How to Draw Hair - Drawing Realistic Hair using Coloured Pencil Video Lecture

hi guys welcome back to another tutorial
video and in this one we're going to be
drawing really realistic looking hair
using color pencils and to do this I'm
going to be showing you the drawing that
I did of Emilia Clarke
in the first part I focus on how to draw
the face but in this one we're going to
be focusing on all the techniques you
need to draw a realistic hair so anyway
let's get started okay guys so the way
that I'm going to do this is for the
first sort of five minutes I'm going to
be talking through some general tips and
advice for drawing realistic hey using
colored pencils whilst I'm drawing the
left-hand side of the hair and then as I
get towards the right bottom side of the
hair I'm going to talk through more
detail exactly my technique for drawing
the hair step by step the colors I'm
using and all of that sort of stuff but
let's get into the first part where I
talk through some general advice for
drawing any type of hair and the first
thing that I think it's really important
is when you do your initial sketch you
need to make sure that you've got it
really accurate you're focusing on the
direction that the hair is going in when
you're doing your sketch and your clumps
and I think it's important that you
don't try to draw in every single strand
of hair is just not needed with the
initial sketch try to keep it simple
just getting the basic clumps and shapes
that make up the hair but try to keep it
as simple as possible and also try to
keep your sketch as light as possible
and that will make it a lot easier you
don't want it too dark because you don't
want the pencil lines to show through
the colored pencil so the tip one is to
have a really accurate initial sketch
you can get this by following a
reference photo and you can decide how
you want to actually get the sketch down
you can freehand it use the drawing grid
you can use like a tracing paper or
whatever you want just make sure that
you have an accurate sketch before you
go in and add all of your colored pencil
but then once you've got your sketch
down you need to think about where are
the shadows where are the highlights in
the hair so look at your clumps of hair
whether it's straight curly wavy no
matter what sort of style it is you need
to identify where are the shadows in
highlights in this particular head of
hair
so like we've curls it tends to be that
the shadows are on each side of the
curtain and towards the middle it
becomes more highlighted so if you
identify the shadows and highlights when
you come to choosing your colors you'll
have a better idea of how dark you need
to go and what your lightest colors
should be okay so once you thought about
that then when you start to apply the
pencil it's really important to think
about how you actually apply the pencil
so what I like to do is I like to use my
pencil strokes in terms of lines rather
than like circular motions because you
might use a lot of circular motions for
doing like skin or shading the skin and
other parts of the face but with hair I
like to use lines that go in the
direction that the hair is actually
flowing in and if it's really curly hair
the hair might be flowing in lots of
different directions so I like to do it
clump at a time and focus on that clump
of hair look at the direction that that
clump of hair is going in and just do
like shading in lines and like tape the
lines with the direction that the hair
is going in and not just shade it in
with circular motions and also as well
as like how you're going to do your
pencil strokes you need to think about
the fact that you need to keep your
pencil nicely sharp
otherwise the lines will be ready fuzzy
so keep your pencil nice and sharp
throughout the entire process and also
try to work in light two layers don't go
in straight away with your first color
and press really really hard because you
don't want to burnish too early if you
press too hard on your colored pencil
straight away then it'll make it really
hard for you to add layers on top the
paper just simply won't take it so with
your initial early layers try to keep it
really light keep your pencil sharp and
just get down the basic structure and
then as you add more and more layers you
can really get in those shadows and
start to burnish and burnishing is
really important when you're drawing
hair because you need to not have that
white grain of the paper showing through
and to get rid of that you do need to
sort of blend it all out and burnish it
all together but towards your first
initial layers you can kind of not apply
so much pressure it's just not needed
and I never like to do that so when
you're actually applying the pencil and
you know where the highlighted areas are
towards the early layers
I don't really apply much pencil to the
highlighted areas I like to keep those
quite white because when I blend it out
with like a lighter color like the
lightest shade you're using that will
add tone to those highlighted areas but
I like to leave the highlighted areas
showing through so I know exactly where
those highlights are but of course this
this guide isn't like the only right way
to drawing hair this is just how I like
to do it and if you like to do it
differently that is up to you so another
thing is that once you're starting to
build up those layers you need to make
sure that your shadows are getting dark
enough because what is so important in
getting realism is having a really good
contrast between your shadows and
highlights as I always say for out
anything that you're drawing the
contrast is key so you need to make sure
that your shadows are getting as dogs
they need to be and the highlights are
as light as they need to be to pop and
contrast and make that hair look nice
and glossy and make it look shiny they
need to have those highlights in and
have them in the correct sort of place
