3 Steps To Draw Almost Any Type Of Hair

Hello Today I want to talk about drawing and coloring the hair of anime characters.. You asked me quite a few times to cover this topic, but with all the different hairstyles there are in anime and manga it‘s quite hard to structure a tutorial like this.. So while I will have to focus on a few specific hairstyles for the tutorial to stay accessible, I will also try to give advice that should be applicable to a vast range of different hairstyles., Except for bald characters. Maybe they will have to wait for another video ) Constructing When it comes to constructing the hair of your character. It'S helpful to decide on a fixed point that the hair grows from., And by that I mean that little spot on the character's head, where the roots are visible.. It gives us a bit of an overview of what's going on in our characters' heads., Where exactly this point lies differs with every hairstyle.. A fun little exercise is to just watch out for these spots. The next time you read a manga or watch an anime, because a lot of hairstyles are constructed like this., Even when the point is not fully realised with the final drawing. You can still tell if someone paid attention to it., Because in the end, the growing point doesn‘t even need to be explicitly visible to give the haircut structure.. If we have a look at these two silhouettes, what is the difference? The one on the left looks quite natural and balanced, while the shape of the other one is a bit… chaotic.. The reason for that is that the first silhouette was constructed consistently. Our eyes can follow the hair’s direction and fill in the blanks, even when just looking at the outline, because it kind of makes sense. With the other one. The strands of hair are all over the place and therefore they appear weird and not really realistic, maybe more like a cardboard cut out.. That is not to say that there is no place for more loose interpretations if you are going for a more expressive design for example. Let’s. Look at Tetsuya Nomura's design for Sora, one of my all time, favourite characters.. If you asked me to point to where the hair is growing out from, I wouldn’t really be able to pinpoint an exact location... The drawing still works really well with that approach and makes the silhouette recognizable immediately. But it’s hard to imagine how it works. When hypothetically let’s say, you would have to style a wig for cosplay for example… For the 3D model of Sora in the game, though, some modifications were made to make the haircut work from all angles., Which is probably the biggest advantage of structuring your haircut with a Growing point., You can imagine the character from different angles way more easily when it's clear how the hair is constructed. And that again also helps. If you ever want to recreate the character in 3D.. So Let’s give it a try and start with a casual hairstyle with bangs.. We can place the growing point somewhere in the rear part of the head.. Now imagine the hair flowing out of it. Just like a fountain. With drawing a few lines, we can begin to illustrate the roots and direction.. For that I like to use these scythe-like shapes.. You can vary them according to your needs by shifting their size and shape, which makes them pretty handy a lot of times when you draw hair., So I can recommend memorizing a basic form of them. Sprinkle them around the growing point and connect them with a few. More lines., Once that is done, we can extend our lines by following the flow to draw the bangs.. I use swift swung lines and I try to randomly shift the thickness of the strands of hair and what directions the tips are pointing at to make the hair look a bit more fluffy.. Some are bent left. Some are bent to the right as long as they have the same point of origin. We won’t have a lot of trouble to make it look consistent and yet natural. For a parting hairstyle. The growing point we talked about becomes a growing line.. We can either place it on the sides or the middle of the head., Similar to the simple point from before this line is a guide to determine where the hair is emerging from. Instead of a fountain, think more of a wave now.. This time we have to draw these scythe-like shapes in a slightly different angle. As this parting hairstyle has the roots visible across the head.. One important thing is that this growing line typically extends all the way to the forehead., So that’s where you’ll also need to draw some roots emerging from the end of it.. For that, I roughly estimate the height of the forehead on the sketch.. Then, with a few lines I can draw the hairline and from there create a transition to the rest. After that it’s. In essence, just like before I switch between thick and thinner strands of hair and give their bend some variety., The growing point is even helpful to work with when it comes to shorter haircuts.. But this time it is not on top of the head, but inside the head.. Let'S imagine a sea urchin to represent the haircut.. Now, if we were to connect its spikes, we would end up somewhere in the middle., And this is the kind of focal spot that we can use for our short hair cut.. So we draw a little dot around the center of the head. From there. We can draw straight lines, figuratively piercing through the skull forming the direction that the hair takes.. It needs a bit of spatial thinking, but once we are done, we can cut these lines at the length we need with our sketch and create the shape of the hair, like a gardener would trim a bush. Now that we have the rough sketch done, we can Continue focusing on the shape. Instead of dealing with every single strand, I think of them as different layers and shapes.. By layers I mean the way you can divide the hair into smaller sections consisting of multiple strands. And by shape I mean the outline that these layers build and how it affects the shape of the head. Overall., A layer of hair can come in all sorts of shapes.. I use my sketch as a guide, but, as you can see the way I divide the hair with the different colors is a bit random.. Depending on how detailed you want the hair to look like, you can divide