Sketching or drawing portraits is something many people enjoy. It does take some practice to get through with drawing people. Especially when you try drawing hairs, you will face many issues with the detailing of hair. That’s what we will be discussing hair. We will take you through how to draw hair.
Drawing hair might seem easy but making it look realistic isn’t that easy. To make hair drawings look natural, you will need to go through some basic drawing steps. Below you can check that.
How To Draw Realistic Hair
We will take you through two types of hair you can draw. The first one is drawing short hairs correctly. Let’s get right onto that.
Drawing short hair
You can draw short hair in the following steps-
- First of all, you will need to draw a base for your hair drawing. You will need to draw the base in a shape where your desired hairstyle matches the base. The base mainly refers to the outline of the head. Drawing an outline of the head will work as a great starting point for you to draw hair around it. Just draw a rough head shape; it doesn’t need to be perfect.
- On top of that head shape, try drawing the hair outline. Start off from the sides and the back. Depending on the angle, you will need to determine the volume of the hair. Then get onto the front of the hairstyle. Make sure to keep some space and volume for the details and shading of the hair. End the outline in the front like the hairstyle you want to draw.
- This is the most crucial part of drawing realistic hair. Here you will need to outline the details and highlights you want in your hair drawing. This means you will separate the areas you want to be in the light and in shadows. It’s like photography, but here you get to decide where the light comes from. So, here you will outline those lights and shadows.
- Now you will need to start shading the hair. Shade the complete hair, and just leave out the highlight outlines you drew. Don’t make it too much dark right away. Shading will give you the color of hair.
- Right around the highlight outlines, you will need to draw some hair. These hairs are usually clustered around the areas. So, darken around the areas near the highlighted outlines. These create the separation between hairs, which makes it look realistic.
- Then you will need to draw the strands of hair. This is where you actually make the hairs. Just follow the hair outline and shape and draw random strands of hair. It will take some time to draw strands individually. Make sure the hair strands are going from thick to thin as they get longer.
- Finish the drawing off with some touch upon the highlights and the shadows of the hair. You will need an eraser to do the job. The places that were supposed to be bright; you will need to make them more visible. You might lose the brightness while drawing those strands of hair. That’s why this is an extra follow up step to make the hairs look real.
This is how to draw hair for beginners. You can quickly draw short hair following these steps. It’s not that difficult at all. But drawing long hair might be a bit tricky. Now we will take you through that part as well.
Drawing long hairs
Drawing long hair will take a bit more time than short hair. So, you will need to be patient about it. Let’s get through the steps.
- Like with the short hairs, you will need to draw a head outline for long hairs. This time try keeping the head shape a little thinner. That way, you can draw the hairs perfectly with greater volume.
- Now draw an outline of the long hairs you desire to draw. Draw the outline based on the type of hairstyle you want in your drawing. Just draw the shape starting from the top and ending the hairs on the sides and bottom. You will need to keep track of how much of the face you want there to be visible for long hairs.
- Next up is dividing the hairs into different parts. It’s just like creating shadows and highlights. But in the case of long hair, another thing to concern about is the layer of hairs which one falls on top of the other. So, you will need to draw outlines of the layers here as well. This will also help you get texture in your hair later on.
- After you are done with the layers, go for the highlight outlines. Draw some outlines around the areas that you want to highlight in your drawing. If you are using reference pictures, you can see the highlights by following where there is much light. Any area without light falls under shadows.
- Shade the hairs but keep the highlights as they are. First, shade a light layer and then work on from there to get some areas darker.
- Then go for the individual strand hair drawing. You will need to draw a lot of hair strands to keep the texture of long hairs. Also, you will need to maintain those layers you planned out in the beginning.
- End the drawing with some little touch-ups and adding some layers. Make slight adjustments on the layers. You will need to give different kinds of shades on these layers to make them look real.
Well, now you know how to draw hair step by step.
Conclusion
So, that’s how to draw hair. We tried giving you two different solutions. These are fundamental steps that you require for just drawing realistic hair. How you approach this will provide you with the kinds of results you are looking for. That mostly depends on your creativity. But this can be a starting point for you if you are a beginner.
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