and you also don't want to have a really
harsh kind of cutoff point between your
shadows and your highlights try to make
them transition nicely so when you're
like blending the shadows into the
highlights try to blend and burnish them
together to get more of a seamless sort
of transition but I'll talk more about
that in a second and another thing that
I love doing is once I've got in all of
the basic tones in shadows I don't want
the hair to look really uniformed so
what I do is I go in with an exacto
crafting blade and I use that to pull up
some of the wax pull a pencil and this
means that I can pull up all little
detailed hairs and individual hairs and
this really breaks up those clumps of
uniforms hair and makes it look a lot
more flowy and natural and a lot more
realistic and finally I'd like to go in
with like curved like a fabric castell
polychromos which isn't so waxed and
soft and creamy and I like to use this
harder pencil
creating little tiny flyaway hairs to
again break up those uniformed clumps of
hair and make it look really natural
okay so now let's get into drawing this
right-hand side of the hair and as you
can see I'm focusing on this particular
clump first and like I said I like to
focus on it one clump at a time and what
I like to do first is I like to get in
all of these really dark shadows and
establish the darkest part for each
clump of the hair and to do this I'm
using like a really dark brown pencil
it's called sepia and the pencils that
amusing are the Karen - luminance
colored pencils so just use any dark
brown or any darkest color that you've
picked for the darkest part of the hair
and so I just used the pencil strokes in
terms of lines I'll use lines that were
going in the direction that the hair is
going in and I've just established those
darkest areas and then what I did was I
went in with the raw umber and I used
that to add a base tone to the whole of
this curl this curl was quite dark there
wasn't too many highlighted areas so I
just added a base color to that whole
thing and then I went over now with some
like burnt sienna so it's more like warm
toned Browns just to make the color a
bit more accurate and I'm just layering
that on top of that section and you can
see that because we added the darkest
shadows first we can still see where
those darkest areas are and so we've
still got a lot of structure to the hair
even though we're going over the whole
thing with other colors as well so now
I'm adding even more shadow to the
darkest parts I really want to make sure
those shadows are as ducks they need to
be so I'm going in again with that sepia
just to really darken up those areas and
so I've added the shadowed colors I've
added the different kind of hues to make
the color accurate and then I just went
in with a much lighter color just to
pull up some of those more lighter
highlighted strands but you can see it
looks quite uniformed at the moment but
we will fix that by adding lots of
little flyaway hairs and pulling up
detailed hairs with the crafting knife
and so I'm just repeating the same
process for this bit of hair up here so
I like to add the
seppia which is dark brown for the
shadows and you can see that I'm going
in the lines in the direction at the
hairs going in and I like to use that
raw umber as a base so I do recommend
you pick the darkest color that you want
to use a base tone that fits Wow for
like the highlights and the mid-tones
and then a highlighted color to like
pull up those highlights and blend it
together and then you can pick some of
the colors to like make the color more
accurate to your reference photo so now
let's go in and fill in some more clumps
of the hair back in again with that
sepia and I'm just looking at the
reference photo and I'm pulling out the
darkest parts I'm not pressing too hard
I'm not applying too much pressure
because I know that I'm going to be
adding lots more layers on top of this
so I'm just applying a firm amount of
pressure not too much I don't want to
burn the ship in I still want to allow
the papers have enough tooth to grip
onto some more layers so I like to take
it slow color pencil isn't something you
can rush just take your time with this
and be really really patient and just
keep building up these layers until you
get it as dark as you need it to be I
only really like to apply black in the
really darkest areas near where like her
neck and at the side of her face was
that's the only part where it got really
really dark otherwise I like to keep it
with natural tones like the Browns or
glaze like brown tones over the black if
you do want to use black so this area
quite here was quite dark so I'm just
still building at those sepia tones and
I'm even filling in some of the like
rest of the mid-tones with a dark brown
because there wasn't too much light
areas but we are going to pull up a lot
of lighter areas with the crafting knife
because it just pulls up all of that wax
pigments and kind of shows you the
lighter layers underneath because it's
scraping off that color pencil and now
I'm just going in with more pressure
because we're doing more more layers
going in with that burnt sienna which is
that warm toned Brown just to add a bit
of life to the hair make
look even more sort of realistic by
adding that warmth like some parts of
the hair had more like orange tones to
them some more red tones so I wanted to
add variation in the hair to make it
look nice and natural like hair isn't
just one tone it has lots of different
hues and kind of like highlights in it
and stuff like that and so I added a bit
of the lighter color there just to
lighten up any areas that are slightly
more highlighted now I'm just going in
with another Brown just to fill in all
of the white grains if you have any like
white grain of the paper showing through
just go in even harder with a pencil and
this will blend the pigment out so that
