’s various stages.

Above is a video that shows how to draw the anime police girl line by line. It also shows some of the details of the face and clothes up close to make them easier to see. You can watch it for a very detailed breakdown of the drawing process and then read the additional instructions and explanations that follow. The steps in the video have been created to match the written parts and images below.

For more anime drawing videos see the AnimeOutline YouTube channel.

Step 1 – Draw the Police Girl’s Head to Match the Anime Style

Begin by making a straight line through the middle of where you wish to draw the police girl. Near the top of this line draw a circle to help get the shape of the upper part of the head.

Anime police girl head structure drawing

In this example the girl has a fairly round face. This is common for anime characters and can also help achieve a younger look.

Below the circle, outline the lower part of the head. Make this narrower as it goes down and draw it transitioning into a curve on each side around the cheeks. Next, make the outline even narrower towards the chin. Draw the chin itself as a fairly small curve (anime characters generally have very small or even pointy chins).

Erase the lower part of the circle once you have the head fully outlined.

For a detailed guide on the structure of an anime head see:

How to Draw an Anime Face (Structure & Proportions)

Step 2 – Draw a Slender Neck & Narrow Shoulders

Going down from the head, draw the neck followed by the shoulders. As this is an anime girl, make the neck quite slender and the shoulders fairly narrow in comparison to the head.

For more on drawing anime necks and shoulder see:

How to Draw Anime Neck & Shoulders

Step 3 – Draw Only the Outlines of the Ears

In this case the ears will be fully covered by the hair in later steps. However, it’s still good practice to define their outer shapes so you can see how much volume the hair needs for them to be fully covered.

To position the ears draw them below the horizontal halfway point of the head with their top ends. Draw their bottom ends halfway between that and it’s bottom.

For more ways to draw anime ears and to position them on the head see:

How to Draw Anime & Manga Ears (3 Different Ways)

Step 4 – Draw Big Eyes With Oval Irises

Draw big eyes with large oval irises as is fairly common for anime characters. Also, draw their bottom eyelids to be just a tiny bit raised. This will help give the girl a slightly “confident” look which can be appropriate for a police woman.

First, outline the outer shape of each eye, next draw the irises and afterwards add fairly thick eyelashes with tiny splits on their outer ends. Usually, you want to leave such small details for later stages of the drawing. However, in this case it can be a hard to judge the characters overall expression without them so you can draw the eyelashes early on. What you can leave for later are the pupils and reflections and eyelids. Why you wish to do so is also explained later on.

As mentioned, the goal of the guide is to give the police girl a little more personality than a generic side character. Making the eyes fairly big (even by anime standards) can help achieve this as big eyes generally tend to be more attractive and expressive. Drawing thick eyelashes can also help further emphasize the eyes and can hint at the character wearing eyeliner. The eyeliner effect will help show that while young, the girl is an adult. As makeup is generally worn by adults or at least later teens.

For drawing different kinds of eye expressions see:

How to Draw Anime Eyes and Eye Expressions

You can also look through the tutorials section for many more guides that cover almost all aspects of drawing anime and manga style eyes.

For more on drawing eyelashes check out:

How to Draw Anime Eyelashes Step by Step

Step 5 – Draw the Eyebrows With Lowered Inner Ends

Draw the eyebrows with their inner ends thicker and slightly lowered. The inner ends being lower down will again, help create a “confident” look.

For drawing different types of eyebrows see:

How to Draw Anime & Manga Eyebrows

Step 6 – Draw a Very Simplified Nose

As anime noses are highly simplified in this case the nose is just defined with an outline of a shadow on one of it’ sides.

Position the outline just a tiny bit above the bottoms of the ears to one side of the center guide line. Define it a as a small oval that’s slightly flattened on it’s inner side.

You can better see the nose’s in the video that’s provided at the start of this guide. It’s shown up close during the last step (shading).

Step 7 – Draw the Mouth With the Lips

Draw the mouth with a light smile to give the police girl a somewhat friendly look.

Quite often anime characters are drawn without the lips being defined. However, in this case the officer is wearing lipstick so you can fully outline them as shown. Similar to eyeliner the lipstick will help convey that the girl is an adult.

For more ways to draw lips and mouths see:

Step 8 – Draw Fairly Short Hair

When drawing the hair it can help to think of it as being split into several sections. This guide shows these in different colors to make them easier to distinguish. However, you can simply draw everything in regular pencil (or one color if drawing digitally).

In this case the girl has fairly short hair (but not too much so). A short hairstyle can be appropriate for drawing a female police officer as their job can get quite active (when they are chasing down bad guys). Long hair can interfere with that. However, if you do want to draw a police girl with long hair you can simply show it as being tied into a bun or a pony tail.

For drawing different kinds of anime hairstyles see:

How to Draw Anime and Manga Hair – Female

First, draw the hair along the forehead and top of the head overlapping it’s outline. Generally, anime hair can have a lot more volume but in this case the girl will be wearing a police cap so the hair will be pushed down. Take this into account and give it less volume by drawing it closer to the outline of the head than you would otherwise.

Draw this part of the hair splitting into three clusters as it runs down. Add one running down the middle of the head and two swept to the sides. Draw the ends of the hair with pointy splits as is so common for the anime and manga style.

Draw the hair on the sides of the head curving around the face as it hangs down. Draw a split into each side that runs up slightly past the bottoms of the ears.

Draw the hair at the back of the head somewhat following the curves of the sides sections. Define the bottom of this section with tiny splits to make the hair look like it’s been trimmed in that area.

