Video 67 Different Hair Types and Their Texture (Patreon)

✍️ (Intermediate) Practice: Different Hair Types and Their Texture
By Pogzart

Hair is more than just lines — it’s shape, weight, flow, and texture. In this exercise, we’ll break down different hair types and explore how to represent their unique textures using directional hatching and stroke control. Whether you’re drawing straight silky hair or tightly curled afro-texture, this guide will help you translate real hair behavior into your semi-realistic style.

🎯 Objective
Learn to draw various hair types by focusing on flow, clump structure, and texture.

Reinforce understanding of:

• Hair volume and shape

• Directional flow and clumping

• Surface texture through hatching

• Stylized simplification vs realism

🧱 Hair Types & How to Approach Them

1. Straight Hair

• Long, smooth, and falls with gravity.

• Use long, clean strokes that taper naturally.

• Hatching should follow gravity from root to tip with minimal waviness.

• Add light reflective bands by leaving soft gaps between stroke clusters.
  ✔️ Tip: Overlapping straight strands helps suggest thickness.

2. Wavy Hair

• S-curved and looser in form.

• Use flowing, wave-like strokes that interweave.

• Emphasize the rhythm of curves and volume.

• Hatch along the curves to show softness and bounce.
  ✔️ Tip: Follow a gentle ribbon-like path and keep forms grouped.

3. Curly Hair

• Tighter and springier with loops.

• Use spiral curls with rhythmic, looping lines.

• Suggest clumps instead of individual strands.

• Crosshatch with light curves for depth and form.
  ✔️ Tip: Focus on outer silhouette to show the "poof" of volume.

4. Coily / Kinky Hair (Afro-Textured)

• Dense, spring-like coils or zig-zags.

• Use tight, repetitive C- or Z-shaped strokes.

• Hatch densely to create volume, with deep shadows between clusters.

• Suggest texture rather than drawing every coil.
  ✔️ Tip: Treat it like sculpted volume with lots of negative space.

💡 Lighting & Form
Always consider your light source. Use highlights and shadows to separate clumps and define mass. Leave space where light bounces off thick areas of hair.
Use darker hatch tones where hair overlaps or folds inward.

✔️ General Hair Tips:

• Think in clumps, not strands. Hair falls in grouped shapes.

• The silhouette of the hair matters just as much as internal detail.

• Vary line weight: use thinner lines for flyaways and heavier for volume edges.

• Avoid over-detailing. Suggest complexity without drawing every hair.

🎨 Stylization Guidelines
You can exaggerate flow and shape in anime-inspired or semi-realistic work — but maintain the hair’s natural behavior.
Use bolder contrast for stylized work, and finer hatching for realistic tone.

🧠 Optional Challenge Ideas

• Draw the same head shape with 4 different hair types.

• Add motion: wind-blown, tied-up, or damp/wet variants.

• Try rendering only the silhouette of the hair using hatching and see how much texture you can suggest.

🔁 Practice

• Do daily 5-minute sketches of different hair textures.

• Copy hair from reference, then draw it from memory.

• Try hatching only the shadow areas of clumps.

• Practice combining hair types — e.g., straight with curls at the end.

Hair tells a story — about your character, your style, and your control as an artist.
Mastering texture and flow turns flat heads into living forms.
– Pogzart