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Sketching hair is dictated by several factors: the type of hair, its tint, texture, quantity, the arrangement and styling of the hair, the personality and disposition of the model or the photograph, and the light effect upon the hair.
The arabesque of the hair is part of the overall construct. A correct construct is significant to the likeness of the hair. Many beginning artists begin with the face and grow outwards from there. This is however a bad procedure and instills bad habits that will prove hard to break.
In fact, the arabesque is especially significant when render a coiffure. Attempting to render the hair working from the inside out, bit by bit, is a recipe for failure. The hair will result in being either too small for the head or too large.
Drawing within the construct of the hairdo, first put in the primary darks. These darks are best seen by squinting down your eyes until a general pattern of light and dark is observed.
Next, you need to stump down the graphite in a sculpturally fashion following the general gesture and movement of the hairdo. For this you can utilize your fingers, a tissue, or a paper stump. If you utilize a paper stump be cautious not to dull the look. If you utilize your fingers make sure they are dry and also wipe them constantly with a paper towel.
Then, utilize your kneaded eraser like a loaded paint brush to lift out the major lights. Do not be overly finicky here. A more virtuoso approach effects a sense of life and rhythm into the hairdo. If you make an error just stump down the graphite again with your fingers or stump and do it again.
Sometimes when you block-in the hairdo other light parts of the head pop out. This is one reason why drawing the head as a whole is necessary.
French braiding is a gorgeous hairdo style, but extremely complex and hard to sketch. The goal is to render these French braids fluidly and with movement. A balancing act is required here: the complexity of the hairdo’s styling is best handled by first line-rendering the main locks and braids. As you lay out the braids be sure to plumb and carefully measure and place each important lock and braid.
When drawing from a photograph there is the temptation to reproduce it down to the smallest detail. You may or may not give in to this temptation but you should always make sure that the hairdo retains its liveliness. However, in most cases, you will not need to sketch every detail.
Further block-in the darks paying attention to the bearing and motion of the major locks of the hairdo. The hardest thing is to refrain from plunging into an region of detail. Not to do this requires mental discipline. Best is to follow a layered procedure that progressively stacks the arrangement of the hairdo, lock by lock.
You also should smooth the edges of the hairdo line so that it blends into the forehead and sides of the face. Hair does this naturally.
Make sure you used sharp pencils because dull pencils lead to dull, dead hair.
Having first mapped out and blocked-in the major locks of hair makes the rendering of the finer areas much easier, but is still labor intensive. You should be prepared to spend quite a lot of time on a hairdo.
Also, keep stepping back from the drawing to maintain an overview of the chief light/dark pattern because detailing can result in a flat chaos in which the values close in on each other.
Hold back from rendering bangs too soon in the process. This helps ensure that the hairdo and flesh can be unified into a unified sense of spirit.
Sketching hair so that it reads naturally and has a rhythmic gesture is hard. Commonly it takes as much time and effort to render the hairdo as it does the face and neck. You must spend as much care in preparing the hairdo as you would for the remainderof the portrait. If you draw from a model be sure you do the hairdo before your model takes a break because the hairdo will very likely have changed when the break is over. The strategy, then, is to devote a whole 20 to 30 minutes of a pose segment to the hairdo.
With these procedures you can be sure that in time your drawn hair will look real and energetic. Do not forget that rendering hairdo takes time so that you do not get impatient.
Download my brand new Free Pencil Portrait Sketching Course here: www.remipencilportraits.com/PPDT/pencil-portrait-tutorial.html target="_blank">Pencil Portrait Sketching. Remi Engels is a practicing pencil portrait artist and oil painter and practiced drawing teacher. See his work at Pencil Portraits by Remi: www.remipencilportraits.com Visit Instructions on Pencil Portrait Drawing - Rendering Hairdos.
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