How do you draw hair? Whenever I try it just *exaggerated hand motion meaning giant mess*
To be honest, that’s pretty much how I draw hair, too. And honestly? Hair is such a complex, diverse thing. There’s a millions of ways to draw hair based on style and texture. I’ve gotten many asks considering hair, and really, I’ve always been a bit confused on how to answer since hair comes in so many different forms. But! Giving it thought, I realized I can give you a really quick, “basic” guide, until I get a more specific question regarding hair.
So, the first step is to draw the hairlines. Hairlines is basically the “hat” of your head, and is what shapes the forehead. Drawing this before you add hair as a guide will be extremely helpful with the hairstyle, and it adds to the the facial features as well. There’s many different types hairlines, as shown here, and they may all vary in height or shape. Go wild, be experimental! Remember that this is a guide, however, so once you have the hair drawn out, make sure that the hairline isn’t as visible as it is here, but drawn as fine lines instead.
The next thing you can do is to draw a point somewhere on the head which will define the volume and the direction of the hair. This is extremely helpful, since you can draw all the hair strands starting from this point. They may start wherever you find fitting, and you may add more than one (although that adds to the complexity!)
The next step is to think in shapes overlapping each other. For wavy hair, I like to draw the shapes as teardrops. For puffy hair I like to draw it in circles and ovals. And for straight hair, I like to think in rectangles. It’s all very simple: use the guides mentioned earlier to place the shapes on the head, making them overlap each other until you’re satisfied. Be as messy or simple as you want, and draw them however you’d like as long as it works for you. Don’t try to details yet, though, focus on shapes!
Once you’re satisfied with your result, you may draw the details to your liking. This, I think requires a tutorial on it’s own since hair textures can vary greatly. I’ll show you a quick example below, but again, this isn’t something that works with all hair types. And naturally, once you’re done, remove the head-shape outline. I kept it here just so that you could see how the hair is placed on top of it.
And as you can see, this method works with short hairstyles as well!
In fact, it works for any hairstyle, and you may even mix the basic shapes to get a unique look. (Ignore the lack of pen pressure on this one)
Now, I realize that the ‘finished’ result can be a bit difficult for some to imagine drawing. Again, I still think this requires a tutorial on it’s own, but I will show you how I do it with one of the hairstyles.
(As you can see, I haven’t drawn out the hairline or a “point”, but this isn’t because I don’t need to, but because I already have it mentally drawn out, it’s not required for this drawing. For some hairstyles, however, I do still draw the hairline/point, especially if the hair is pulled back. But for the sake of simplicity, I will keep it, well, simple.)
Notice how I draw the shapes just as mentioned before? Here, I draw very fine lines in vague teardrop shapes, which I overlay as I draw.
Finishing the look, keep adding more layers…
Defining the “point” as a detail, so that it doesn’t look like some horribly made wig…
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