How to Draw Hair

Hair gives character and definition to someone's face and defines your drawing. Follow these quick and easy tips to draw better hair.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Paper
• magazines
• colored pencils

Instructions

1. Before you begin, look at different hairstyles and think of what best suits what you have in mind.

2. Draw the head, neck , eyes , nose, eyebrows, mouth and ears. Make sure that the skull is given the right proportions and the ears are not too large in relevance to the face.

3. Draw the outline of the hair without adding specific details. Define the bottom part and where it frames the face as well as the space where the ears are showing.

4. Draw in the details of the hair strands. When drawing short hair, make sure the skull is well defined first. Begin by drawing in the darkest areas, with pencil strokes going against the hair growth, carefully leaving white where there are lighter hairs.Curly hair and braids require finer details.

5. In short strokes, build the hair length bearing in mind how the light strikes the skull. Shade in lighter in those areas. To create a more even tone, use a 4b pencil to reduce the contrast between lights and darks. Short marks are needed when hair is shorter or darker hairs cross over.

Tips & Warnings

• Let the hair be free-flowing

• Think of the hair as a frame for the face

• Highlights can be made with an eraser or exacto knife

• Don't create uniform shapes

• Avoid bigger shapes that overwhelm the drawing