Step 1. Draw the "helmet" to mark the distance from the head. Straight hair usually is not very voluminous, so you don't have to add a lot of distance. Advertisement.
If you want to make the hair more detailed, you can add lines following the rhythm. Be careful when drawing these lines inside the wavy strands, though—they may look too heavy with long lines inside. Instead, try to pick your pen/pencil up from time to time to make the lines less continuous.
Hair is a very complex subject to draw, because it's like a substance that can take many shapes and forms. Because of this, manga artists have developed a special method of simplifying hair. In manga or anime, you draw hair as a mass or a cloth. This way it can be drawn quickly, with exaggerated shading that conceals the lack of detail.
Although a wavy hairstyle may look quite voluminous at first, it doesn't add a lot of distance to the top (of course, feel free to modify it for an exaggerated effect!).
To draw anime hair, start by drawing the outline of the head and the hairline. Next, draw the basic outline of your desired hairstyle, making sure to focus on which direction the hair strands flow. Then, add details to make the hair more realistic, and emphasize the outlines by tracing over them with a dark marker.
Sometimes when I draw the hair, it looks like it blows one way, but then other strands are blowing the other way. Stand by a mirror, get your blow dryer or a fan, and test it out. Observe how your hair is blowing. If you have short hair, ask a friend or family member to stand in.
You could use the shadow of the hair to fall over the eyes giving it a gloomy look. Spiked hair can look evil sometimes. Slicked, oily hair can give the impression of being greasy in character as well as in hair. Check out cartoon character and movie villains for an idea of what might work.
It's just where the hair starts. If you're drawing a character with bangs, where their hairline is not seen, you don't necessarily have to draw it - but it could help you get a clearer idea of the proportions of their face if you draw it and then erase it. Thanks!
One good reason for this is that if you are drawing multiple frames of animation or multiple panels of a manga it will simply be too time consuming to draw anything overly detailed.
The pigtails are another very common style of anime hair. Same as the ponytail example you can see that this particular drawing can pretty much be broken down into the front and back section of the hair. With the “back hair” split into the hair covering the head and the pigtails. There are really only tiny bits of actual “side hair”.
From the hairline draw two lines going towards the sides of the head to indicate the front hair. To show that the hair is curly you can draw these lines in light waves.
Anime curly hair drawing breakdown. Curly hair is probably the most challenging anime hairstyles to draw. This particular hairstyle can again be split into the front sides and back with the front hair being similar to the previous example. Anime curly hair step by step drawing.
Long straight hair is probably one of the most common hairstyles in anime and is fairly easy to draw. Above you can see the breakdown of the long hair drawing example into: Red – Front Hair. Green – Side Hair. Blue – Back/Top Hair. You can apply a similar breakdown to drawing other hairstyles as well.
Anime neatly combed hair drawing. This hairstyle can again be split into three parts with the front, side and back hair. The front section of the hair however is a little different from the previous examples. Anime combed hair step by step drawing.
For the hairstyle with hair over one eye you can yet again split the hair into the front, sides and back. In this style the front section of the hair will be fairly large and sort of merge into the “side hair” next to the covered eye.
Anime male hair front drawing. Draw the front of the hair in fairly large clumps that start from around the top of the head and go down well past the hairline. Make the clump/clumps in the middle slightly longer than the sides.
The reason for this is that short hairs can’t reach far enough to join into as a big a clump.
Anime medium long male hair front drawing. Begin the drawing of the actual hair by adding the part that goes down the middle of the face. It can start from about the top of the head and go down to around the tip of the nose (if it was shown).
One common characteristic of this hair is that the portions that would cover the eyes are often swept to the sides with one big chunk going down the middle of the face to around the tip of the nose.
The medium length hair (or some variation of it) is probably one of the most generic hairstyles in anime and manga. Very common to the “average guy” protagonists. Before drawing the hair draw an outline of the head along with the hairline.
Step 1. Draw the "helmet" to mark the distance from the head. Straight hair usually is not very voluminous, so you don't have to add a lot of distance. Advertisement.
If you want to make the hair more detailed, you can add lines following the rhythm. Be careful when drawing these lines inside the wavy strands, though—they may look too heavy with long lines inside. Instead, try to pick your pen/pencil up from time to time to make the lines less continuous.
Hair is a very complex subject to draw, because it's like a substance that can take many shapes and forms. Because of this, manga artists have developed a special method of simplifying hair. In manga or anime, you draw hair as a mass or a cloth. This way it can be drawn quickly, with exaggerated shading that conceals the lack of detail.
Although a wavy hairstyle may look quite voluminous at first, it doesn't add a lot of distance to the top (of course, feel free to modify it for an exaggerated effect!).