Learning to Draw Hair is both challenging and rewarding – the former makes character drawings more realistic, and the latter makes the drawing process more enjoyable and efficient. This article offers tips that will make the experience less daunting and more fun!
Start by outlining the overall shape of hair using a light pencil, paying particular attention to darker areas where they overlap and how they interweave with one another.
Observation
Understanding how to draw hair can make all the difference when drawing realistic portraits or cartoons; it adds believability, personality, and movement to character designs. But where should you begin? In this video, Lee Hammond provides her fundamental drawing techniques for drawing hair of various lengths and styles using light pencil sketches, first observing facial features before moving on to shading basic head structures like heads and face features with this method.
Once the sketch has been drawn, she adds some darker marks with a pen. Be patient when using your pen – only use darker spots where needed, and refer back to your reference image when applying darker lines.
When drawing hair, it’s essential to observe its direction lines and their arrangement – how clumps of hair overlap and create shadowing – for accurate representation. A good quality reference photo can help immensely in learning to draw hair.
As hair grows from within our heads, its shapes can only be defined through growth – this helps explain where it comes from and goes. Gravity, styling, and the shape of our heads all influence where these forms will emerge – something essential to remember when drawing hair – particularly for things such as ringlets that result from coiling around themselves. By understanding this, you can sketch primary forms before filling them in using short strokes to show individual strands.
Basic Shapes
Drawing hair requires capturing primary shapes while leaving out details like individual strands. One way of accomplishing this is to map out significant areas of shadow and light with a pencil prior to adding any individual strands of hair to allow yourself to focus on capturing its shapes and value rather than worrying about perfecting every stroke. Also, an opportunity to try different pencils and techniques; for instance, soft 4B leads to more gradual transitions while sharp HB gives more defined lines.
If you’re using a reference picture as inspiration, ensure it contains good contrast and transparent shadows. Also, try finding one showing your subject moving or speaking so that you can observe how their hair moves and flows.
Start by tracing over your pencil guidelines with a light pen to define the general shapes of hair, then add individual strands following their natural direction of growth – this will create the natural waviness seen in source images while keeping lines consistent with them.
Though it might be tempting, drawing each hair strand will become time-consuming and inconsistent. Instead, try removing larger clumps first before adding detail later. Finally, remember that shading will darken the lines; thus, be cautious with how darkly you apply them; better to be light than too dark!
Contouring
Whether we’re drawing curly, wavy, or straight hair, we must pay close attention to our reference image’s light and shadow areas. For the best possible realistic and natural-looking result, sketch contours as flat graphic shapes before shading them with slightly loose and soft pencil strokes for more natural-looking results – this approach also prevents too many floating forms, which could potentially detract from the overall drawing process.
As you begin shading your hair, apply the darkest moments last. Hair strands should appear lighter near their roots and darker towards their tips to create an impression of light bouncing off and adding volume to the locks.
With your Tombow Mono Zero eraser, mechanical pencil, and 4B pencil handy, begin by sketching a soft hairline following the shape of the face and head. When applying a pen for lighter tones, use light hand pressure, while when adding darker ones apply additional stress for a more significant effect.
Once your primary outline is in place, sketch some strands to add texture and dimension. It is best to include long and short strands for maximum impact – don’t forget some that hang off of the character’s face as well!
Remind yourself how important it is to add these strands assertively and dynamically. Fast and confident strokes always look better than timid or timid ones. Additionally, try changing line weights between your strands so they have more of an active feel, creating realistic hair movement with each stroke.
Highlights
Hair has an inherently shiny surface and reflects light beautifully, so highlights are integral to drawing hair that adds extra depth and realism. Highlights generally feature white highlights; however, they can come in any hue and even have waves or curves for an authentic appearance. To achieve the most realistic effect when drawing hair highlights, use dark pencils as shadows and lighter pencils or gel pens as highlights.
Hair highlights found most commonly in anime and manga are simple; draw two lines to indicate where it begins and ends, leaving them white or coloring their bright colors. Another popular type is gradient highlights which gradually change brightness rather than all at once as simple highlights do; for more dramatic changes, use drawing lines where desired and then blending them in with surrounding colors.
Keep your stroke lengths and thickness varied when creating highlights to give an irregular look that draws the eye away from uniformity. While this might take practice to master, it will give rise to some fantastic effects once you do!
When adding highlights, start by shading in darker areas with different pencils and pens – experiment with various methods until you find what works for you!
Shades
Once the outline has been completed, it’s time to add dimension and realism by shading the hair in dark areas. Use pencil grades B or 2B when dyeing for best results; take your time shading using light pressure; try not to stain over bright spots (highlights); focus instead on darker tones and mid tones while leaving highlights free. Use soft hand pressure when dyeing; this way, you’ll have complete control of tonality.
When shading darker areas of hair, always refer back to your source image for reference. Ensure you establish the appropriate tone without adding too much darkness; toned paper may make this task more straightforward, as lighter pencil strokes will show up better than on plain white paper.
As you are shading, use the direction lines you created earlier as a guide to indicate where to add heavier pencil strokes. Be mindful to keep light strokes for darker areas and more severe strokes for more delicate hair parts.
When shading with a pen, it is crucial that your strokes be light and only apply slight pressure; this allows for better tone control as you refer back to your reference image as you work your way slowly through the hair.
