How to Draw Long Curly Hair

Hey! I'm Darlene and you're watching a Rapid Fire Art tutorial. In this video, I'm going to go over several ways to draw long curly hair. I'll cover tight and loose curls, how to draw them on the head, and the shading slash detailing process. Let's begin. A few of you have requested me to draw using only a single pencil, so that's what I'm going to do today. I'm using a 3B pencil and varying my pressure to get different values. If you're stuck on selecting the right pencil, basically, the softer your pencil is, the darker you'll be able to draw, and the harder it is, the lighter you can draw. So select a pencil or a few in the value range you prefer. I'm also using a kneadable eraser, and for blending, you can use a q-tip, tissue, blending stump, or whatever you have on hand. Just to make sure you have a clear understanding of what I'm doing, let me first outline the structure of a lock of hair that is curled. I'm just drawing some boundary lines to begin, which I'll talk more about later. Alright, so curls have a sort of back and forth, zigzagging pattern like this. And the curls that we'll be drawing today will follow this general zigzagging pattern. Now that you have a visual of the basic simplified structure, let's draw some actual curls. I'm starting with tight curls. For all the steps, minus the shading part, try to keep your lines as light as possible, so that when you shade, the construction lines won't show through. I'm going to draw really dark lines so you guys can clearly see what I'm doing. Now, just like what I did on the left, I'm going to create a set of parallel lines going up and down. These act as guidelines, boundaries for us to draw within. You can also draw a funnel shape like this, where the top is wider than the bottom. Let's draw the first curl. On the left here, we have a very straight line, which isn't realistic at all. What we want to do is draw more of an S shape, something that's more curvy. Let's start our stroke right here. Begin your stroke with a curve, extend it down to the right. Curve your stroke down even more, as you reach the boundary line. Now we have a smooth S-like shape. Again, for tight curls, we don't want the hair to angle down too steeply, so do keep that in mind as you draw your S's. The next step is to duplicate that shape right below it. Your spacing will determine how thick the lock of hair will be. This is something you can experiment with. Now we have two wavy S's compared to the rigid straight lines over here. Connect the ends together to complete the shape. Okay, let's duplicate what we drew here several more times below it. Since we're drawing tight curls, we want to keep them fairly close together. But not too close, because we still need to leave space to draw portions of hair that go the other way. Another thing you can customize here is the thickness of each section. So if you want, you can make the top section thicker than the bottom. I'm running out of space here, so I'm going to end it with this one. You can draw more if you want it longer. To finish off, let's taper the end. Instead of having the curl point down, it can also point up, like so. These are the front sections of the curl, the ones closest to us. Next, we'll draw the sections that appear further back, essentially connecting everything together into one continuous lock of hair. Right here, let's create a nice round curve. So instead of a pointy thing like this, we want the shape to be rounded. The next step is to connect this to the opposite side, which would be here. And again, make the turn very round instead of pointy. That part is actually hidden behind the front section, so I drew that part very lightly because I don't want it to show through when I shade. Now from here, we're going to do the same thing and connect it to this corner. I'm creating a faint stroke to show you how each section connects to the other, if we're looking at an x-ray, but we're actually not going to draw all the way through. The dotted lines mark the sections of hair that are hidden. You don't have to draw these dotted lines, they're just for reference. Now that you've gotten the hang of it, let's quickly draw the last section of hair. What we have now is a continuous lock of curled hair, which I'll show you how to shade later. Next up is loose curls. For this one, let's create a different set of boundary lines. Something more flowy. I'm drawing a long narrow shape that is curved, and it's more wide at the top than it is at the very bottom. There are two things you want to keep in mind when drawing loose curls. Number one is the angle of each section. So if we take a look at this top section right here, the slope is not very steep at all. For loose curls, create a very steep slope. The steeper it is, the more loose the curls will appear. I'm drawing a wavy S shape again. Now I'm sure you're quite familiar with this part already. Now the second point to keep in mind is the distance between each section of hair. Over here, everything is pretty close together. To draw loose curls, we're going to expand the space, stretching the distance between each section out longer. Okay, so let's apply that over here. I'm drawing this quite far away from the top one. Whoops, it should be a little steeper than that. And then connect the two sections together like we did earlier. For the last bit of hair, extend your stroke down in any direction really. You don't have to stick to the boundary lines. For example, I can curve it over here and pass through the left boundary line. It is possible to draw these without any boundary lines. Those are just there to help you in the initial learning stage. Before you continue with the video, I'd like you to practice drawing a few curls with boundary lines and then a few without. Alright, so how do we draw this on someone's head? Go from the top of their head. Curve the hair around the shape of their skull and almost straight down. Where you want to start the curls, bring your stroke out. Create a tapered point at the bottom. When you're doing this, it will help to look at a few curls that you've drawn already. I'm referring to the one I drew right here, specifically this area. I'm going to continue right on down to the very next section while referring to the corresponding one right here in my reference image. When you're drawing without boundary lines and you want to keep the width of each curl consistent from top to bottom, draw an imaginary vertical line to keep your drawing in check. To make the hair swirl in a clockwise direction, find all sections of hair that point to the right and then erase any lines that run through them. For a counterclockwise direction, find sections that point to the left and erase lines that cross through those. This clockwise slash