How do I draw hair without drawing every strand?

The instinct with hair is to draw hairs. It produces a scratchy, flat, uniform texture that reads as fibre rather than as hair, because real hair is seen as masses catching light, not as a countable set of filaments. Work from the largest shape down, exactly as you would with anything else, and only descend to the strand at the very last stage.

Step by step

1. Draw the skull first and the hair on top of it.Hair has volume and sits above the bone with a gap. Drawing the hairline onto a skull you have already constructed prevents the flat cap of hair painted onto the outline that most beginner portraits have.
2. Block the whole mass in as one silhouette.Squint at the reference until the hair becomes a single dark shape and draw that shape accurately, including the parting and the way it breaks up at the edge. This shape carries most of the likeness.
3. Shade it as a form, not a texture.The hair mass has a light side, a shadow side and a core shadow, exactly like any rounded object. Establish that before any strands exist. Roots are darker; the ends catch light.
4. Find the band of highlight.Smooth hair shows a broad band of light running around the head where the surface turns towards the light — soft-edged, following the curve of the skull, not a stripe. On curly hair it breaks into many small highlights following each curl.
5. Break the mass into a few large clumps.Five or six, not fifty. Each clump has its own light and shadow and its own direction. The shadow between clumps is where the darkest darks live, and it is those darks that read as depth.
6. Draw strokes that follow the growth direction and taper.Every mark starts at the root and flicks off at the end, with the pencil lifting so the line thins. Marks of even weight along their length look like wire. Follow the curve of the head with the whole stroke.
7. Work dark to light with an eraser.For light or blonde hair, shade the mass and then lift the light strands out with a sharpened putty rubber or an eraser pencil. Pulling light out of dark is far more convincing than drawing dark lines onto white paper.
8. Detail the edges last and sparingly.Where hair meets the background, a few flyaway strands escaping the silhouette sell the whole thing. A dozen is plenty. The interior can stay as tone.

Tips

• Curly and afro-textured hair reads as clusters of small forms rather than long bands. Establish the overall silhouette, then the clumps, then a few defined curls at the edge — the same order at a different scale.
• Hair is rarely as dark as it appears. Even black hair has strong highlights and takes on the colour of the light around it; drawing it as flat black loses all the form.
• The hairline is soft and irregular. A hard line where hair meets forehead is one of the tells of a beginner portrait — feather it with small tapered marks.
• Charcoal and soft graphite suit hair far better than hard grades, because you need a genuine black between the clumps.

Common mistakes

• Drawing individual strands across the whole head — The eye averages many uniform lines into a flat grey texture. The result reads as fur or wire and has no volume.
• Outlining the hair mass — The outer edge of hair is broken and soft almost everywhere. A continuous line round it turns the head into a helmet.
• Leaving the highlight as bare paper with hard edges — A hard-edged highlight reads as a bald patch or plastic. The band has soft edges and there are usually a few dark strands crossing it.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask