Learn to Draw the Hair in Various Different Styles!

In this quick lesson on how to draw the hair, I will incorporate three different types of brush strokes you can use in your digital art program.

Granted, they are fairly unrefined but will give you an insight as to how to draw this feature.

With that said, hair is not easy to draw. It will test your patience! Most people stop half way because of the time it takes. However, it is rewarding once you figure out how it’s done.

1. Setting up the foundation

The foundation would be the head, of course!

Up to this point, you should have your own ideas on how to form the head from the lessons you have done thus far.

I have drawn a female’s head to characterize the types of hair that we will be doing. You can also use this background so you can start working on how to draw the hair on your own terms.

Just start up a new layer and begin to paint over this background with the type of hair that you want!

In addition, I have lightly outlined the scalp where the hair should start and end. Just follow it as best as you can.

We will start simply by drawing short hair.

2. Short hair

Like I said, hair begins when you are able to see the mass on top of your character’s head. With short hair, the mass is evenly distributed into various different tips.

Therefore, in order to draw these tips, you need to utilize short and quick brush strokes. If you haven’t bought a digital stylus yet, I would suggest you do so soon!

Your control comes from doing quick strokes that finishes as soon as it starts. The key here is be consistent with how you want to shape your hair and yet, have a sense of randomness to it.

Always keep in mind where the scalp is. Just keep on doing quick strokes that start from the scalp and end somewhere else; building mass wherever you draw.

Later, you can refine the mass as it begins to slowly appear.

3. Long hair

The main technique to drawing long hair is that the strokes must be continuous. You will require a lot more control than drawing short hair.

Basically, do not ever let go of each stroke! In addition, do not go back and forth. Start from the scalp and end when you feel it is long enough.

If it helps, start by using a larger digital brush and draw huge masses of hair where you think the scalp is. Continue on all around till you get your mass.

Only when you have your mass, you can slowly refine it. You can then shrink the brush to something smaller and begin working on the individual strands of hair. Be careful though, don’t do too much or else it’ll look cluttered.

4. Long wavy hair

The last bit in the lesson of how to draw the hair is learning more control. This example shows long and wavy hair you can try to form on your own.

To make things easier, begin with a large brush and draw thing wavy lines from the scalp all the way down. Try to be as random and controlled as you can. Again, the idea is to form the mass of hair that you will refine.

To refine these larger strands, you will swap your large digital brush into a smaller one. Then, you will build on these masses.

The difference is that you may not always start at the scalp. What it means that you will also have to utilize short strokes near the wavy parts to create parts of the hair that bends around itself.

The effort in creating wavy long hair is very tedious and requires a lot of patience. What we have done so far is teach you how to generally draw the hair in you digital art program.

Now, we are going to refine this technique properly so you can digitally paint the hair!

Return from Draw the Hair to Paint Faces.
Return from Draw the Hair to the 2d Digital Art Guide.