you don't have any gaps showing through
and I'm also just adding some of the
like thicker clumps of flyaway hairs
like I'm gonna do really fine individual
hairs but there was some like more
intense clumps of Flyway hairs around
like the main shapes of the hair main
parts of the hair another thing is that
I don't like to wipe away bits of color
pencil with my hand because this will
mean that you're likely to smudge it and
you don't really want to smudge your
color pencil work so I like to go in
we've just like her big fluffy brush
just to wipe away any bits of colored
pencil but now what I'm doing is I'm
going in with a color called Brown okay
temp sent it's just like a very light
creamy brown tone very light color and
I'm just using this to pull up some of
those highlighted strands and just
indicate where these lighter areas are
but problem that I had was that because
some of the areas had black on it like I
said I used the black towards the neck
and the cheek part when I added this
lighter color over the top I got more of
a blue hue and so to fix that all I did
was I went over it with some more brown
tones like the brown okay and this just
gave it more of a nice warm Brown
natural tone but it still is a lot
lighter than the others so it still
gives us that highlighted strands of
hair look to it so I'm just still going
around with all of the different colors
just tweaking little bits but now let's
get into adding all of the detail with
this
after knife and this little tool is so
amazing it getting detailed with colored
pencil you can just see in a minute how
much you can get it's like so much lift
from the colored pencil and like so many
like light heads it's just amazing it's
like my favorite tool for drawing hair
but it does take quite a bit of practice
because if you go at the wrong sort of
angle you can very easily tear your
paper and I don't want you guys to do
that so I really recommend using this
unlike his scrap piece of paper just lay
down some color pencil and then try it
from different angles and see what works
best for you you don't want to be
digging you're like crafting knife into
the paper you just want to be like
sweeping it over so it's like scraping
it away and you'll see in a minute it's
like I'm sweeping the knife rather than
like digging it in otherwise it will rip
it's not like you're trying to etch the
colored pencil in it's not like you're
itching you're just simply trying to
scrape off the wax based pencil like I'm
doing now I'm just sweeping that knife
over and you can just see it lifts off
all of those like waxy colored pencil
areas and one thing that's great about
this is you can use it to go over like
multiple clumps of hair so like if you
have a flyaway hair that spans like the
entire part of the hair you can just do
that and it will make everything look so
much more natural because it's like
overlapping all of these different
clumps of hair you've got more depth
you've got lots of layers going on it
just really really adds a level of
realism to your hair because it can be
very difficult to create lots of detail
with colored pencil to get like those
color pencils so sharp that you can get
that tiny detail but with this you can
just get it so easily
and what's great is this little tool is
like really cheap I'll link link to it
in description of where you can get it
I've got mine off Amazon so it was only
like a couple of pounds and it is like a
game-changer and then the other thing is
that once you've lifted up the color
pencil you can go back in and you can
like add color pencil over the top of it
so you can also use it as a way to lift
the colored pencil and then you can go
back over it with more color pen
if you want to as long as you don't rip
the paper so I like to do that quite a
bit it takes a while but I just want to
make sure that everywhere looks natural
I don't want any clumps of hair to look
too uniformed so you can add lots of
these I kind of make it a lot of
different sort of thicknesses depending
on which part of the knife you use you
can get thicker strands thinner strands
and all of that sort of stuff so it's
ready to be good going-over with that
fluffy brush again just to wipe away all
of the little bits of color pencil that
this knife is scraping off so that I can
see everything clearly
and what we're gonna be doing finally is
adding some Flyway hairs with this brown
pencil in a minute I'm just gonna make
some adjustments darken up some shadows
I might spot things that I need to tweak
and I just go ahead and do that but the
basics are that I like to block down my
shadows first in the direction that
they're going in I then like to add like
the base tones and all the different
colors and apply more pressure as I do
so maybe use some like colors like a
white or a cream to lift off the
highlighted areas and then go in with a
knife to just completely add all of
these Flyway hairs to really break
everything up but now I'm going in with
a sharped fabric castell polychromos
pencil and i'm using this to add some
flyaway hairs i'm changing like my
pressure so that i can get some really
lights faint ones and then some more
like harsh ones so that it looks like
some are more set back and some are more
like to the front just to get that sort
of depth in there so that's how I drew
this hair if that was too fast for you
then I've got the full real-time version
of this complete with voiceover so that
you can follow along with me on my
patreon the link is in the description
so that you can follow along with me
every step of the way in real time
anyway guys that is it for this tutorial
I really really hope you enjoyed it and
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and subscribe for future tutorials but
if you want to see even more colored
pencil tutorials right now then I'll
some over there that you can check out
but I'll see you guys next time bye
everybody