Features in focus: Hair
The approaches you can take to drawing hair can be as varied as the potential hairstyles your model might sport. We express our moods and identity by how we cut, colour and style our hair, so a frustrating morning might nd its expression in a bad hair day. In a portrait, hair provides a place for us to record something personal about the model and to express something about ourselves and our materials, in how we have chosen to represent it.
SHAPE
It is always important to establish the overall shape of hair early – this will help you to see the hair as its own prominent volume and not to simply think of the hair as strands sticking out from the skull.
FLOW
Once you’ve established overall shape, break down the complex mass of the hair into manageable ows. I like to use tonal marks, made in the direction of the ow of the hair to shape around the highlights. Let the white of the paper do the work of indicating the lightest tones.
TONE AND TEXTURE
The key characteristics of hair are its tone and texture. In this drawing, I used tonal marks, made in the direction in which the hair ows, to build up dark shapes between the highlights of the hair. The texture of the hair expresses itself most readily at the boundary of the forehead or at the outer limits of the hair and a few condent ourishes can add a huge amount of character. ▫