How to draw hair

MAKING WAVES

My approach to drawing hair is much the same as my approach to painting waves and the sea; to look for a rhythm or pattern despite the apparent chaos.

I recommend following the principle of working from the general to the specific. First of all, it is important to understand that there are various lost and found edges in hair (i.e. defined and less defined edges). Unlike other parts of a portrait, hair is the one aspect of a human head which can be reshaped, often to suit our mood or time of day; perhaps not in my case!

Working from the general appearance I suggest blocking in or drawing the general shapes in the hair, often differentiated by colour or value, where there are obvious dark, medium dark or even light areas of hair. To help with accuracy try to look at these areas as abstract shapes even though they may not be clearly defined.

Once these obvious shapes are placed, identify and mark the very darkest areas, then the medium darks until you reach the very lightest areas.

Take time to pause and review progress, if working from photographic reference, turn the drawing and photo reference upside down and see the areas as simple abstract shapes and compare your drawing with reference.

Once you are happy with this stage, continue developing the range of values from dark to light until you reach the point where you can render the very darkest areas and then the lightest areas.

For the final stages, decide on where the most notable or most interesting parts of the hair are. This may be a few selected dark hairs or an individual stray hair only part of which has caught the light; this is magical part and should be executed with fewest strokes using a sharp pencil point and a confidently drawn line.

By selecting a few specific hairs, even if that part of the hair appears untidy, believe me, by picking out these most interesting individual hairs the magic happens. However, it is important not to overdue the highlights as only part of each hair catches the light. It is this variation in rendering edges and variety of strokes which will help give the illusion that you have rendered every hair.

See the section on Pencil Portraits to view the stages of this drawing sample.

Blocking in general areas of colour or value.

Marking in the darkest areas.

Picking out specific hairs of interest.