the hair in rougher shapes by combining thicker strands of hair, or you can go for thinner strands of hair, occasionally even single ones. Doing a sketch with that approach, it’s easier to understand how The haircut works. Dividing the hair into smaller parts helps you to keep track of the flow and balance of details, and it also helps you with figuring out what kind of layers overlap each other.. That comes in handy, for example, when you want to quickly add another layer of hair, and also it makes it easier to figure out what part of the haircut you need to fix whenever something looks off.. If the overall silhouette of the haircut looks correct, for example, but there still seems to be an imbalance, we don't need to start all over again, but just change these certain layers of hair that look strange. Let’s have a look at the other example.. This time. I have my line of growth to start with.. From that I highlight the shape following the lines of the sketch roughly connecting chunks of hair.. Then figuratively I go one hair layer below and again I determine the shape with my reference point in mind. When drawing these bundles of hair, I usually like to use a combination of both thicker and thinner strands of hair to make it look natural. But, of course you can do it, however, detailed or rough you want.. When we come to the hair behind the ears, we just draw a few strands down from the ears.. It might seem trivial, but this way the hair still follows our initial growing point. That hair doesn’t grow out of the neck after all.. When we are done covering the head in sections of hair, we can check whether everything turned out consistent and balanced.. If you haven’t developed a feeling for that, yet you can mirror the drawing to see it with a fresh view.. Usually then, you’ll see right away if something looks off with the shapes. In case of irregularities like when some layers look too small or too big, or they don’t really follow the flow you are aiming for. We can select these areas with the lasso tool and adjust them with the transform function warping and stretching those little parts to your liking.. If that isn't enough to achieve a satisfying result, we can still erase parts and draw them again., But with the focus on layers, we don't have to draw everything all over again.. This might be a lot of effort to put in your sketch and no one expects you to use these methods every time you want to draw. It's more of a concept, a way to think so. You can structure your drawing.. After all, the sketch is the basis you work from so the better. The sketch is the less adjustments you will have to make later when doing the lineart. And as always the more experience you have, the quicker and easier it will get to see and divide. These shapes intuitively and overtime. It will be something you don't even actively think about anymore. Step2 Coloring In my “Drawing vs Painting” video. I explained the spectrum of working more rough or more detailed when it comes to coloring.. This also applies to coloring, hair, of course, and when you have a proper sketch or lineart, you can take it to endless different directions.. You can make your work. Look more cartoonish in style using only a few plain, colors or paint more naturalistically, where you can see every single hair. For this video. I want to go for a style that is kind of detailed, but works for manga drawings. But if you are interested in that different coloring technique, you can find the video linked below.. Now the thing is with coloring hair. I often found myself unsure where to even start, as it can become a bit overwhelming with all these lines and details.. But I noticed that something that is recurring with most of these hairstyles and that was the shape of a single strand of hair. May it be with shifts in shape and size. This fellow appears in a wide range of manga hairstyles.. So If we know how to color this one, we can get closer to color the full hair. Great. Now we have something that we can replicate on multiple hairstyles. How do we color it As weird as it sounds? I will try to explain my approach with the help of…..letters. Now hear me out. I usually shade my hair as everything else pretty randomly.. Adding highlights and shades wherever I feel like has become a bit of a habit for me., But when I thought about how I could explain that process other than to just say `` do what you like''. I started looking for patterns in some of my older artworks. And look at that letters are a pattern.. I will use the single strand of hair here as an example.. First, I create a base using the magic wand tool and fill it with a flat color.. Then I paint a little gradient with the airbrush using a darker and a lighter tone.. Now that base color and shading are set, I will start shading it with a darker color, drawing a „C“. Using that as a guide, I can figure out how I can add light and shadows by painting along that line.. I use a round painting brush which is linked below and the G-pen for hard edges and details.. With the color picker shortcut, I switch between the tones and use the Letter as an orientation.. I want to work with a variety of different edges, so I keep some parts around the “C” shape, sharp and others I blend, together with the rest, to create more and smaller gradients.. This adds detail and makes the hair look more interesting without the need to paint singular hairs.. Overall, there is no rule on what part of this strand gets, which treatment. I play around constantly overpainting and editing the painting throughout the process and look what effect it has.. I just want to make sure to have a balanced combination of smaller and bigger areas of light and shadow.. Occasionally, I also use the Smudging tool.. This tool is exceptionally great for adjusting any irregularities in regards to the direction of the flow.. Also, it softens out any blotches, so if you prefer a hard edged, shading style don‘t go overboard with it.. This also works with the „S'' shape. Same setup as before, -just the base colors- and now I‘ll draw an „S“ on my strand of hair.. Then again, I start shading using that line as