Drawing Hair

So hair is an interesting part of drawing and art because it can be done in so many different styles. The style I usually draw in is manga, and that has a distinctive way to draw hair depending on what look you are going for. For realistic hair (which I am not as skilled at) the way you draw and the way it looks is quite different. For manga hair can be done in blocks, or sections, as I like to think of them. They usually utilize triangles and set shapes to give it more of the cartoon-y manga effect. When drawing realisticly, you have to be more aware of the shape of the hairs, their direction and also about how much hair you are giving the person.

So, some manga tips (they can also be applied to realistic drawing):

-When drawing hair you have to remember the hightlights on the hair. Also you can use highlight placing strategically to give your hair more volume and/or depth.

-Strait hair is not always strait unless it was straitened and then there is no outside force acting upon it, so use wind when you draw or at least the bumps from where the hair hits the shoulders.

-Curly hair has many different types of curles. There can be large loose curles like what is done with a curling iron, small compact curles from naturally curly hair, Shirley Temple curls, and others too. Now each of these look different be it small or large but also the way the light and wind interact with these different types of curls. With large curls it may blow in small strands while small curls will blow the entire curl. So keep that in mind.

-With wavy hair there can be so many ways to play around with this so if you just use light wind and different types of hair types, you can get very interesting/unique looking hair.

So here is a video by a very good american manga artist who shows how to draw a few types of hair styles

Another can be found here

For realistic hair (by the same person as last week's videos)