How To: Draw Hair

Okay, in this tutorial I'm going to help with the basics for hair. I'm just going to teach you how to do one hair style today. I'll do a video soon of how to draw some other hair styles.

For some people it's easy just to draw from your imagination.  If you want your drawing to become more realistic though, you'll draw with ether a model who is posing for you or get some pictures. I'm going to draw from pictures. I'm going to be drawing my friend Sophie's hair. I'm going to explain how to do the basics, and then you can look at the video (when I post it) to see some other hairstyles.

Okay to start I've already drawn the shape of her head. You want to decide where your light source is (your light source it where the sun/light is falling on your person.).  I've drawn arrows showing where my light source is so you guys can understand a little more. Your light source will create a highlight on your model so you want that spot to be white as posible. But, before I get into that, let's start with the contour line (The outline.).

One of my art teachers always say that when someone is drawing a portrait they always draw their hair flat against their head. DON'T DO IT! You're hair has shape and volume, don't plaster it on to someone's head. To start, I'm going to draw a rough contour line for the top of her hair and draw the basic shape.

Once you have that drawn you're pretty much done to tell you the truth! All you need to do now is add some values. (shadows and highlights.)

The hair is always darkest around the head; along the part(in the hair), the jaw, and the neck is where you'll find the darkest areas (Or where the hair overlaps like in Sophie's braids).

HELPFUL TIP! As you draw the hair, make sure your pencil strokes flow in the same direction. There might be individual strands blowing off in some weird direction and it's okay to draw those strands. But you're not going to draw your pencil strokes horizontally because your hair doesn't sit that way. You want your strokes to start at the roots of the hair (top of the head) and have them flow downwards.

Don't use the pencil stroke on the right if you're drawing realistic.
Use the stroke on the left to draw realistically. 

As we start to draw the hair, remember we can't draw every single hair on someone's head. We need to draw clusters and make the illusion that we are drawing ever single hair. To do this, I draw a strand and then I fill it in. I'm drawing very lightly right now because I need to add value.

As you draw your strokes, think about your highlight. Where the light is hitting your model, you'll want to have thin light strokes. As the hair falls away from the light source it becomes darker and so you'll press harder with your pencil and make your lines 'thicker'. This helps create value and makes your shape become a form. (Three Dimensional or 3D.)

Notice how much more realistic her hair looks now!

So to close, remember that as you draw you need to make sure it looks life like and not fake. What I mean by this is, you don't want to have geometric shapes as you draw hair. You want organic flowing lines that give your model personality. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't look right. If something looks off to you, look at it through a mirror and you'll see somethings that you didn't catch before! Good luck!


See ya later!