How to draw shiny hair

You always wanted to give your fashion sketches a beautiful, shiny and full of life hair but you didn’t know how to draw it? This step by step tutorial will teach you an easy technique on how to achieve this. Learn how to draw and color realistic, shiny hair and bring something special to your designs. Have fun!

5/10

7 min

drawing paper
pencil
eraser
colored pencils
white gel pen

Step 1: Draw a hairstyle outlines

Draw the outlines of the hairstyle you like – long or shorter.

Make sure you’ve marked some of the ends of the hair and you have a hair path. In case your hairstyle doesn’t need a path, the same coloring rules will be applied to the hairline around the forehead.

Now imagine a few ellipses covering the hair. Two of them will be placed always on the top of the head. The number and position of the rest depend on the hair length. For the example illustration, two ellipses ( at the chin and at shoulder level) are just enough.

Step 2: Draw the highlights

Having the position of the ellipses in mind, start building the highlights with a very light color.
Start your lines from outside of the ellipse and finish about its border. For best results try to make the hairs gradually disappear as you enter the ellipse and leave its center white.

Find balance in the width of each hair. If you draw too many and too thin lines they will take you an eternity to finish; if you draw them too quickly your fashion sketch might look messy.Find balance in the width of each hair. If you draw too many and too thin lines they will take you an eternity to finish; if you draw them too quickly your fashion sketch might look messy.

Step 3: Mark the shadows

Shadows, of course, depend on the light source and many other things, but in this tutorial, we’ll use the basic shadows rule: What’s behind or in the deep is darker!
So color the area around the head using a darker shade, since it’s behind the face.
The area behind the ear is darker too and right next to the hair path there will be some shadows.

Step 4: Add the Base tone

Add a second layer of hairs that blend it with the highlights from step 2.
Pick a color that is darker than the highlights, but lighter than the shadow tone.

Every new layer of hairs starts further away from the ellipse and ends (blending) where the previous layer started

Blend gently with the highlights from the top and bottom sides of each ellipse. Remember not to cover the highlights completely- part of them should remain visible. Notice that near the path the brush strokes follow the head shape and are curving.

Step 5: Fill it all

Use the same color from the previous step to fill the empty spots of the hair. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect at this point.

Step 6: Draw 3rd layer of hair

Take the shadows color and the next layer of hair.
Start from the shadow areas. The lines should cover part of the base color but never touch the highlights. Keep the direction of the lines parallel to the outlines.

Step 7: Draw 4th layer of hair

To make the hair look more realistic you need to add a last layer of hairs. Use a color even darker than your shadows- maybe something greyish or even black for brunettes. Start the furthest away from the ellipses and move carefully in.

Step 8: Blend!

After you went through all the steps most probably you will need to blend the result in order to make the hair appear more natural and smooth. Use the same technique filling all the gaps and uneven parts that you don’t like. Work until you’re satisfied.

Step 9: Magic in my hair

This is an optional step that goes very well with most formal hairstyles. Add a few white dots in various sizes. You can even draw tiny stars here and there. Place these dots near the highlighted areas and be aware of not overworking it.

Hopefully, this how-to-draw shiny hair technique was helpful for you. You can use this technique to create amazing looking hair when you draw a braid or curly hair. Have fun creating amazing hairstyles for your fashion sketches and building a great, great looking portfolio!

Happy drawing!