How To Draw A Plait / Braid: Hair Drawing Tutorial | Step By Step

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my channel, I'm Kirsty and in today's video I'm going to be doing another hair tutorial. But this time I'm going to be focusing on drawing plants and I'm going to be showing you a demonstration of how I just drew that hairstyle. But first I'm going to be talking a bit about the structure of a plant and how it works. So a plant is made up of three strands of hair and they're all interlaced into each other. And so I'm starting off by showing you a simple method for how to draw the outline of a plat. So if you're trying to make your work look realistic, then I always recommend using a reference photo, even if it is to just look at the structure of the plat, because it's very hard to draw things realistically, if you're just trying to do it from imagination and Most of the time is not going to look very realistic if you're, just drawing from imagination, there's no shame in using a reference photo is actually really really good. It will make your work a lot better in a nut shot time period than if you're just trying to draw everything from memory. So, as you can see when I'm drawing this plots, I'm doing the individual little shapes at a time and they're all very similar shapes. But they're just going in the different directions and it's a very repetitive pattern that you'll draw in with plots so make sure that you look at your reference photo and identify that pattern, and once you've done a few, it becomes very easy to notice where you've got To do the next segment of the plant so when it comes to doing the outline sketch of the plot, I do recommend using a very light pencil so that if you get it wrong, then you can easily erase it without damaging the paper. So make sure you do it really really lightly and also make sure that you're, looking at your reference, photo and really study how the plat works and how those free strands interlace into each other. It'S really useful to identify the free strands and follow them all the way through the whole plat. Okay. So now I'm going to talk you guys through how I drew the French braid and the plat as well. So I'm starting off with charcoal pencils and I'm using the generals brand charcoal pencils and the pencils that I'm using is the extra hard one. I am using the HB as well and also a four being, and the 4b is the softest grade of all the charcoal, which means that it blends really easily. And it creates a bit more powder, which means that when I'm blending I'm going to be using a brush, and so it's a lot easier to blend the softer pencils. So the hair I'm going to be drawn today is going to be done using charcoal. But I've also doing a video recently, which is my do's and don'ts, for drawing hair and in that video, I'm using graphite your hair. So if you're using graphite - and if you also want to know more tips to draw hair, then make sure you check out that video and I will link a card above so you can just click on that and go straight to it. So I'm starting off by using the HB pencil and I'm using this to block in the direction of the clumps of hair. As you can see, I'm not drawing in every individual strand of hair, I'm just blocking in the direction of all the main clumps of hair, and it's really important that you do this to identify the flow of the hair and also the individual clumps that you're going To need to render later on, and also you can see that when I'm doing my stroke, I'm doing them in lines and now not all uniform they're, just following the direction that the hair is going in. It'S really important to do your strokes with the direction of the hair, rather than all in one direction. Otherwise, it would look really odd and it won't look realistic so once I've done that I'm going to go in with this fluffy brush and it doesn't really matter what brush you used to blend. I just use one that I had hand and was quite soft and I'm using this to blend out the charcoal and, as you can see again when I'm using that brush, I am using it on the individual clumps and I'm just going in the direction that those Clumps are going in I'm not trying to blend the whole thing all in one go and go over the whole patch. I want to do it in individual sections so that I can really get a looking soft and I also get the direction correct as well. So I'm just gon na continue to do that and I'm taking my time, I'm not rushing it and I'm just making sure that it looks really soft and then I'm gon na build up some more layers over the top and also when you do blend with this Fluffy brush it softens everything out a bit, so those lines aren't as harsh, but you can still see the general direction. So you still know where the individual clumps are and then you can go and build on them. So now I'm going in with that extra-hard pencil and because it's extra hard, it means that you can get a finer point on it and do even more detail work. So I'm using that to now render some of the clumps a bit more and I'm just using it to add in some more shadow and I'm integrating those shadows and those harsh lines. I did earlier into the highlights as well and, as you can see, the whole of the top half of the hair now has a tone to it. So there isn't any bits of the hairstyle that are just completely white and I'll have and haven't got any charcoal. But that means that we've still got to lift up some highlights later on, because this will help it pop a bit more. So I'm just now going to go through all of the hair and add in these shadows and again I'm just looking at the reference photo and I'm looking where the shadows