how to draw hair and different hairstyles for beginners | step by step tutorial

Hi everyone! I am back with a new video and this is a tutorial on how to draw hair. This video is also sponsored by Skillshare, an online learning community for creative people who are always looking to learn something, whether that's a new skill or to brush up on a skill you already have. I feel like this is a really great platform for that. They have so many online classes ranging from so many different topics and just some of my favorites include illustration, graphic design, and something that I'm currently into, animation. I am so excited to share with you some classes that I recently watched and loved, which I will talk about at the end of the video. I will also recommend some classes that you can watch along with this tutorial to help you so stay tuned for that. And because this video is sponsored by Skillshare, I have a special link in the description box below that will give the first 1,000 people to sign up using that link two months free of their premium membership. So a premium membership gives you unlimited access to all of their classes in the platform, which is normally valued at less than 10 US dollars a month if you pay annually. So two months of free unlimited content is a really good deal. So I highly recommend that you check them out and you join using that link if you haven't already. In order to draw hair, we first need to have a head, which I've already drawn. And if you want to learn how to draw the head and its facial features, I have a video for that. I also added the neck and shoulders for this demonstration. The first thing to determine is the hairline, which is located on the forehead and it indicates the roots of the hair closest to the face. If you draw seven lines equally spaced down the head, the second line on top is our guideline for the hairline. There are many different lines you can draw for the hairline depending on the face shape and you can see them all on screen. But for the demonstration, let's keep it simple with an oval face shape, therefore an arched hairline. Next is to determine if there is a partition on the hair. As we know, hair can be parted on the left, center, or right side of the head. Therefore, the guideline we will use is a line located on the top of the head and we can change the position depending on where the partition is located. The partition line that we draw also indicates the roots of the hair and we can also change the length of this guideline to show different types of partitions. For the demonstration, we will have a center part on the hair, therefore the guideline is located on the center of the top of the head. And if you decide that a hairstyle doesn't have a partition, you don't have to draw this guideline. Next is to determine if there is a hair accessory or anything that's gathering or pulling hair strands together. For example, if hair is tied in a ponytail, this means that hair strands gather to a point where the hair tie is located. So we add a guideline which I will call the gather point. This is located anywhere where there is hair and we can change the position and length of this guideline depending on the hair accessory. For the demonstration, I'm going to tuck some hair behind her ear which isn't a hair accessory but it acts like one as it gathers hair to that one spot and because of this, the guideline I used is not a point but instead a line that follows the top of the ear. And once again, if you decide that a hairstyle doesn't have any hair accessories, you don't have to draw this guideline. Now that we have the guidelines in place, let's draw the strands of the hair. And there are two curves that I like to use. The first one is the S-curve which I use to draw long hair strands. So that's what I'm predominantly using for the demonstration. Keeping in mind that hair grows from the hairline and the partition line, this is where we start to draw our S-curves. It follows the shape of the top of the head and it falls down to the shoulders. And depending on the type of hair, we can change the degree of the S-curve and you can also make it irregular. So a subtle S can be used for a natural straight hair and a strong S can be used for wavy hair. You can also repeat the number of S-curves in that strand to create curly hair or kinky hair. So if you draw these curves repeatedly side by side, you get something that vaguely resembles hair. That's pretty much the idea of hair strands. However, I personally don't like to draw every single strand of hair. Rather, I like to think of hair in bunches or in bulk. In order to draw that, let's take our single strand of hair and draw a similar looking strand next to it, but draw it on an angle. This way, the lines meet at one point and we get a pointed end. Another way is to draw the letter S starting from the top tip of the strand and making sure they meet again at the bottom tip. Now, let's draw a letter S again starting from the top tip, but this time it doesn't meet at the bottom tip. And if we draw a horizontal line at the bottom, we get a flat end. Basically, we've just done four different ways to draw bunched up strands of hair. And that's what I'm using for the demonstration. To give it a layered look, some hair strands are shorter than others. I also make sure to vary the S-curves that I draw so it looks a bit natural. And sometimes I change the direction of the hair to create some flyaways and it just adds movement to the hair. I also like to vary the line thickness where a thicker line is used to indicate a bulk of hair and thinner lines are used for detail. This is where the second curve comes in handy. This is the C-curve, which I use to draw short hair strands as well as details for the hair. Similar to the S-curve, we can once again change the degree of the curve so it almost looks like a straight line. And you can make it as irregular as you want depending on which part of the hair you're drawing. For the details of the hair, because the hair isn't as wavy, the curve I'm using is a very subtle curve. I will also be using this for the part of the hair coming down from the partition line to the ear where I've drawn a gather line. As you can see, the hair starts from the partition line and every single strand meets at the gather line. The idea behind this is that the hair is being pulled from the root to behind the ear and the hair falls back down to the neck and the shoulders. I then continue to draw the rest of the hair as well as add some details that I feel are necessary. But that pretty much explains the of hair. You can use these guidelines and curves to create a variety of hair types and styles, allowing you to experiment and use this as a starting point to stylize and create different characters. As you can see on screen, the guidelines can move around and change to your discretion. You can create short hair, long hair, hair that's tied up or hair that's kept down, braids and updos. The basics are there and now it's up to you on what you want to create with it. And as I mentioned before, I've included some resources from Skillshare down below which I believe are really helpful when drawing hair. I really liked Hairstyles 101, Draw and Color Hair for Character Design by Maria Lea Malendrino. I think that would be a great follow-up video to this as she talks about how to draw hair for different characters and personalities. This one isn't hair related but I absolutely loved the animation classes by Libby van der Ploeg and Manon Luart. I'm not sure if I'm saying their names correctly but they both inspired me to improve my animation skills which I've applied onto this video and I hope that you guys appreciate the little animations I did to help aid my tutorial. I will link all of the classes down below so I highly recommend that you check them out. A few final tips are to of course practice and don't be afraid to use reference photos. I think it'll be very helpful to see a reference image and identify where the hairline is, the partition line is and if there are any gather points or gather lines on the hairstyle. I think this will help a great deal when it comes to tackling hair which can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. And that is it for this video. I hope that you found it helpful. If you did, please give it a thumbs up, share and let me know your thoughts on this tutorial. I would greatly appreciate your feedback and take it on board for my future tutorials. If you follow this tutorial, tag me on social media as well. I would love to see it and don't forget to subscribe for more videos and push that notification button to know when I upload. Thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you in my next one.