Hair drawing tutorial potx

You need just pencil, charcoal and rubber eraser.. Start with the base layer, draw a black area with charcoal and then smooth it out with a specially prepared surface of an eraser explai

Hair drawing tutorial

Introduction

Drawing hair is definitely one of the trickiest part of almost every portrait

However, you will definitely like it if you acquire technique and skill in it

Therefore I introduce some easy and effective ways to draw wavy or straight hair

or hair blowing in the wind No matter how much chaotic the hair is, you'll be able

to draw it

This tutorial explains two techniques of drawing hair on four portraits I laid emphasis on minimum of drawing equipment You need just pencil, charcoal and rubber eraser I admit that better equipment makes better drawing, but maybe you find inspiration or some new ideas in this tutorial

Starter

The first time I ever tried to draw realistic wavy hair was when drawing

my portrait of Hilary Duff As you can see, the hair may look real when you distance the portrait from you

Actually, if you come closer, you’ll see it consists of curved lines drawn with charcoal and smudged with a rubber eraser

How to do it?

Start with the base layer, draw a black area with charcoal and then smooth it out with a specially prepared surface of an eraser (explained hereafter) When you need to make a forelock protruding from hair then just pull over the border of the black area with the eraser and draw the forelock with it (you can 'pre-draw' it with

the charcoal) (red arrow)

When you are done take a new piece of an eraser (a clean one) and by erasing lines from the black area, you create as many strands of hair as you need

drawing example real photo

The white lines look like a light reflected on the strands.You can see it in reality too Just make sure some of the protruding strands of hair continue with erased

lighter lines to make an efect of volume (yellow arrow)

Let‘s go on with more realistic look of hair I’ll explain the matter on some of my latest portraits

Drawing Realistic Hair

For example, let‘s take Alessandra's and Jessica’s hair I used an identical

technique for both It consists in a little bit different way than the one I explained

earlier I think it’s more elegant and the result looks better Of course, you can combine these two Ok, let’s describe how it works

Stuffs you need or may find usefull:

 two pieces of a rubber eraser (ordinary eraser) (necessary)

o In case you have a pencil eraser or other special erasers, use them However, I do not Therefore I've figured out this easy way to substitute a hairline eraser Moreover, you can use one piece of a rubber eraser for rubbing charcoal

in Note that for rubbing charcoal in you need the surface of the rubber to be smooth It should rub in, not out! On the contrary, for making light lines in hair you need a clean rubber eraser to rub charcoal out

 pencil (2B or 4B and H or F) (necessary)

 technical pencil (HB)

 tissue or a piece of cloth

 charcoal (the more black and less wide the better) (necessary)

Step One - Sketch (Outlining)

A good sketch usually precedes every portrait However we're dealing with hair There is no need to draw an accurate skatch of hair If you draw main lines as contour and forelocks, it's quite all right

Step Two - Charcoal

Make several lines with charcoal in places where hair appears to be darker It can

be caused by casted shadow or shading I remark they should be lines And the more narrow the lines are the better

If you see that there is a whole black area in the reference picture, fill it with charcoal in your picture and then rub it in with the 'smudging' rubber, which will also help you to cover narrow areas clumsily reachable with charcoal

Step Three - Rubbing

When you're done with some of the lines drawn with charcoal (you don't have to make them all at one go), you can rub them up to make them look more smooth - like hair In the picture you can see the directions of rubbing

You can continue with the step number one in the same manner

In the next picture you can see red arrows meaning directions you must move

your 'smudging' rubber to rub the charcoal lines up with it Usually only one move

(or two) for each line Blue arrows show you where you can use the clean rubber

eraser to make an effect of sheen In these areas you can also use technical pencil and draw several hairlines to add more details You don't strictly need to stick to the reference image punctually, be creative in details and the final drawing will look more naturally (Creativity - that's why you are an artist.)

Final hair

I used the same technique by drawing hair in other portraits For instance,

Alessandra Ambrosio - I liked her hair in the reference photo and its look really

matched this technique

Here you can see the reference photo

This is the drawing Let's zoom in on one forelock

Again, red arrows mean directions of rubbing the charcoal lines

Combining the two techniques

Now you should be familiar with two possible ways of drawing hair The two of many I'd be glad if it helped you even a little

The first technique: Draw the whole area of hair with charcoal, smooth it out and

make forelocks (rub it in paper with 'smudging' rubber), then rub out lines

representing lighter forelocks

The second technique: Draw just lines with charcoal and then rub them up

As I mentioned above, you can combine these two techniques Both are suited to most of kinds of dark hair Anyway, if you draw extensive dark wavy hair, I recommend to combine both the techniques as you can see in the following

drawing of Adriana Lima Red arrows point the areas where the first technique is

used, the rest is drawn according to the second method

Reference photo

Drawing Note that the blowing wider strands of hair are drawn with charcoal and 'rubbing' eraser, but the thin strands are drawn with pencil (2B or 4B) and the thinnest strands are drawn with pencil F (you may use H as well)

The End

Thank you for reading this tutorial I'd be really pleased if this tutorial helped you somehow, inspired or just enjoyed you If it did, you might show me your results or let me know your opinion and contact me , it'd be welcome

Or you may share your opinion or questions relating to this tutorial and post it

here on my blog I'll try to answer all your questions