How To Draw Hair: Male & Female - Ultimate Tutorial

Hey I'm Darlene and you're watching a rapid-fire art tutorial today, I'm gon na show you how to draw three different hairstyles on the same person, one male and one female. First, I want to thank you for the unbelievable response on my face. Drawing tutorial, you guys have showered me with tons of love and support, and you even helped me reach 1.5 million views in just 5 weeks. I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial too. So without any further ado, let's get to it I'll start with the mail and walk you through my detailed drawing process. The first step is to draw a head. This is really important because you need a solid structure to draw the hair on. You can learn how to draw the head and face by watching my last tutorial or pause this video and trace the right side of the screen ready for the next step. The next step is to draw the hairline. The hairline is what gives the forehead its distinctive shape to draw it we'll need to split the whole head in half and then roughly split the top section in half and then in half again, I'm labeling the top two lines as hair a and B for easy Reference draw your hair, starting at line a as you work, your way down slit in your strokes towards the ear and then down along the side of the face to form the sideburns. Here I'm using a technique, I call shadow lining which are outlines that you don't need to erase ever because they will blend. In perfectly, when you add the details to shadow line, use strokes that follow the general hair direction, you can use regular lines as well. Just remember to keep those ones nice and light, so you can erase them whenever you need to for a medium-sized forehead. I like to draw the top part of the hairline right about here. If you want to draw a shorter forehead, bring your hairline closer to line a and for a receding, hairline bring it up above line B. Okay, let's go back to our main drawing the next step is to add volume to give the hair a good amount of volume. Sketch a rough outline around the head make sure the distance from the hair to the skull is consistent, avoid drawing hair flat on the head unless it's super thin, and/or wet. The next step is to think about where the hair is flowing in general. Why is this important? This will give you a better sense of direction while drawing at the top the hair flows in a large arc shape to the right and left at the bottom. It simply flows downward. So this hairstyle is pretty straightforward. If you're drawing really short hair, these arrows will really come in handy pause, the video to see if you can make out the general flow for the top back and sides. The key word here is general: drawing arrows can help you better visualize the flow and understand your reference image even more. I'M gon na use this image to demonstrate the next step. Well, specifically, this area here drawing hair is much less intimidating when you break everything down into simple shapes, this can help you draw faster because you're simplifying something that looks complex, for example this clump of hair. It can be simplified into this now. Let'S apply this to our main, drawing take your attention off the details for a second, maybe take a step back from your computer and try to pick out major shapes within the image on the left. You can group this whole section as one there's also a similar shape here, and here there's really no right or wrong way to do. It so feel free to use any shape you want as long as they help you simplify the image. Let me get rid of those construction lines first, because we don't need them anymore, once you're done visualizing the group's sketch them out lightly, we're still in the planning and sketching phase. So if the flow doesn't feel right to you, you can still erase and have another go at it. The important thing is to focus on maintaining a natural flow. If you're drawing from a reference image, you don't have to copy exactly what you see try to improvise by designing your own groups of hair and making them flow in unique directions. The outline we drew earlier acts as a boundary to help keep the volume consistent. Here'S one last important step before we hop into the details. Let'S talk about light now, where is the light coming from? In this example, our main light source is coming from the top because, as you can see, the lightest areas of hair are located at the top. These areas are called highlights. Sometimes it's not enough to simply make a mental note of this. If you really want to simplify the process of drawing hair, you might want to put that down on paper how you can use the shadow lining technique to outline major highlights. So you'll always remember where they should be. I'M shadow lining this area by using strokes that follow the general hair direction. Here'S a close-up example: let's highlight this section across these two groups of hair. The hair is flowing from the bottom left to the top right. So our shadow lining strokes should follow that same direction. When it's time to add details, we won't need to erase them because they'll just blend in perfectly aside from shadow lining highlights you can also shade areas that are facing away from the light. I think this is a very useful stuff for beginners, because it's like creating a roadmap for your drawing, so you don't get lost once you move into the next step, which is getting into the finer details if you're drawing from your imagination, like, I am think of This step as a quick, low commitment way to plan out the drawing before you jump the gun and spend five hours on a drawing that still constantly needs revising if you're drawing from reference doing this