Dreaded hair
Hair (female hair particularly) is one of the many things which I’ve never been good at drawing because I’ve never understood it. The funny thing is I only just realised how bad I was at it. And the only reason I realised was because one day I was studying the work of one of my favourite artists (by studying I mean redrawing, merely looking doesn’t sink in) and I realised how simply they manage to convey hair.
This led me to want to get a better level of understanding. I started with photos of real people via Google and it looked okay but it was too complex. I was seeing all the detail and not thinking about what was happening.
The next thing I tried was a little more effective... I watched a Youtube video called something like ‘5 ways to part you hair’. I figured if I understood where the hair was coming from in the first place maybe I would be able to make sense of it all and stop overcomplicating it. I paused the video as I went along and paused and took notes as I went and it was definitely a good starting point for me.
Then I went back to the same artist’s work to check if they had applied any of the things I had learned and to be honest, I couldn’t tell. What I did realise though was the emphasis on making it an appealing shape. After further study I began to see how much thought that artist was putting into how the hair wraps around the form of the cranium and how it falls down - all the while using solid shapes but making it look like flowing hair.
This puzzled me a lot so I kept drawing their work and I also looked at other artists and some classic disney model sheets like Hercules, Jungle Book, Aladdin and Oliver and Company.
One thing I learnt was basically that you can do whatever shapes you want as long as adds wraps around the head and falls in a believable way and it makes sense in the design rules that you are setting out. If necessary, cheat the angles like they did on Meg’s hair for Hercules a la Mickey Mouse’s ears.
I learned a lot and I just hope I can apply these things to my drawings in the future.
Here’s me fooling around with some random hair shapes:
Let me know if this was useful to anyone.