are. It will be very different with different types of reference photos, so just make sure you're identifying the shadows and the highlights and do the shadows with this pencil and leave the highlights without any charcoal on so it's easier to erase those parts later. Okay, so again, once I've done that I'm going back in with that fluffy brush and I'm just using that to again blend everything out and stuffing it up a bit more and now I'm going to go in with the four beasts soft charcoal pencil - and this is Really dark so the softer the pencils are, the darker they are so this is where I'm adding the really intense shadows and also because it's a softer charcoal pencil. It releases more of that powder so that you can blend it a bit more as well, which also helps to soften things out a bit more. So, as you can see with plants, the main shadows tend to be very much in the center line of the plants. If you look at all of the individual segments, you'll see that it tends to be that the shadows are on the inner and outside corners of each of the segments and then, as you go towards the middle, it's more of a highlighted region. And this is true for all of the segments. Really, it will tend to have a shadow either side of the segment and then, as you go towards the middle, it will be more highlighted. But you need to make sure that you don't just have harsh shadows and highlighted areas. It needs to integrate very smoothly into each other. So now I'm going in and adding those highlights and, as I just said, the highlights tend to be in the center of each of the segments and I'm just adding these highlights with the eraser and I'm using a cheap eraser. Just to show that you don't need really expensive materials to do a good job, so I'm just using that eraser and I chopped a bit off the side with the craft knife to get more of a sharp point. So it's easier to get detailed work and now I'm just using that to pull out some highlights and I'm looking at the reference photo for where the highlights are, and it tends to be quite a lot in the center of each of those segments. But there also tends to be some other highlighted areas, for example when the scale had highlights in our hair and now so you don't want all of those highlights to be as harsh as they are. So I'm using this fluffy brush just to soften some out because I'll add a bit more powder to highlighted areas which will tone them down a bit. But then you do want some extremely highlighted areas to add a bit of contrast. So I'll go back in with the eraser to pull up some more additional highlights, and this helps to give a good variety into your highlights and shadows, and it also means that you get a lot of depth into your hairstyle as well. So now you can use your normal eraser or your kneaded eraser to help pull up some additional highlights so now moving on to the bottom half of the hair - and this is mainly the Platinum drawing now - and so I'm drawing each segment in a time and I'm Using the HB pencil again to block in the shadows and as you can see most the shadows are on either side of that segment and I'm also leaving a highlighted area towards the middle and also where the segments interlock with each other. There tends to be a bit more shadow as well, especially down the center line of the plat, and so I'm just blocking all that in and then I'm going in with the fluffy brush and I'm just blending all the charcoal out. And then I'm going back in with that extra-hard general charcoal pencil and I'm just going to use that to add in more detail before I blend that out again. One thing that I really like about using charcoal is the fact that you don't get any shine, which is really nice, especially when you're doing realism, because sometimes the shine can deflect from the realistic look and also especially when you have really dark areas. The darker the graphite pencil, you use the more shine you get, so that's why I really love using charcoal and also it allows you to get even darker values, which i think is really nice for getting a really high contrast. I also like the way it blends with this brush and it also just seems a lot easier to get a smoother coverage, and so now, I'm just going back in with the eraser to add in even more highlights. Okay, so one thing that's gon na make your hairstyle and your plat look really realistic is, if you add some flyaway hairs and that's what I'm gon na do now, but instead of using a charcoal pencil which is quite dark, I'm using a graphite pencil and I'm Using the grade beef for this - and I'm just using this to add in some light, flyaway hairs because the individual hairs will be lighter and you don't want them to be really really dark. You just want some subtle, flyaway hairs, so I'm just creating them to break up the individual clumps of hair and just to make it look a bit more realistic. Another thing you can do is take your eraser again and use that to add some flyaway hairs over the top of the hair. So then, I'm just going around the plant and I'm adding some flyaway hairs as well, and that's basically it for this tutorial. I hope you guys enjoyed it and learned some new tips and techniques if you're new to my channel and you enjoyed this tutorial, make sure you subscribe, so you don't miss out on future tutorial videos. Thank you guys so much for watching and remember. If you enjoyed doing this hair - and you want to see how I do it with graphite - make sure you head over to my do's and don'ts video for drawing hair, where I'll show you how to do this, but with graphite. Thank you guys. So much for watching - and I will see you in my next video bye - you