step will greatly reduce the number of times you have to glance Over at your subject, once you have your road map drawn out, you can start to add the details. I'D like to start in the darkest areas working from the route up, I'm using a 0.5 HB mechanical pencil for a medium shade of hair. You can select a harder pencil for lighter hair or a softer pencil for even darker hair, for a more detailed guide on the different pencil types and uses check the description again. The light is coming from up here, so the top section of hair is casting a shadow on the section directly below it. This cast shadow is darkest near the overhang and becomes lighter near the hairline. The darker you shade an area the more depth you introduce since eyeshadow line the highlights earlier. I know exactly where to lift my pencil after each stroke. Again, I'm starting my strokes at the root of the hair and then swiping up towards the highlight to make the stroke fade out gradually always draw towards the highlight to make each stroke look more natural. Here'S a close-up example of what I mean the strands are being drawn towards the highlight where they fade out gradually to make the highlight dull, give it a light shade of gray. The more white your highlight is the shinier. It will look notice how at the sides the hair seems to clump together in many small groups, when your character has wet or gelled hair, the hair will sort of stick together, as you can tell, he has much less gel on the top of his head. Let'S move on to the left side, since this is where his hair is parted. I'Ll draw this suction extra dark to accentuate the curvature of the hair. This also gives it more volume and adds depth to the drawing. If you want to add, lighter hair like blonde or gray, use something sharp and pointy like a needle or even a screw tip, to make some strokes along a clean area of your drawing once you're finished continue drawing on top and the lighter hair will start to Appear for thicker, strokes, use a thick object like an empty pen or even a key. Let'S apply this to the main drawing, but first I need to erase a clean path before I use this group. I want a nice clean spot, so the strands are white from root to end. This technique is very useful for drawing salt-and-pepper facial, hair and animal fur. It'S a big time-saver. It doesn't work well on thin paper, though, because if you're, not careful, it can tear right through. So as an alternative, you can use a flattened, kneaded eraser to lift thin sections of graphite from the page. Here'S a close up from my Game of Thrones portrait, where I'm adding light hair on a dark background. I'M flattening my eraser and dabbing it on the graphite to lift it away. Sometimes it takes a few tries to lift the right amount, that's needed after each dab. I'Ll fold the eraser into itself and continue the process, if you accidentally remove too much graphite, use the sharpest edge of your pencil to shade around the Strand. The quality of your lines will depend on how well you pinch the eraser. So take your time you can get some pretty unique shapes by bending the erasers, so it's not just a straight line or a simple curve. Let'S go back to our main. Drawing again, sometimes, a group of hair will look boring because it's too patterned like this area here it will look a lot more interesting once you break it up, you can do that by adding some gaps to separate the hair. This will also give it more depth. Here'S what it looked like before and after before we move on to the next hairstyle. I want to talk a little bit about flow, because I think it deserves a little extra attention and another example. On this side. We want the hair to flow in a general downwards direction pointing towards the left, but it would look boring if each and every strand followed the exact same path. You can make your drawing a lot more interesting by pointing the hair in several directions, while still flowing in the same general direction. I know it can be a little bit confusing. So here's one final close-up example: here's the scenario: I want to draw a bunch of hair going in this general direction, but this looks very patterned and unnatural because in reality, hair is never really this neat. Let'S try this again. Alright. This pattern is too predictable an unpredictable pattern like this is much more natural. You can make your drawing look a lot more interesting and natural by pointing the hair in several directions, while still appearing to point in the same general direction. A simpler way to add a layer of unpredictability is to draw stray hairs using an eatable eraser bend. The eraser into a unique shape and then press it onto your drawing several times repeat this process until you achieve your desired results to finish off check if the overall lighting makes sense, as you can see, the right side is lighter than the left to fix. This simply add an extra layer of graphite. If it's too dark, you can easily bring the light back by lifting the graphite away little by little, using an eatable eraser all right. Next hairstyle, let me use the same face to draw a popular hairstyle called high-top fade. This hairstyle is long at the top and really short at the sides. Let'S give him a clean hair line with really sharp edges here, I'm sketching a line to mark where he parts his hair. Our character has curly hair now. So this is where the shadow lining technique comes in again. Instead of outlining the hair using straight lines, you can draw a row of circular shapes this way. When you draw the hair in more detail, your outlines will blend in perfectly instead of showing, through I'm switching to a thicker pencil. So I can cover more ground