Here's a very rough five minute, uh, not really a tutorial, but a principle on how to draw hair that I did for a friend who voiced some struggles with drawing hair.
I promised to upload it here for safekeeping, maybe it'll be useful for some of you, too! It's not a full process but it shows how you can overcome the overwhelm that comes with drawing something detailed such as hair.
So first here's the drawing with some flat colors. The arrows are there to just point out the general direction of light. The key thing to drawing hair is to think of it as a 3D form and then imply detail which is what I'm showing here.
Now you gotta be bold and pick a big brush. Make it so big that it's almost clumsy so that you don't start noodling right at the get go. Lay down some very rough light areas.
When you have the light areas down you can push and pull the lighter and darker colours to fine tune the shape of the areas and also imply detail in certain areas. Remember to not make things too monotonous! If you have the same level of detail everywhere you will lose the sense of the form and also overwhelm the viewer with too much detail.
Then I just popped on some highlights to make it slightly less flat and to illustrate that you can use the highest highlights very sparingly and it still does the job of both implying form and keeping the overall image readable.
You can use whatever technique you fancy - erase light areas from the shadow layer, paint the light colour on top, paint the shadow colour on top - whatever works for you! The principle is the same. You can also add in darkest darks in the same fashion as the brightest highlights - sparingly but to give the hair a bit more oomph.
Hello! I love your art so much, especially the way you draw hair! I was wondering if you have any tips or tutorials on how to draw it? Either way your art is amazing! Have a wonderful day!
hii ty !! I made a little thing about how i shade hair in my current style hehe
the main thing is to draw in the direction that the hair is going, to give it shape and volume and gravity! I make up the light source hghh and mostly just go with what i feel looks best in terms of where to put the shadows and highlights. This is such a fast was of shading hair and it is very fun to do ! If you do try it out i hope you enjoy it as well !!
How do you draw Abodes Dreads/Braids? I'm a black creator and still (embarrassingly) struggle with them in the arcana style. (And in general XD) the way you draw her is gorgeous. And I must know the magic you poses.
Nothing to be embarrassed for! Unfortunately there's not much reference for black hair in the Arcana, so we all have to guess. I'd highly recommend looking at @kianamaiart and Simkray's hair brushes for other examples of stylising black hair (if anyone has examples of black hair in angular art styles, please share!!)
Anyway, I hope this helps!
Dreads and braids are both segmented styles which makes their basic construction similar, however dreads are stiffer and hang less than braids, which are quite heavy
She usually pulls her hair back so I only have to pay attention to the hairline, but I draw each dread as a somewhat stiff tube. Where it connects to the scalp I feather in short, fine lines for the edges/thin hair that's attached to the skin.
To show the twisted texture of dreads, I add curved lines along each one. For me, this is a good balance of detail for the style (though I can still get tired of lineart -_-)
Then, as a final detail, I give Abosede imperfect ends, topping most dreads off with a thin twist. This is optional as some dreads don't have this.
Then finally, for colour. I take reference for how they render ropes and add a series of light lines along each dread. Dreads don't reflect much light, so these are pretty faint.
For some braided hairstyles, you just replace the tubes I use for dreads with a simple plait pattern (as seen in Lucio's masquerade outfit). If you're aiming for cornrows, instead of the segments, draw the tubes along the scalp with sharp ends. Then fill them with a plait pattern. For extra detail, you can hatch lines in between the cornrows where the hair is pulled into the braid.
Braids have stronger highlights than dreads, and I tend to dot them in the centre of each part.
So this is my basic process. If you have more questions, feel free to ask!
Yes! With a super fast 10 minutes sketched tutorial! (I’m sorry, it is kinda ugly, I hope you can understand it well enough)
The main 3 things you absolutely need to know are:
- hair has ITS OWN VOLUME no matter how flattened you want your hairstyle to be, there will still be a little bump (this one depends a lot on your artstyle tho)
-always follow the vertigo, once you have selected where it will be. Hair will always start from one point and flow out from it
-follow the head, neck and shoulders masses. Even if you can’t see them, they’re under there, and hair flows down and around shapes!
This is it, mainly! Hope it’s going to be useful, but if you guys would like me to make a more in depth one, or wanna know something else, let me know!
just put up a new art tutorial on how i draw hair in my style! i don't really shade my hair - i only add main highlights, and that removes a lot of stress from drawing perfect hair for me. maybe you can learn something new from my lil tutorial 💜