Tutorial 5: Hair

To draw the hair perfect, smooth and natural, I personally think practicing is a good way to start. You may try to draw different lines and curves with different pencils, strength and angles. I've always liked to draw on a flat drawing board, but in fact I found out that if you put the drawing board up, it is so much easier to take control of what I’m drawing. At first, you may get tired of holding your arms in the air, but once you practice more and get used to the strength and pressure you put on the pencil and paper, everything is fine. With a steady hand, you should be able to draw out natural looking lines.

Step 1- Identified the darkest areas in the section of hair and draw them in with a 3B pencil. Try to look for details inside the darks, a lot of the time there will be lighter hairs passing through the dark areas so draw around those.

Step 2- Located more dark areas and draws them in, again using a 3B but with slightly less pressure. Also draw light guide lines to show where some of the highlights and mid-tones were to go.

Step 3- Begin shading the mid-tone area that was located in step 2 with a B pencil.

Step 4- Fading the mid-tones into the highlight area that was located in step 2. Again using a B pencil but with less pressure than for the mid-tone area.

Step 5- Fade the dark tones towards the top of head into the highlight area with a B pencil. Then shade lightly over the highlight area with an H pencil. Smooth, fluent shading is key here.