Hair Drawing Tutorials

Short hair is slightly more challenging to draw than normal hair because hair does crazy things when its shortened. With longer hair, the sheer weight of the hair pulls the hair down in a relatively consistent direction. But short hair can curl, bend, and go just about everywhere.

The top part of the head can be drawn as an extremely curving line, or can be drawn with simplistic alfalfa sprouts, or can be drawn using all sorts of triangles and curves.

Typically, the bangs are more complex than the rest of the hair on a short hairdo. This part of the hair has lines and strands that run the gamut. You can draw simplistic triangles or you can draw curves. You can make the bangs symmetrical, or you can have them go all over the place. You can have strands overlap or you can have each strand appear to neatly stay in their own corners.

The key is not to draw every single strand, but rather to try to draw huge chunks of hair. Not only is it difficult to see really fine strands of hair, but drawing clumps of hair is less time-consuming than working to draw every single strand of hair growing out of a character's head. This especially makes drawing individual strands branching off from the sides of the heads a lot easier. It can seem like a nightmare trying to figure out how thin, yet normally visible strands of hair branch out.

Of course, lots of people might want to capture every single strand and draw the most realistic character possible. This is possible with a strictly pencil drawing. But it can get a lot trickier when you have to figure out the correct shades for each individual strand. This is possible, but it can be very time-consuming. This might be your bag. But if you're interested in cartooning and want to save time, you might want to learn how to draw the outline of the hair, drawing out clumps of hair, and adding shading and highlights.