What is fun about drawing? Fun comes when you successfully beat the challenges with your pencil or charcoal, commanded by your knowledge and patience. Skill comes from practice, and practice requires patience. Draw more – find more (good and bad) – and learn more – Henry Yan
I have a strong romantic fantasy about things – and that's what I paint and draw, but come to it through realism. If you don't back up your dreams with truth, you have a very round – shouldered art. - Andrew Wyeth
Video clip - The making of Frozen: Designing Elsa's Hair
Video clip - The making of Frozen: Designing Elsa's Hair
This post is intended to deal more with types of hair rather than styles of hair. once the principles of drawing hair and the knowledge of how hair works is understood, then after that comes practice and you should be able to take those principles and creatively apply them to any hair style you can imagine.
The biggest trap that beginners fall into when drawing hair is that they want to draw a forest but can't see it for the trees. meaning, that we get caught up in the individual hairs of the matter.
A painter wanting to capture a forest on canvas will not meticulously draw every tree in the forest, but will subtly and through great understanding capture the very essence of the forest through its volume, sense of vastness in space, great mystery and shadowy light struck depths. this is the same as drawing hair. The best way to convey the sense of hair and all it's subtle intricacies to the audience is best served, not by drawing every individual strand, but by indicating its attributes through design principles. Draw a forest, not a tree.
1) BEGINNINGS - HAIR LINE
2) VOLUME
3) CLUMPING
4) SURFACE DIRECTION
5) ENDS
REFERENCE -
Start looking at hair - I will refer to this reference throughout the post - also, this is just a very small sample of some of the cool stuff out there - be creating a reference library.
1) BEGINNINGS - HAIR LINE
this is a great place to start. Start off thinking about hair like Drapery (refer to the Post on Folds). The top of the head is like an anchor point from which the hair falls. As always, the key here is gravity
build the hair around crown of head. be thinking about volume, thickness and how gravity is influencing it.
2) VOLUME
Volume is just a fancy word for shape. thinking about the kind of shapes you use when describing that volume will depend on the subject's hair. Is it going to be a full, flowing mane, greasy, stringy, balding, silky, wiry?
these will all have their own types of shapes. This is where collecting a reference library can be very useful and inspiring.
for example, frizzy, fluffy or fro-like hair is going to feel very dense and will be built out of very blunt full shapes.
Silky hair is best conveyed in a "ribbon" shape
Curly hair is best built out of large round shapes which taper off in squiggles or curly Q's.
Greasy or string hair will be built out of stiffer, spikier, straighter, smaller shapes.
Giving volume to your character's hair will make their hair a distinctive part of their shape and design. it is consistently keeping the integrity of these shapes that will help your character retain their appearance even from different angles.
Giving volume to your character's hair will make their hair a distinctive part of their shape and design. it is consistently keeping the integrity of these shapes that will help your character retain their appearance even from different angles.
3) CLUMPING
clumping is the organizing of the above shapes into BIG MEDIUM & SMALL masses.
It is making sense of what may otherwise be chaotic and confusing
an “unwieldy non-shape”
When clumping hair, remember that hair naturally clumps - look at some reference. it even clumps under water. Non-clumping hair looks wet or greasy. It is important when clumping however, to be sure to vary the clump sizes. Too much clumping and the hair will feel to solid. not enough clumping and it will feel stringy, wet or greasy. big shapes combined with the small inevitable loose escapee shapes will make your hair feel natural.
4)SURFACE DIRECTION
Remember surface direction as you draw is what will define and give form to your shapes. (think of contour lines on a map)
Treat the hair like a living thing. it starts and the top and flows from there. any marks on it should strengthen this sense of flow and the forces acting upon it (such as gravity or anchor points.) remember the hair is not flat, but has volume to it. just as striped stockings follow the form of a leg, the hair lines should follow the form of the shapes. this is one of the things that really convey the texture and shape of your hair.
Avoid anything uniform when it comes to hair. Hair is anything if NOT mechanical. It is very organic (especially if there is any length to it), so avoid any paralleling, straight or uniform lines. Again, keep in mind the surface direction and let the lines follow the volume of the shapes.
Depending on the type, hair often twists around on itself. use your lines to show this twisting effect and how it undulates or twists in space.
Like drapery, line can also show where it falls naturally or is pulled tight. how it wraps, braids, rings or drapes.
Remember surface direction as you draw is what will define and give form to your shapes. (think of contour lines on a map)
Treat the hair like a living thing. it starts and the top and flows from there. any marks on it should strengthen this sense of flow and the forces acting upon it (such as gravity or anchor points.) remember the hair is not flat, but has volume to it. just as striped stockings follow the form of a leg, the hair lines should follow the form of the shapes. this is one of the things that really convey the texture and shape of your hair.
Avoid anything uniform when it comes to hair. Hair is anything if NOT mechanical. It is very organic (especially if there is any length to it), so avoid any paralleling, straight or uniform lines. Again, keep in mind the surface direction and let the lines follow the volume of the shapes.
Depending on the type, hair often twists around on itself. use your lines to show this twisting effect and how it undulates or twists in space.
Like drapery, line can also show where it falls naturally or is pulled tight. how it wraps, braids, rings or drapes.
5) ENDS
not gonna lie, this is where hair gets fun. Look at your research photos again. Volume/shape is the #1 thing that defines hair. but 2nd is how you treat the hair ends. this is where you get the heavy bluntness of dreadlocks. the wispy tendrils of urchin hair, the unruly curls of Merida or spiky tufts of a drill sergeant.
not gonna lie, this is where hair gets fun. Look at your research photos again. Volume/shape is the #1 thing that defines hair. but 2nd is how you treat the hair ends. this is where you get the heavy bluntness of dreadlocks. the wispy tendrils of urchin hair, the unruly curls of Merida or spiky tufts of a drill sergeant.
