How to Draw Manga Hair (Part 1: The Basics)

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How to Draw Manga Hair

Drawing dynamic hair in manga adds an extra layer of personality to your characters. In this post, I'll show you how to draw manga hair.

As we all know, hair is made of many individual strands. However when drawing manga hair what manga artists normally do is to draw them in clumps and groups. As you can see in the drawing above, there are many ways to accomplish this.

Next, you need to understand that hair doesn't just grow from all over the head. Above I have shaded the parts of the head that hair grows out from. Manga characters have a hairline as well, so take caution not to draw the hair growing from above the hairline so that they don't look like they're balding.

Make sure to draw the outline of the hair at a sufficient distance from the head to give volume to your manga character's hair. A common mistake is to draw the hair very close to the head without giving enough space between them. You can vary the distance to create different looks e.g. shorter distance for thinner hair and longer distance for puffier hair.

The direction of hair growth is typically on a spot behind the back of the head. Look at the picture above to see how hair grow out from the spot marked 'x'. This of course doesn't mean that all hair grow out from that one spot, but instead it means that all hair moves away from that spot.

Hair Movement

Manga hair isn't a rigid part of the body, and so you shouldn't draw them in a static manner. When a girl manga character with either long or short hair moves, draw their hair moving in the same direction as the wind is blowing. Wind isn't the only thing that creates hair movement, gravity affects the hair as well. In the bottom right picture above, gravity causes her hair to fall down towards the ground.

There are two types of manga hair that are commonly found: straight hair, and curly hair. To add variety to your character's hair style, try changing the degree of curliness. Curly hair that is less pronounced (i.e not so curly) is sometimes called wavy hair.

Hair Type: Straight Hair

Straight hair in manga is somewhat straight forward to draw. After outlining the hair, draw many lines that follow the curvature of the hair to indicate straightness. Another thing to note when drawing manga hair is that it curves around the shoulders before falling straight down again.

You don't always have to draw manga characters with 100% straight hair; straight hair often curl slightly at its ends. The picture above from left to right shows 1) straight hair with slightly curling ends, 2) straight hair tied at its ends, 3) straight hair with very curly ends, and 4) completely straight hair.

Hair Type: Curly/Wavy Hair

There a two basic ways of how to draw curly manga hair, one is with the "C" shape and the other is with the "S" shape. As the curliness increase, extend the "S" curl longer. 

Below is a picture of a generic girl manga character with her hair drawn using the "C" shape. Notice that the direction of the curl can be towards the center, away from the center, or towards a single (left or right) side.

Next up is a step by step guide on how to draw manga hair using the "S" curls.

Step-by-step: How to Draw Manga Hair Curly

Step 1
First, draw the shape of the head. In this tutorial I will focus on the hair, so all other features e.g. eyes, etc have been drawn in.

Step 2
Lightly sketch in the overall shape of the hair using many different "S" curves. At this point, your drawing can be messy since the pencil marks are still light.

Step 3
Continue to draw in more "S" curves and add in additional details e.g. an extra curl at the top left.

Step 4
Once you are satisfied with the shape of the hair, continue by darkening only the lines that you wish to keep.

Step 5
Next, erase unnecessary line such as the head outline that is covered by the hair.

Step 6
I would normally draw in the face at this point, however you can do that later as well.

Step 7

Color in the hair by drawing parallel lines. In this example, I drew the lines from left to right only. What this means is that when the pencil tip reaches the right, I will lift the pencil up and start from the left again instead of drawing a line from right to left.

Step 8

Finish shading the hair. Notice that you don't have to draw long pencil strokes across the entire width of the hair. Instead, combining smaller strokes is sufficient as well.

The completed drawing. In the next tutorial I will show more on how to color and shade the hair.

Thanks for reading this tutorial and stay tuned for more to come in Part 2 of my How to Draw Manga Hair tutorial.

To be continued in Part 2

How to Draw Manga Eyes (Part III)

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How to Draw Manga Eyes

Eyes From Different Angles

The eyes look different when viewed from different angles. As the view shifts from front to the profile view (left to right in the picture above), the eye that is further away slowly disappears behind the nose until you can no longer see it in the profile view.

Generally, both eyes should be drawn with the same height, no matter the angle of viewing. This is true for manga girls eyes.

The drawing below shows the top view of the eyeballs, and how they are placed along the heads curved surface.

The eyeballs are located in the head's eye sockets, which are basically holes along the curved surface of the head. Now because these surfaces are curved, the outline of the eye changes depending on whether they are viewed from the front, or at a low or high angle.

When viewed from a low angle, the line of the eyes slopes downwards on both ends. As a result, the inner corners of both eyes are higher than the eyes' outer corners.

When viewed directly from the front, the eyes form a straight line.

When viewed from a high angle, the line of the eyes slopes upwards on both ends which result in the inner corner of the eye drawn lower than the eyes' outer corners.

The drawings below of a manga girl are an example of how the eyes should be drawn when viewed at from a low angle, normal angle, and high angle.

The guidelines mentioned above apply not only for when the viewing angle is high or low, but also for when your character is drawn looking up or looking down. For example, the low angle can also be used if your character is looking up, and the high angle can also be used for when your character is looking down.

The eyes, eyelids, eyebrows and eyelashes all look different when drawn from various angles. The above drawing of a manga girl shows how her eyes look like from the side, the 3/4 views, and directly from the front. You can refer to the drawing above as a chart of angles if you'd like. Practice this by drawing the eyes from the common angles at first, and later progressing into the more complex, uncommonly used angles. 

Manga Eyes - Side View

The basic shape of a manga eye viewed from the side is the shape of a triangle.

The eyelids cover a curved surface on the eyeball since the eyeball itself is spherical. So when drawing the triangle, draw the sides of the eye slightly curved to suggest to roundness of the eyes.

Below are some variations of the basic triangle shape that can be used to give your manga characters distinct looks. Play around with the triangle by changing the length of its sides, the degree of slant, or even the roundness of the corners.

Also notice that in the third example of the side view of manga eyes above, you don't have to outline the entire triangle of the eye. This however, is up to you to decide on for look of your character.

Closing of the Eyes

You may have notice that in manga it is common to have characters that are drawn with their eyes closed. Drawing characters with their eyes closed is an effective way of portraying a variety of expressions such as cheerfulness, sadness or more. I have even seen some characters that are drawn with their eyes permanently closed all the time.

As the eye closes, the upper eye lids move downwards until it touches the lower eyelid. Notice that the lower eyelid does not move up. The iris slowly get covered by the upper eyelid as it closes down.

The same rule applies when drawing the eyes closed from both the side view and front view.

Notice how the curve of the closed manga eyes affects the emotions of the manga girl above. A downward curve of the eyelids means that they eyes are simply closed, whereas an upward curve shows happiness and joy.

Looking Direction

People normally look straight ahead, and so the iris and pupil will be in the middle of the eyes. To make them look left or right, simply draw the iris towards the direction that you want your character to look at. Remember to do this for both eyes, or your character will look cross eyed.

Where your character is looking at gives an indication of what he's feeling/thinking, so use it appropriately. When your character is looking away, he is possibly shy, looking at his surroundings, or maybe remembering something. Mixing this up with eyebrow positions gives a variety of expressions.

To be continued in Part IV