[WICKED]

Ive been doing some pencil drawings and I'm improving in everything but the hair. I'm just not sure how to go about. Do I shade hair in and then do lines? It alwasys comes out like a huge mess.

WICKED

[NukleoN]

Think of hair as a mass, not individual hairs. Seperate the hair by where it is parted, and draw masses, THEN do hair rendering on those masses to suggest form.

[BlackPool]

I will say it a different way. Long hair gathers in locks that lay side by side as well as overlap as they fallow the contoure of the head. Focus your initial attention on shadows to seperate those locks as well as the shadows along the hair line that nearly always seperate the light values of the hair from the face.

Here's a quicky sketch I did in pencil that better illustrates what I am talking about:

[WICKED]

thanks guys. What about short hair though, I have the most difficulty with that.

[Jezebel]

Personally I enjoy drawing hair as one solid mass with a hard outline, then filling it in with a lighter flat sort of shading. If I want areas to pop out a little more I use a white pencils for highlights. Darker areas like parts of the hair that might be in shadow I tend to shadow darker with the same "flat" technique.

A sketch I did from my costume book, you can sorta see what I mean:





I don't always do it this way but generally I want more attention to go towards the face, so I want to leave the hair as simple as possible. I think it works well... for me anyway

With longer hair I tend to draw out the locks and big blocks of shapes. But most of the time I still try to keep the lines (individual strands of hair) to a minimum so it's not too distracting. Hope this helps.

[WICKED]

thanks Jezebel

[Impaler]

You mean, there's other methods than just scribbling with one continuous line??

I like leaving the top of the head undrawn, then using short, thick strokes for short hair.