quickly. Just drawing the hair flowing upward in this direction, keep drawing circles and squiggly shapes until you're done to draw dark hair use a softer pencil grid such as a 4b for his final hairstyle. I'M going back to the original hair line, because that's my favorite one. This guy has medium length, hair the sides and a lot of volume at the top, as you can already tell from my outlines. Moving on to the female I'm gon na show you how to draw a long, dark hair. But first let me show you a variety of hair lines to draw the hairline split the whole head in half and then split the top in half and then in half again start on line a and work. Your way down towards the ear females tend to have softer hair lines with rounder corners, so I'm just avoiding sharp angles. This is a medium forehead. You can bring everything in a little bit to make the forehead smaller. You can also make the forehead shorter by bringing the hairline down closer to line a okay. Let'S stick with the medium forehead, I'm gon na part her hair down the center, but instead of drawing a straight line, let's make an S shape. So it's more interesting. The next step is to sketch an outline around the head. I'M gon na give her a half up hairstyle. This means the top half is tied up while the bottom half is let down. So there will be less volume at the very top and more volume, as we work our way down where the hair is loose so for hairstyles, where the parting line is really visible. I like to start there and work my way out as the hair starts. Wrapping around the back of her head near the ear it starts piling up and becoming quite thick, so this section is gon na have more volume compared to the section directly above it. For the rest, let's make some wavy shape, stretching all the way down. It'S especially wavy near the bottom, because the hair is sort of resting on her shoulders. Now, if she were to grow her hair longer, I would draw my lines much straighter, as the hair would flow down her back instead of being pushed up by the shoulders. Since her hair is parted down the middle, the left and right side should have a similar amount of hair and volume. Let'S get rid of those construction lines from the hairline. I'M gon na draw the fringe reaching down past her eyebrows to match the rest of her wavy hair I'll curve them a little to the right. I don't want them too straight, because they'll look out of place. The next step is to visualize the flow using arrows here. The hair is flowing down and wrapping around the back of the head down here, there's a steeper curve and then it wraps in at the shoulders if you're, drawing from your imagination - and you have trouble making the hair look interesting, especially in large areas like this, create Some randomness I'll add a random arrow, pointing this way to make the flow less predictable. Here'S an example of a boring pattern. Alright, I'm pretty happy with how it looks and the flow seems quite natural. So I'm sticking with this design, if you're drawing light blonde hair and don't want the outlines to show through in the finished piece, lift some graphite using your kneaded eraser until it's lighter than the shade of blond hair, you had in mind I'm drawing dark hair. So my outline should blend in just fine now, it's time to break everything down into smaller, more manageable shapes. I'M breaking this into three smaller shapes remember: to keep your initial lines very light in case they don't really match up. The left side looks too neat and boring. So on this side, I'm creating a staircase shape, so it looks like each section of hair is piled on top of the other. Do you see the difference? Let'S cover part of the ear and create a thick section of hair wisping down to the right and then left for all the other sections. I'M just gon na go crazy and point them in a bunch of different directions. So it looks more realistic and random. Our hair is flowing in the general down direction, but each path is unique, sometimes you're going to want to do some overlapping. The most important thing when you overlap hair is maintaining continuity. Let'S say we want three locks of hair behind this one draw your shapes crossing right through each other to make sure each lock flows smoothly and then erase the lines you don't need after you're done. Okay back to our main, drawing if you're happy with the design and flow move on to lighting. Just like the other examples, the main light source will come from the top except this time. There'S a twist on the right we'll have an intense bright light, while the left, who will be dim, I want to show you how to draw shiny versus matte hair. All we're gon na do is change the size and value of our highlights under intense light. Our highlights should be larger, so the hair appears brighter under dim light. The highlight will be smaller, less prominent because there's less light reaching the surface of the hair I'll talk about the value part later, let's go ahead and shade any major areas facing away from the light all right. Now that we've created a lighting map, we can finally add details for detailing. I like to use a mechanical pencil. An HB LED will produce clean lines because the material is hard. However, a lot of pressure is required to shade dark values if you're drawing dark hair. Like me, choose a softer pencil such as a 4b remember to draw towards the high light instead of away from it. So you get a nice radiated value from dark to light for a matte surface, one that is not shiny, shade, a light layer of graphite over your highlight to cover the color of the paper. So not only is the highlight small, it's also a light gray. Instead of white, I think the biggest difficulty when