Sketching hair is dictated by several factors: the type of hair, its tint, texture, amount, the arrangement and styling of the hair, the personality and mood of the sitter or the photo, and the light effect upon the hair.
The arabesque of the hair is part of the overall arabesque. A correct arabesque is essential to the likeness of the hair. Many starting artists begin with the face and grow outwards from there. This is however a poor procedure and instills bad practices that will prove difficult to overcome.
In fact, the arabesque is especially essential when draw a hairdo. Attempting to draw the hair working from the inside out, bit by bit, is a recipe for disaster. The hair will result in being either too small for the skull or too large.
Drawing within the arabesque of the hair, first put in the main darks. These darks are best seen by squinting until a general pattern of light and dark is observed.
Next, you need to blend the graphite in a painterly fashion following the overall gesture and movement of the hair. For this you can use your fingers, a tissue, or a paper stump. If you use a paper stump be careful not to dull the look. If you use your fingers make sure they are dry and also wipe them constantly with a paper towel.
Then, use your kneaded eraser like a loaded paint brush to pick out the significant lights. Do not be overly picky here. A more virtuoso approach creates a sense of life and rhythm into the hair. If you make a mistake just blend the graphite again with your fingers or stump and do it again.
Sometimes when you block-in the hair other light parts of the skull pop out. This is one rationale why sketching the skull as a whole is necessary.
French braiding is a beautiful hair style, but extremely complicated and hard to sketch. The idea is to draw these French braids fluidly and with movement. A balancing act is required here: the complexity of the hairs styling is best handled by first line-rendering the main locks and braids. As you lay out the braids be sure to plumb and carefully size and locate each main lock and braid.
When sketching from a photo there is the pull to copy it down to the smallest detail. You may or may not give in to this pull but you should always make sure that the hair retains its liveliness. However, in most cases, you will not need to map out every detail.
Further block-in the darks taking into account the bearing and gesture of the significant locks of the hair. The hardest thing is to refrain from plunging into an area of detail. Not to do this demands mental discipline. Best is to follow a layered procedure that progressively stacks the arrangement of the hair, lock by lock.
You also should smooth the edges of the hair line so that it blends into the forehead and sides of the face. Hair does this naturally.
Be sure to used sharp pencils because dull pencils lead to dull, lifeless hair.
Having first mapped out and hatched-in the significant locks of hair makes the rendering of the finer regions much easier, but is still labor intensive. You should be prepared to spend quite a lot of time on a hair.
Also, keep stepping back from the drawing to maintain an overview of the primary light/dark pattern because detailing can result in a flat chaos in which the tones close in on each other.
Restrain yourself from rendering bangs too early in the process. This helps ensure that the hair and flesh can be unified into a coherent sense of spirit.
Sketching hair so that it reads naturally and has a rhythmic gesture is challenging. Ordinarily it takes as much time and effort to render the hair as it does the face and neck. You must spend as much care in prepping the hair as you would for the remainder of the portrait. If you draw from life make sure you do the hair before your model takes a break because the hair will very likely have changed when the break is over. The idea, then, is to devote a whole 20 to 30 minutes of a pose segment to the hair.
With these instructions you can be sure that in time your drawn hair will look authentic and energetic. Do not forget that rendering hair takes time so that you do not get impatient.
Article Source: http://www.articleviral.com
Cartoons and Caricatures