Hair

Hair can be a lot of fun to do, as long as you understand how to draw it. In this lesson I'll give you a basic understanding of how hair works. But I also suggest that you take the time to observe how hair looks on real people, photographs and other artists work. The more you observe, the better you'll understand.

I found the best way to think of hair is to think of it as a ribbon. It can ba very light and flowy as strans or small pieces... or it can be fairly heavy (well as heavy as hair can be ^_^;; ) when grouped together. And like a ribbon it bends and moves. It's also common to think of hair as a sold shape...but I personally don't like that idea. I've found that it gives you a "plastic hair" look. And finally, like most things, hair has a variety of highlights and shadows.

The first thing you need to do it to ditch the idea of hair being made up of strands. While it is.. if you draw it that way you get really fake looking hair.. and that's being generous. It does not look good when you draw every strand. Instrad, you can indicate the "layering" and strands of hair buy breaking it down into smaller "chunks" of hair. It's okay to add strans of hair, you just don't want all of the hair to be made up that way.

Now to talk about how hair moves. As I said earlier, you must remeber that hair is fairly light when it's let down (again.. hair is heavy when it's tied together in a ponytail or braided). I've thrown together some quick doodles of jow hair reacts.

In the example I used wind. This is probobly the most common reason for hair to flow to one side. If the wind is light only a few strands or chunks will move. But, if the wind is strong (like in the picture), then most of the hair will flow to one side. Remeber... hair has a set length (from when it's cut). In the picture you'll notice that hair from the left side... doesn't go out as far as hair from the right.

The next example is of someone jumping. Think of someone jumping on a bed. when you jump upward, your hair flatteds downward from the upward force. But when you're coming down from the jump you hair flies upward from downward force. make sence? O_o just think about it, it will ^_^;;

The other two doodles are of someone tilting their head downward and upward. In both cases, gravity is pulling the hair downward. When you lean forward, gravity pulls the hair down (into the face). When you look up, gravity pulls the hair away from the face. easy huh? ^_^

On to the Next Lesson!