How To Draw Curly Hair

Now, I am going to show you how to draw curly hair and we are just going to work with a pencil and have a rubber at hand. Now, I am going to draw it from the back of the head of someone so that you can see the full effect. So, we are just going to draw an oval shape, to kind of represent the back of someone's head and maybe a bit of a neck here.

Now, the first thing you need to think about when you are drawing hair is where the crown of the head is going to be. So, decide where that's going to be to start with and mark it, and then, first of all, you need to draw few radiating lines out from the crown. Some of them can be quite large, okay, and some quite small, because hair is - wow, has a lovely design, really.

So you want to convey that in your drawing, so you want to make a series of S shapes towards the edge. Notice, I am not really worrying about the middle just yet. I am just forming the shape of the air, the hair rather, with these little S shapes running down what should be the neck, okay? Right, now, what you can do in the middle is the same thing, okay, but this time, you are making it more rhythm-like.

I am sort of adding a second edge to every S I am creating because you would see more of that sort of effect on the back of someone's head. And again, some of the S's are in the right way round, some of them, moving reverse. Right, so I am still keeping all this very light.

I am not defining anything just yet because I want to make sure I have got the shaping of my head the way I want it, okay? Now, you can start being a little more confident with your line work. You are just using the original lines as a guide. You are going over them with slightly stronger marks now to create your curly-curly wavy hair.

And then, I suppose, if you wanted to add a bit of shade, I would use the pencil much lighter. I am still working in lines rather than shading like this, still working in lines. I am going over bits to bits, and down here, I am doing the same thing.

I am going over again with lighter lines but I am doing S's again, just to give a little bit of shading to the head, maybe to make it look as though it's catching light a little bit. All the time, we are making shapes like this, wavy, wriggly shapes all the time, because this hair is representing wavy hair. To the side there, a little bit more, now, let's define the edge already.

Obviously, this is the back of someone's head so I thought this was the best way to show you really. And that's really orderly straight. There we are.

To draw curly hair, all we need is a pencil and a rubber. We start by making an oval shape representing the head and a neck. First, the position of the crown of the head is chosen and marked down by radiating lines going outwards.

The edges are drawn next with little S's. .