in your art tutorial (which was awesome and helpful btw) you had an example which i believe was the last one of a person with a long ponytail and honestly the way their hair looks in that fascinates me so i was wondering... how did you do the thing ? im rubbish at hair .
First of all thanks! I’m going to try and roll both a tutorial as to how I draw that particular hairstyle as well as an overall hair tutorial, aight?
when it comes to that sorta thing I draw a rough sketch first (sometimes i don’t out of habit, but with unfamiliar or more complicated hairstyles it never hurts to have your hairline down
I also lay down where the parts in the hair are (rella specifically has kinda roundish bangs along her forehead)
ok so a lot of more anime-ish hairstyles can be broken down into different parts
rella has:
the bottom part of her hair (red, which is a little closer to her skull and comes off of it a little bc That’s Just What Ponytail Hair Does unless it’s a really tight one or something)
a braid along each side of her hair that meets around in the back (blue, it’s relatively stylized because I don’t want to draw a lot of strands All The Time)
the Rest of It (green) which is essentially just hair going from the part into the braid or into the other side of her head
she also has a ponytail
the way i stylized it basically makes her hair really ribbonlike in shape but it’s also really thin in shape and texture so it’s easier to play with in terms of shape and volume
if i were to make it thicker hair, this is how i’d do it: a lot closer to tufts as opposed to strands, though when shading, i’d follow more or less the same ribbon shape (with respect to the bumpy shape of the tufts of course)
when i’m done with all of that, i normally merge my sketches and make them transparent and i take a brush and start lining (this one i just used is this one, it’s my only downloaded brush pack and that’s just because i’ve been using it for so long tbh)
little detail things that i do:
divide the hair into mini strands as you see fit, define it!! especially on shorter, tuft-ier hair (like in rella’s bangs). generally i define it more where more shading is, because that gives me more of a baseline as a whole.
hair is like fabric but it’s on your head. and your head is round, so rumple it! make it come up OFF of the head, make it emphasize the shape of it! it’s a wonderful way to make it realistic just by making it a little ruffly
hairlines are not always super clean cut. jag em up! show where individual follicles are being pulled if u Gotta.
for the back hair: pretty much always show it going into the background. the more you indicate that there is DEPTH to the hair, the better it works.
more detail things but more actual bodies of hair:
do whatever you can to continue to indicate that the hair is 3-dimensional. make it twist around corners, make it move and spill together. have fun this is the payoff
separate it! it’s a very art nouveau look, plus it makes it look to actual hair with strands moving and doing their own thing
have hair not only break away from the bigger body, but also have it interact with obstacles. hair does that
rella has auburn hair, and i just randomly picked out some colors that seemed legit, if not a little ugly
screen layer + multiply + overlay + a background to set the mood
im making a palette out of this
ok with the base colors all flatted in, i’m finally ready to actually…color the hair
there are several ways to go about it this time around i’m blocking it large areas with (circular) gradients. it’s a trick i picked up from studying how himaruya (the artist for hetalia) does things and I think it lends itself pretty well to a silky hair texture.
i also took her skin color and used it right next to the bangs to make them look more transparent
i took the highlighter color from the palette i made and blocked in some soild shadows on a multiply layer. i’m probably going to change up the colors after a bit to make it look nicer, but for now, this will do just fine!
i did the same with the highlight and an overlay layer. it looks a little off right now, but i can always change it later.
i ended up not using the palette as much as i thought (which is ok! it happens) and i locked the layer with the shading on it so i can just go in with a light blue instead, so that it looks more unified!
and there!
this last bit is optional because black lines look fine but a style thing to consider is coloring the lines, which i did here:
and yeah that’s how i do hair
