When someone starts drawing, even if they are somewhat advanced in portraiture, drawing hair can be quite challenging. Within the types of hair, we have: straight, curly, wavy, afro, black, blonde, brown, red, and gray hair.
There is no magical or miraculous formula to draw every type of hair. However, there are certain common parameters that will help us better understand how hair works and how we can draw it. Based on these common points, here are:
5 General Keys for Drawing Hair
1. Structure Before Texture
Always begin by creating a preliminary structure of movement and value before adding texture to the hair. A good structure is like the foundation of a house. Just as we need walls to hang curtains, we need a well-constructed base of shape and volume before adding textures and details.
If you start drawing hair by creating the texture of each strand directly, without first establishing a structural base, the result may look unstable and imprecise. However, if we start the hair by creating a structure that sets the form, movement, and volume, when we add the detail and texture, the hair will appear much more solid and convincing.
2. Do Not Draw Hair Strand by Strand
If you don’t want your hair to look like spaghetti, avoid drawing hair strand by strand. When adding texture, that is, the lines we identify as hair, we might fall into the mistake of trying to draw each individual strand in its full length. This makes it difficult to show how light interacts with the hair.
Because of the movement of the hair, light does not reflect evenly along the length of a single strand. When this hair curves, the light will hit the highest parts of the curve more intensely, causing highlights that gradually fade into deep shadows. All of this happens on the same strand, and that’s why trying to draw a line with a pencil to represent the light changes is impossible. This is why our hair will appear flat and unconvincing.
3. Identify Highlights as a Whole
Just as we may want to draw each hair individually, we often make the mistake of seeing highlights as isolated luminous strands that are disconnected from the entire structure and form. This results in highlights being perceived as gray hair, especially if we draw the highlights as isolated, long lines.
It is recommended to analyze the structure of highlights as a whole before drawing hair, as the white of the paper must be respected in those areas. Understanding volume through the use of three main values—light, mid-tone, and shadow—helps greatly, and then we can add intermediate steps. If you miss some highlights, don’t worry because you can use the eraser to recover them.
4. Learn to Modulate Your Stroke
One of the lessons that will make you a better artist is becoming aware of using your own body as a tool. By moving our limbs, we can make the most of our strokes. Imagine our body as a large compass, with each of our limbs as an anchor point. When we create strokes using only our fingers, they are short and very curved. When we use our wrist, the curves we create become wider, and we increase the size of the lines.
However, if we need to cover larger areas of the paper, we may have to use the movement of the elbow, which softens the curve. Finally, to create long, straight lines, we use our shoulder, and even our legs and torso for greater movement.
5. Avoid Automatism and Patterns in Drawing Hair
Avoid creating automatism and patterns. This leads to repetitive hair scenes, making it seem like the artist became tired of observing the uniqueness of each strand and simply started copying the structure they had already established.