Part One of the Hair Trilogy

Part Two of the Hair Trilogy

How to Draw a Long Hair Explosion!

Hello to you all! This is the last hair tutorial from me for awhile. I got really carried away with the drawing, but I created a bunch of new hairstyles that I’m going to put on my characters. Today I’m playing around with long hair. The really great thing about long hair is that there’s really no limit to what you can do with it. And long hair looks so… cool. *(^_^)*

Lengthening the hair on a character means only one thing… HAIR EXPLOSION! That’s right. Bangs, strands, flips, curls, and dos can go all over the place.

I really, really love drawing long hair. Hair can have a fine, coarse, or wirey texture. People with drier hair have all sorts of curls that flow and bounce all over the head like they’re taking over the joint. Wetter hair is long and free-spirited, blowing whereever the wind wants to take it. Some hair-owners try to make their hair symmetrical and pretty, while others let hair go wherever they want it to. The wilder the hair, the more interesting it is to look at.

I’ve seen cartoon hair in three styles. The most common seems to be the angle look, since the really sharp edges of the angle show up really nice on a cartoon. Figure one shows the basic principles of the angles. Lazier artists draw huge gobs of hair and then fill these gobs in with lines. But these gobs of hair can look really great, especially if colored well. You can see the gobs of hair in figure 2. They have a really nice cartoon look to them. But if you’re going for a much more realistic look, you might want to try drawing each strand individually. There’s really no limit to how realistic you can make each strand of hair, but you should keep two things in mind. The more realistic you make your hair, the more realistic you should make the rest of the character. Also, the more realistic you make the hair, the longer it will take to draw the entire head of hair. Really, there’s no limit to how detailed you can make a head of hair.

Figure 1                     Figure 2

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Tags: anime, Art, bangs, cartoon, cartoon drawing, comb, curly, Digital Art, do, draw, drawing tutorial, forehead, hair, hairbrush, hairstyle, how to draw cartoons, illustration, manga, paintbrush tool, scalp, sketch, sketching, spikey, spiky, strands, traditional Art, Tutorial, widow's peak

The next natural drawing tutorial is “How to Draw Medium Hair.” Short hair stays on the top of the head and sometimes throws a party, except when a comb comes to crash it. Medium hair often covers the ears, or extends down part of the neck. That includes my favorite hairstyle, the one that is made up of curved triangles and wraps around the character’s head, making it look really round. Its a common hairstyle in Japan both among men and women.
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Tags: anime, Art, artist, bangs, cartoon, cartoon drawing, curly, draw, drawing tutorial, face, hair, hairbrush, hairstyle, how to draw cartoons, manga, Pencils, sketch, sketching, strands, Tutorial

I love drawing cartoon eyes and hair. The great part about Japanese cartoons is that a lot of the boring features are really simplified and easy draw, while some of the most attractive features are really stylized. Cartoon eyes aren’t hard to learn how to draw because you, the artist, get to decide how simple or complex you want the eyes to be. Long cartoon hair isn’t hard to learn how to draw either because most long cartoon hair is made up of curved triangles or gobs of squiggly lines. Draw the outline of the hair, add four or five squiggly lines on each side, and you have long, flowing hair.

Drawing short hair sucks, which is probably why so many cartoons have male characters with long hair. But that doesn’t mean that short hair should be avoided altogether. Figuring out better ways to draw characters is my favorite part of cartoon drawing. And short hair can be really fascinating if you manage to capture a lot of the strands of hair in the drawing. So I decided to give it a shot and create a drawing tutorial on short hair. Click to read more …

Tags: bangs, brush, cartoon, cartoon drawing, comb, curly, do, drawing tutorial, forehead, hair, hairbrush, hairstyle, how to draw cartoons, manga, scalp, spikey, spiky, strands, widow's peak