Our model today was Dalana Miller. I did a quick demonstration of drawing hair. I often see people draw hair using a bunch of lines meant to represent strands of hair. Similar to drawing trees or anything where there is a collection of a lot of little things we first need to address all the hair as a volume.
The hair is generally a spherical volume like the skull. I started by identifying the light source and blocking in the highlight and shadow as if I were drawing a ball. Once the hair is a convincing volume (consistent with the light logic you have have established) then you can start adding some lines to represent the texture of lots of individual hairs. See the video below for a more in-depth demonstration.
I also took took the opportunity to mess up many of your drawings by scrubbing them thoroughly with a dry paper towel. This is something I regularly do with my beginning drawing class and it is also part of my normal drawing process. Three reasons I gave you for this being a helpful practice are:
- It spreads some value into the negative space (background) of your drawing so when you start adding highlights they will actually be highlights because the area around them will be at least slightly darker.
- At the beginning of a drawing when you are trying to establish correct proportions and contour lines you will tend to draw several lines close together or makes excess marks. Scrubbing your drawing will blend those repeated lines together and the average of all those lines will often be more accurate than any one line by itself. It is easier to see what you are doing when you get rid of some of that visual noise.
- I personally feel the act of scrubbing a drawing helps keep me from getting too attached to any one part of the drawing. This is especially important at the beginning of a drawing. This will make it easier to see and correct problems. It will also keep you from getting too detailed too soon because the scrubbing will get rid of most of the details.
Thanks again for an excellent 5 weeks. I was very happy with the progress I saw you all make. Today was the best day yet. See you in the fall.