Hair

Well we just talked about how hair works.... so I suppose it would be a good time to talk about hair placement and style!

Now the first thing we're going to talk about is the hairline. One's hair starts about 1/3 of the way down the head. It does not start right on the top of the head! You don't have to give your characters bangs. If you've noticed, the illustrations of myself that I used for the face section doesn't have bangs while the illustration of myself that I used in the faculty section does. I don't have bangs. The reason most characters are draw with bangs is pretty logical... it's much easier. Assuming your drawing the hair well to begin with, using bangs may mean that you don't have to be as precise about the shape of the forehead. You'll see this as you being to preatice drawing hair. While it is easier to draw characters with bangs of some kind, you should also be capable of drawing them without bangs.

Bangs start right on the hairline and usually runs the length of the hairline. That is... all of, or most of, the hair on the hairline forms the bangs. Sometimes bangs are very thin spurts of hair, in this case it's where ever they have been cut from. All of the bangs I've illustrated above are "full" bangs. Bangs can go back as far as an inch or more from the hairline. The farther back they go the thicker the bangs.

In the illustrations above, I've taken 3 different bang styles. as you'll notice. They're all placed on the hairline the same, regardless of how different the styles are.

After that it's pretty simple.... I added different types oh hairstyles. Take note of how the differnt hairstles can change the look of the same face.
I can't teach you how to make different hair styles.... it's kind of something you just do (if you know what I mean^_^;;). As long as you make a point to observe and understand how hair works you shouldn't have any trouble drawing it. I highly suggest looking through magazine and other comics and such for ideas on hair styles. There are also many webistes that you can use as well.

Here's the first male I've used in the lessons so far ^_^;; Men's hairstyles are a tad more limited that womans. Mainly because women tend to style ther hair more. The most that men generally do is throw some gel in it or tie it in a pony tail (or braid, if they have long hair). Although it is kind of funny to picture a man styling his hair with a curling iron ^_^
Anyway... mens hair works much the same as womens, with the exception that it tends to be on the shorter side. you can also add facial hair to men, but we're not going to go over that. If you're interested in it, you can observe some pictures of facial hair.

Well I hope you've learned a little something about hair!

Now on to the Next Lesson!