counterclockwise direction is the perspective from below looking up. You might want to swirl the hair in different directions when you're drawing a whole head of hair and you want some variety from one lock to the next. Let's add another lock of hair behind this one. Again, I'm going from the very top, wrapping around the head. Go almost straight down and then curve the stroke out to begin the curl. Create another line to show how thick the lock of hair is. When you're weaving back and forth behind hair that you've drawn already, it might be easier to draw a single wavy line all the way down. When you need to cross through a section of hair, do the pencil motion for it but don't actually draw a line through it so that when you come out of the other side and you actually draw that stroke, it looks like a continuation of what was drawn on the other side. Drawing the rest is really easy if you refer to curls that you've drawn already, just like I'm doing now. Once you get the hang of it, you won't need those reference images anymore. If all of those methods were too difficult, here's another alternative. Draw a random wavy shape like this and then draw the exact same thing a distance away but still overlapping the first wave. Connect them at the bottom. Draw a vertical line connecting each of these points. And then erase the spare lines to make the curl go in a counterclockwise or clockwise direction. If you need a reminder on how to do this, the timestamps are down below. One more point. Once you've drawn a bunch of hair, the ones in the very back should be a lot easier to draw because you can draw random curls anywhere you want. Enough with that. Let's get to the detailing and shading phase. First, I'm going to erase the boundary lines. As I mentioned earlier, my lines are especially dark to improve your viewing experience. Having them so dark makes it less ideal for shading. They can make the drawing look less realistic. Especially if I were to draw light colored hair. So before I shade, let me remove a few layers of graphite from the page using my kneadable eraser. I'm rolling it into a cylindrical shape. And then I'm going to roll it over top of my dark construction lines. I think that's light enough. The first step is to determine where you want the highlights to appear. These will be the lightest areas. I'm going to highlight roughly down the center. Basically shading these areas the least. Let's put down a light layer of graphite to start. For this part, you'll want to sharpen your pencil so you get a lengthlier edge of exposed graphite. I'm holding my pencil with an overhand grip. So when I draw, I'm using the side of the graphite instead of the sharp tip. This will give me really thick strokes, allowing me to cover more ground as I shade. Let's shade from the outside going in. With this grip, you might find it restrictive to pivot using your wrist when shading in certain directions. Or when shading a drawing in a much larger scale. In which case, you can pivot at the elbow and shoulder. This might take a bit of practice to develop the muscle memory for. So if you don't have it down quite yet, know that the more you practice, the better you'll become at creating those desired motions. Again, I'm working from the outside in. Basically drawing towards the highlight. I'm lifting my pencil up at the end of each stroke to create a fading out effect. Let's do this all the way down. Notice how the graphite looks really grainy? If yours does as well, you can use a blending tool to smooth it out. You don't need anything fancy. A tissue or a q-tip will do the trick. With a tissue, I'm ripping off a piece and wrapping it snugly around my finger. I'm going to blend this using the same motions I did when shading. You can also use a blending stump if you have one. Once you're done, use the pointy end of your pencil to draw individual strands of hair. I'm using the edge of this shape as a guide, but you can definitely deviate from that. For example, let's create a few steeper angled strands of hair. To make this look even more natural, you can curve the very beginning of your stroke like so, so that the edges aren't so straight anymore. Let's do the same thing over here. If it's a weird angle to be drawing in, feel free to rotate your sketchbook for a more comfortable drawing position. My paper is taped down to my desk, so I'm just going to stand up and move around to the side so I can draw more naturally. You can make some areas darker than others, so there's more tonal variety. It just makes it more interesting visually. If you're not sure where to shade darker, choose zones that are already dark to begin with. Let's do this all the way down, working on the front sections of the hair first. When you get to the very end, draw a few strokes that go out, so that the end of the strands don't appear so blunt. We've just shaded the three sections of hair closest to us. Now we're going to shade the two that are in the back. Since they're in the back, an area that is most likely to be in shadow, they should be a little bit darker. So I'm just going to press a little bit harder so that my graphite looks darker. Don't forget to factor in cast shadows from the sections of hair in front. Once you're done, it might look too uniform in shape. So what you can do to make it look more realistic is to draw additional stray hairs that are sort of off on their own. At the very end, maybe some hairs point down instead of up. Unruliness is what I'm going for. Okay, this example is going to ruin my drawing, but if you're drawing light colored hair and you want a few strands to just cut through a section, you can easily do that by pinching your kneadable eraser to a long narrow edge and then dabbing or swiping the graphite to create a series of thin hairs that are flowing through. You can also do this with a hard eraser. Just cut your eraser until you get a very fine tip and then use it like you would a pencil. Okay, that's really bothering me. Let me get rid of it. If you find that your curls don't look very 3D, it might be that the sides aren't shaded dark enough. Or wherever you chose to draw your darkest values. It might also be that the highlights aren't bright enough, in which case you can pinch your kneadable eraser and swipe along the highlight zone to lighten those up. Both of these solutions are aimed at creating a bigger contrast or difference between the light and dark values in the drawing. I'll link to a video where you can learn more about this. At this stage, if your drawing looks grainy and you want it smoother, use the blending tool of your choice to fill in those tiny gaps within the paper. So yeah, that's it guys! If you enjoyed this, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and hit that bell. Thanks for watching!