How to Draw Freckles on Anime Faces

This is a very short tutorial that shows a few different ways to draw freckles on anime characters. It provides example explanation of the specifics of drawing them.

Freckles can be used to give an anime or manga character a bit of a more unique look. Generally (though not always the case) characters with slightly more mild or shy personalities tend to have them.

Just like anime characters anime freckles are also stylized. The goal is not so much to show realistic looking freckles as to create an appearance of them. Anime faces tend to be drawn with much larger freckles and a lot fewer of them than a real person normally has. This also saves the artists time and makes them easier to see.

There are of course some exceptions to the amount of detail. Solo anime styled art pieces or 3d characters can show more realistic freckles but in most shows/manga they are drawn similar to the examples below.

Drawing Freckles on the Cheeks

For these types of freckles you want to draw a patch of them under each eye. The only real trick here is to make the freckles look balanced that one patch does not visually “outweigh” the other.

If you want a more natural looking character try and not make them too symmetrical. You can also slightly randomize their size (some larger some smaller). For a more stylized character you can pretty much mirror them and make them all the same size.

For shapes you can pretty much just make them all round.

You can see what the “under cheek” freckles can look like with anime facial features in the example above.

Drawing Freckles on the Nose

For this example draw a patch of freckles around the bridge of the nose area. As that actual part of the nose is not drawn in most anime characters try and simply position them a bit above the tip.

Again you can slightly randomize the size.

You can see what the “on nose” freckles can look like with anime facial features in the example above.

Drawing Freckles Across the Face

This example is basically a combination of the previous two. Draw these freckles as a strip across the face around the nose and cheek areas. Make them more dense in the middle and less so around the sides.

Yet again try and randomize their size and placement while and balance out the overall shape they create so that it’s not squired to one side of the face.

You can see what the “across face” freckles can look like with anime facial features in the example above.

Conclusion

This tutorial is very short as there really isn’t that much to drawing freckles on anime characters. There are however a few small specifics that were mentioned in this tutorial.

For more similar tutorials also see:

• How to Draw Anime & Manga Blush in Different Ways
• How to Draw Anime & Manga Eyebrows
• How to Draw Anime and Manga Noses