it comes to drawing long hair is achieving long, smooth, continuous strokes. The trick is to move your elbow and shoulder instead of your wrist. The wrist provides very limited movement, which is fine for drawing short hair here. I'M reducing movement in the wrist and using my elbow and shoulder to achieve a larger movement. If you haven't tried this before it does take a little getting used to. But it's very helpful. A good way to practice is to fill a few pages in your sketchbook, with a bunch of straight and curvy lines going in various directions. If you make a mistake, pinch your kneaded erasers, with thin tip and erase in the same direction you are drawing. If you erase in random directions, it can make the area look patchy for a shiny surface. Try to make the highlight as clean as possible. You can easily control the light intensity of a scene by manipulating the highlight size and value or color. The brighter your highlight is the brighter the environment will be. If you want a little variety in your stroke, thickness use a regular pencil, the more you wear it down the thicker. Your lines will be. This will also help you draw faster because the lead is thicker and can cover more ground in a shorter period of time. If you only have one pencil, you can control the line weight by wearing the lead down while holding it on an angle, rotate the lead, as you draw to get thick medium and thin lines. I do this all the time when I need to draw super thin strands of hair or when I need to draw on tight spaces. If your shot edge becomes dull again, keep scribbling to sharpen the lead areas closest to our main light source will be brighter than areas here which are far down and far back the further back. The hairs are, the less light will be able to reach them. So the highlights should become darker and darker. If you want to add depth to your drawing. This is a great way to do it. The lighter locks of hair are pulled into the foreground and the darker locks are pushed into the background. Here'S a really clear example of where that's used, this image looks very flat once gaps or dark spaces are introduced, the drawing immediately conveys a layer of depth to the viewer. Now this drawing looks really weird having two different levels of light intensity. So let me add more strokes on the right side until the lighting matches the left. Now that my drawing is consistent, it's pretty much complete, I'm going to show you how to draw two additional hairstyles, really quickly we're working with the same girl. Here, let's cut her hair a little bit shorter and part it on the left side, just making a squiggly line to mark where her new parting line is from here. I'M gon na draw the left side of the hair just using some loose sketching lines and then draw the right side. Since her hair is parted on the left. There should be more hair on this side than, on the other, see how the hair is closer to the head on the left compared to the right from the parting line. Again, let's draw her fringe going around the eye and then curving up a little near the ear. The reason why the hair curves up at the ear, instead of going straight down, is because she regularly has her hair, tucked behind her ear, which causes the hair to dent the rest of the fringe wraps around the side of the head on the left. Let'S tuck some of that hair behind her ear. There are so many strands at the bottom that it forms a thick clump. Here are some arrows, so you can visualize the hair flow and here's what the hairstyle looks like when all the details are added. Okay, last one, a lot of time has passed and it seems like she's grown out her hair quite a bit. The parting line is still in the same spot, although I did forget to draw it, there's a lot more volume than the previous hairstyle, because the form is a lot wavier, and because of that, the outline will be much further away from the head. Remember to keep those lines loose and light, so you can easily redesign something sorry. This is where my camera cut out. So I lost the footage in between. Basically, since the hair is longer and heavier than the last hairstyle, the fringe weighs down and covers part of the eye, even though the parting line remains the same all right, let me flip through each hairstyle, so you can see the differences. Here'S a recap of the whole process draw a head sketch the hairline give the hairstyle volume visualize the flow break, everything down into small groups or simple shapes, understand the lighting and then map it out by shadow lining major highlights or shading major shadows. Then add your details by drawing strokes that go towards the highlight and don't forget to use your elbow and shoulder for long, continuous, strokes, make sure your lighting is consistent and have fun remember these are just general steps to help guide you through the drawing process. You don't have to use all of them in one drawing here's. My challenge to you, pull out your sketch book and try to fill it with as many hairstyles as you can like. I am right now. Don'T focus on how accurate or how perfect each one needs to be. It can be as rough as you want. The most important thing is just to start. That is actually the most difficult step. If you just want to focus on drawing hair and don't even want to bother with drawing heads and faces click the link down below to find a printable file of the template, I'm using right now, if you need inspiration, flip through a magazine or do a quick Google search for trending hair styles - I hope you have a ton of fun and if you fill out an entire page, send me your artwork and I'll feature it on rapid-fire art comm. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one you