Introduction

Hair is one of the most crucial part of character illustration and it also might be one of the most challenging one to draw specially for beginners so in this article I will teach you how to draw anime hair

Basics

The human head has a center which is also the center of all the hair this center determines the flow or direction in which the hair will go this center is usually in the back of the head but it can be anywhere based on the type of hairstyle.

Hair mainly has three parts which are the Front hair, Middle/side hair, and back hair. These are the only places where hair grows, Even a character having very messy long hair will also have these three parts as their source of hair as hair only grows in these areas of the head

While drawing hair avoid drawing hair as single lines of hair instead draw it as groups of hair as strands look better than lines of hair and will make your drawing look better

While drawing anime hair think of hair as a sheet of paper this will help you better understand the volume of the hair

Where to start?

Before starting to draw hair on your character illustration I would recommend you to first design a hair that will later serve as a reference while drawing the hair. So I would recommend you to make a simple head or you can copy it from the image below or make your own.

Drawing thehair

In this step I will start drawing the hair, If you are a beginner then you might have some questions as to how would you go about designing the hair, if you are wondering that then I would recommend you to copy the same hairstyle that I will be drawing for this time and when you are done with the whole drawing you can practice again by designing your own hair

 

In this step, I will be showing how I draw the front bangs.

 

The front bangs will start just above the eyebrows. when the hair reaches the middle of the head the hair will become longer, You can copy the same hair that I drew or make your own using a reference.

Now I will move on to the side hair, For the side hair I will use very simple bangs

and make sure to erase the lines underneath the hair.

 

 

 

Now moving on to the back hair, The back hair is easy to draw compared to the rest of the hair as it consists of only the top and the end of the hair.

You might end up with a rough sketch so after you are done with your sketch make a new layer and do the lineart and then it will look better.

 

All of the above steps can also be applied to short hair and also to male hair, I have prepared both a male and a female short hair version, Feel free to copy it for practice.

Extras

I made this YouTube tutorial where I explain the process of drawing the hair and I also show my drawing process. Please give it a watch.