orientation. Along the line. I exaggerate the curves with some darker shadow tones and I make use of contrast by putting the lightest tone right next to those lines., Just like with the “C” shape. I work with a variety of edges combining soft and hard edges, and I drag one end of the `` S'' shape all the way down to the pointy tip of the strand.. Now let’s try it with an „N“.. I draw a slightly deformed ”N” across this strand of hair. And by now you probably know where this is going. Along the line. I start using the shades in varying intensity.. I add more detail with some additional lines and gradients that follow the flow and bring them together with the smudge tool. You could probably go through the whole alphabet to look for inspiration for these kinds of shadings.. I made some more versions for „G“ „A'' and „Y“ ( lol ). There are probably endless more ways to color these strands of hair. And obviously you don’t have to add perfect typography to your hair now., But I needed something to explain the randomness. That is my shading and letters happen to be the first thing that came to my mind when I was looking for a pattern in those structures.. I think, though, that they are a fun way to get things started when coloring hair, and maybe you can even hide messages right on your character's head ). Now that we have learned how we can color strands in a variety of different ways, let‘s puzzle them together. And.. - I mean you - could literally just go and arrange these single strands together to a bunch and call it a day.. But that's not what I am talking. About., Rather, we will use this method on the actual drawing., Just as before, I need a locked base layer filled with the shape of the hair.. So first I create a selection with the magic wand.. I select the surroundings of the drawing and invert. The selection. Then get rid of everything that is not the hair.. You can use the lasso tool for this step or create the selection. However, you like., Then, with the airbrush. I add a big highlight across the middle of the head and a shadow tone on the upper and lower parts to roughly create the basic light situation. So far so good.. Now I am going to sketch my letters on the strands of hair.. The challenging part is to combine each strand to make everything look consistent. And an important aspect to achieve that is to keep the rough light situation in mind that we created with the gradient.. So, with the highlights, I try to roughly follow without covering it too much with the shadow tones.. I also exaggerate the shapes of the letters, just as I did when I did the single strand., So the curves get a bit of shadows and they get smudged in certain areas while they stay sharp in others. To have the strands of hair more included. I add extra lines and I extend or reduce the shapes, so they can flow into each other seamlessly. Not every strand of hair is in need of one of these letters, as we also want to have a balance of details.. So, with some strands, basic shading is enough.. For this I use the line art as a guide, either following the lines with some darker tones, or, I add, shadows underneath some strands of hair to make the overlapping more prominent.. Another advice I can give you is You: don’t have to stick 100 % to the lineart when you feel it limits you.. If you decide throughout the process of coloring that a certain strand of hair looks better if it was more bent or you want to add extra hair to have, it overlap, go for it.. Lastly, we can edit the color of the hair.. So far I painted the hair black, but If I want to change the color, I can do that pretty easily using gradient maps.. A Gradient map replaces each shade with the colors of the selected gradient, which is a great way to add a range of colors to the hair.. So I add the adjustment layer and with levels and tone curves, underneath I can change the values of the hair.. You will have to play around with it a bit because the values decide what colors get replaced by the gradient map.. Then some final tweaks with Hue and saturation, and I changed the hair from black to blonde. Transfer. This is basically how I paint hair. Before we come to an end, though I want to show how you can transfer this technique on other hairstyles., Because with some adjustments, the same method works also for longer hair. Across the long strands of hair. I sketch a few letters just as before. Following the lineart. These letters get a bit more stretched out to fit on those long strands of hair, but their function stays the same.. I use them to figure out how I want to divide the light and shadows and, just as before, I use a combination of smaller and bigger, highlights and a variety of edges to bring everything together. And it works on even more examples like curly, hair or a Braid. From constructing the shape by dividing the hair into layers to then spreading the letters around and using these as orientation for your shading, the same steps can be used just slightly adjusted to fit the lineart. To come back to something I said in the beginning, with The vast range of different hairstyles there are it’s near to impossible for me to cover every single one.. My goal was to give you something that enables you to transfer the methods I talked about to your own individual artwork.. So I hope that, even if I used only a few examples that in essence, you can make use of this tutorial., Even if you don’t have a use for the specific techniques I talked about, maybe the insight in my methods were at least interesting to listen to And gave you a new perspective.. As I said, there are endless ways to shade hair and I encourage you to go for whatever suits you best. Anyway, that’s it., If you liked my art and want to see more of it I’m also on Instagram and Twitter, the username is always Laovaan, but you Can find links in the description. There I post far more often as these kinds of videos take a lot more time to make.. If you have any tips, you would like to add, or even want me to address in a future video feel free to share them. In the comments. Likes are always appreciated as well.. Thank you so much for watching and until next time.