Shapes, Values, Texture: My 3 Hacks to Make Real Hair Quickly

Hey everyone!

Today I wanted to talk about a simple yet challenging part of character design: making hair look great! As you know, my style doesn't focus on realistic detail but more on a simpler interpretation of reality. To come up with this style, I spent quite a bit of time illustrating real hair pictures. In doing so, I realized that three things usually helped me achieve that simple look while still retaining key information. Let's dive in!

1. Follow the Flow

One common issue artists run into is making hair look too stiff or unnatural. Drawing every single strand can end up looking more like spaghetti than actual hair. The trick here is to think of hair as a series of lines and shapes that flow together. You don't need to draw each strand; instead, focus on larger shapes created by grouped strands.

Instead of sketching individual hairs, try capturing the overall shape and flow by splitting the hair structure into groups and defining each group's silhouette shape.

1 Hour Exercise: Pick a picture you like, whether it's yours or from Pinterest. Open it in Photoshop and turn the opacity down. Draw on top of the picture and split the hair structure into different groups of hair. This training style is mostly for you to find patterns you can later reproduce into your characters. After a while, you might spot repetitive structures present in hair. After all, we might be different but anatomically similar at some fundamental level, and this anatomy structure is subject to the same physical forms.

2. Vertical Shapes Project Horizontal Values

Flat, lifeless hair can kill the dynamism of your character, making them look dull and two-dimensional. To solve this, add depth to the hair by layering values of light and shadow onto the shape groups of hair. The trick is knowing the direction of the values. Imagine the hair goes from point A to B; then the values will go from C to D. If the hair shapes start and end in a vertical direction, often due to gravity, the values should be defined in the opposite direction (horizontal). It's useful to imagine that hair is a group of paper slides coming out of the head.

1h Exercise: Search for a pic you like as a reference and change it to black and white, so you can see the distribution of values (lights and shadows) more clearly. Define the hair groups, put the drawing right next to the reference, and add lights and shadows as if it were a cylinder. A soft brush often helps build the feeling of values in hair groups.

3. Use Texture Wisely

The previous two approaches will help you build hair like a group of shapes, but if no texture is applied, the hair will look too uniform, lacking the texture that real hair possesses. The trick here is to spot where the viewer's attention would be and apply that texture right at that spot, which is often where the highest contrast is.

Exercise: Right where the highlight is, erase the bright value using small thin lines or a big soft brush. You can do the same with the shadows, but attention often goes to the highlights. Also, outside the hair silhouette, make thin hair lines that break the overall shape, adding an extra layer of information where contrast is.

Conclusion

The way I often tackle subjects like this is more general, but from time to time it's good to focus on one aspect, like hair today. I know not everyone has a workflow similar to mine. Some prefer to treat character creation piece by piece, like a puzzle. So, I hope today's tips solve any problems you might have. Notice that exercises suggest 1h, but this is merely a suggestion. If you can complete more than one study in one hour, go ahead; if not, try again tomorrow. One step at a time.

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