Once you have the hair fully outlined, erase the parts of the head covered by it. However, leave the outlines of the eyebrows fully shown and also have the outer ends of the eyelashes overlapping the hair. While in a more realistic style these would also be covered, in anime it’s fairly common to show the eyebrows and eyelashes over top o the hair. Doing so can save time when drawing and can make it easier to show the character’s expression.

Step 9 – Draw the Police Uniform With the Service Cap

Anime police girl clothes outline drawing

Draw the police uniform over top of the body’s outline similar to the hair. To make the outlines of the clothes easier to distinguish than those of the body they are shown in blue. However, similar to the hair, you can just draw everything in regular pencil.

Draw the Police Service Hat

You can start drawing the police uniform with the service cap (so that you go top to bottom). First, draw it’s band section (the part that wraps around the head). Next, draw the top section (the crown). Finally, draw the visor.

For drawing other kinds of hats see:

How to Draw Anime Hats & Head Ware

Draw the Police Uniform Shirt & Tie

In this case the main outline of the shirt is simply defined by the outline of the body. Onto this add the collar followed by the tie. Afterwards, draw the shoulder patches that are so characteristic of police and military attire.

Once you have the various parts of the uniform outlined erase the areas of the body that they cover. Leave the smaller detail of the clothes for the next step.

For more examples of drawing anime clothes see:

How to Draw Anime & Manga Clothes

Step 10 – Draw the Small Details of the Face & Uniform

Finally, draw all of the small parts and details of the face and the uniform.

These are as follows:

Eyes – pupils, eyelids and reflections
Cap – hat badge and visor border
Shoulder patches – simple design elements (borders and splits)
Tie – small folds in it’s upper middle

When drawing the pupils you can just outline their lower half’s. Doing so can help prevent the character from having a “stare like” look. Also, draw a fairly big reflections. These will help make the eyes look more “lively” and again help create a friendlier appearance. Although, cops may not be so nice to bad guys, they can also often be polite and helpful.

Once you’ve added the details, trace over your lines to darken them.

The reason you generally want to save the smaller details for last is so that you can first see the drawing as a whole. Sometimes when this becomes the case, you may realize you wish to make adjustments. If you save the smaller details for after that point it’s less likely that you will need to also erase and draw them a second time. For example, if you decide that you wish to move the hat lower down on the head before you’ve added the badge to it, then you won’t need to redraw that part of it as well.

Step 11 – Color the Police Girl

Outline Reflections Before Coloring

When coloring the drawing be sure to leave some white spots along the following areas to show reflections:

Cap crown – a strip along the top
Cap visor – a strip along the bottom
Hair – a streak of small white spots
Lips – a small spot along the lower lip

You can outline the reflections before coloring as is again, shown in the video at the start of this guide. You can also lightly go over them with the corresponding colors afterwards so that they don’t appear too bright.

The reflections in the eyes were already defined in an earlier step. Unlike the rest, you can leave these white and have dark outlines around them for emphasis. The rest don’t need to have visible outlines once you are done.

For more ways to draw hair reflections see:

Different Ways to Draw Anime Hair Highlights

Color the Girl

To color the girl you can simply give her brown hair and eyes. Use a mix of pink and very light yellow for the skin and make the lips red (slightly pink).

Color the Police Uniform

Blue is a very common color for police attire. In this case the uniform consists of several different blues along with some yellow and dark grey (for black). Blue and yellow are complimentary colors that go well together and greys are neutral, meaning they go with everything.

Color the police uniform as follows:

Cap crown – dark blue
Cap band – dark grey
Cap visor – dark grey with a yellow border
Shirt – light blue
Shoulder patches – dark and medium blue with a yellow borders
Tie – dark blue

For an explanation of what colors go well with one another see:

Beginner Guide to Picking Colors When Drawing Anime & Manga

Step 12 – Add the Shadows to the Police Girl Drawing

In this example the shading is done in a generic way, as though the police girl is either outside during the day or in a well lit indoor environment where most of the light is coming from above. This means that the shadow will generally be cast downwards.

First, darken the pupils (as these are naturally darker) and the upper parts of the irises. Next, place the shadows in the following places:

Upper parts of the white of the eyes – cast by the eyelashes
Around the eyelids – as these areas are indented less light will generally reach them
Along the head/hair below the cap – cast by the visor
On the side/back section of the hair – cast by the hair along the forehead
On the inner/back section of the hair (around the neck) – as these areas are fairly closed off from the light on all sides
The outline of the nose – fully shade this as the outline is of the shadow
The top lip – casts a shadow onto itself
Below the lower lip – cast by it onto the chin
Along the bottom of the head – thin strip where the curvature of the head shifts to the bottom
Along the top of the neck – cast by the head
The lower half of the cap badge – this can also simply be a dark reflection
Below the the cap badge – cast by it onto the crown
Below the shoulder straps – cast by them onto the shirt
Below the collar – cast by it onto the shirt
The inner area of the collar – as this area is fairly closed off less light will tend to reach here
The fold in the middle of the tie – as it’s indented less light will tend to reach here

For examples of shading a face in different kinds of lighting see:

How to Shade an Anime Face in Different Lighting

Conclusion

Police officers are fairly common in anime and manga but they usually tend to appear as side characters. This guide shows how to draw an anime police girl (young woman) in uniform and how to make her look more interesting so that she could be a protagonist.

In addition to explaining some of the logic behind the character’s design the guide and also show how to gradually build up the drawing in “layers” and how to proportion the face to help achieve an anime look.

For a general tutorial on drawing various kinds of female anime characters see:

How to Draw Anime Characters Tutorial

For drawing characters in other kinds of popular outfits see: