The windswept hair and stern, lined face make this portrait of Van Hohenheim one of the trickier close-up busts in the Fullmetal Alchemist tutorial lineup, since getting the flow of the hair to read as dramatic rather than messy takes careful attention to direction and weight. This guide on how to draw Van Hohenheim breaks the portrait down into 11 manageable steps.
A Close-Up Portrait With a Lot Going On
The tutorial covers a bust-level portrait with the hair swept hard to one side, which adds asymmetry that full-face symmetry practice alone will not prepare you for. All 11 steps go into building that portrait from a rough structural sketch through clean linework, with no background and no color to worry about, so line confidence is the main thing being developed here.
Van Hohenheim’s Key Visual Features
- Long hair swept dramatically to one side
- Rectangular glasses on a stern face
- Short beard and mustache on jaw
- Suit jacket with necktie
- Wrinkled, intense facial expression
If you are working through the Fullmetal Alchemist character list, Edward Elric’s face is a solid follow-up for close-up portrait practice, and Roy Mustang’s face covers similar compositional territory with a different character structure. For something fuller in scope, Olivier Mira Armstrong is also available on the site.
Reading the Step Colors
Each step image uses a three-color system to show exactly what to draw and when:
- Red Color: lines added in the current step.
- Black Color: lines completed earlier.
- Gray Color: base sketch for structure.
How to Draw Van Hohenheim: Step-by-Step Tutorial
Finished the Portrait? Show It Off
Once the linework is clean, drop your finished drawing in the comments below. Seeing how different people handle the hair sweep or the glasses is genuinely useful for anyone else working through the same steps. New tutorials go up on Facebook and Telegram as soon as they are published, a new YouTube video goes live every day based on existing guides, and Pinterest gets updated regularly too. From the Fullmetal Alchemist cast, Ling Yao and Edward Elric in a fight pose are worth trying next. If you want to support the project, the Patreon page has unique hand-drawn coloring pages that are not available anywhere else.