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I'm reading a book on how to draw manga style characters, and I came across this sentence. It is part of a larger block explaining how to make a character look the same from all different angles.

同{おな}じ髪型{かみがた}といっても、どこから分けてあるか、どんな感{かん}じのカーブで、みけんならみけんのどこまでかかるのか、などに注意{ちゅうい}をはらって描{か}きます

I think I understand the general meaning of the whole sentence, but the part where it says みけんならみけん puzzles me a bit. I get that it's talking about where to draw the brow of the face and how far across it goes (「どこまでかかるのか」).

As I understand it, なら is something like "being the case that", so I translate みけんならみけん as "the brow as the brow", but that seems weird to me. How would the brow act as anything other than the brow when drawing a face? My translation must be wrong because it would be redundant to talk about the brow as the brow.

What is なら doing in this context?

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"Even if it's the same hairdo, you draw keeping close attention on where to part it from, what sort of feeling of the curves, and [for/in the case of] the area between the eyebrows how far across to go of that area, etc."

みけんなら
=[for/in the case of] the area between the eyebrows

みけんのどこまでかかるのか
=how far across to go of the area between the eyebrows

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  • Wait... みけん is "eyebrows"? I thought eyebrows was まゆげ.
    – Questioner
    Commented Jan 21, 2012 at 10:45
  • @DaveMG oops...眉間 apparently refers to the area between the eyebrows sorry
    – cypher
    Commented Jan 21, 2012 at 10:49
  • Thanks for confirming the definition. As for the grammar, I think I see it now. There's a conceptual split following なら, so it's not 「けんならみけん...」 as I was reading it before, it's 「みけんなら、みけんのどこまで」...
    – Questioner
    Commented Jan 21, 2012 at 11:19
  • @cypher the last "it" in your sentence should refer to the hair(do), not the area between the eyebrows. I.e. "how far the hair goes across the area between the eyebrows".
    – dainichi
    Commented Jan 21, 2012 at 17:58

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