How to draw a bob haircut

A bob is hair cut to about chin length, falling from the crown past the ears. It is one mass with a clear outer shape and a clear bottom edge, and those two things decide whether it reads as a bob, so draw the mass first and the strands last.

The figures are pencil plates of head 20 from our head rotation library, pencil, which draws each head from one 3D head at 22.5-degree steps. Head 20 wears a bob that ends between the mouth and the chin, with the ears left uncovered.

Head 20 at 0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees. On a phone the four run top to bottom in the same order.

1. Draw the head first

Block in the bald head: the ball of the cranium, the brow line, the ears, the jaw and the neck. The bob hides most of the skull, so it's tempting to start from the hair's outline and treat it as the edge of the head. The hair then loses its thickness, and the face and ears get placed against the wrong shape. With the skull drawn first, you can see how far the hair stands off it. How to draw a bald head covers the shape you're drawing first.

2. Measure the mass against the face and the ear

Head 20 from the front and in profile. Front: the red ticks mark the outer edges of the hair and the edges of the face at the brow. Profile: the red lines carry the top and the bottom of the ear back across the hair behind it. On a phone the front view comes first.

From the front, measure at the brow. On head 20 the hair there is a little over one and a half times as wide as the face between the hair's inside edges, and below the brow its sides fall nearly straight down past the ears. Then they turn in toward the jaw and stop between the mouth and the chin.

In profile, use the ear. Carry its top and bottom back across the hair, as the red lines do. Just behind the ear, the bottom edge of the bob sits about a third of the ear's height below the lobe line. It drops to about half the ear's height below the line partway back, then curves up at the back of the head to about the level of the lobe.

Those numbers belong to one haircut: a shorter bob ends higher, and a fuller one is wider at the brow. Take the same two measurements on your own reference: the width at the brow against the face, and the bottom edge against the ear.

3. Draw the outline as one shape

Draw the outer edge of the hair in a few long lines: from the crown, down the sides, around the back. In profile the back of head 20's bob swells out past the skull and then turns in near the bottom edge, toward the nape, so the mass looks heavy and rounded at the back.

The hair also has an inside edge, where it meets the face. From the front it frames the forehead and runs down the temples to the ears. In profile it curves down from the temple to just above the ear, with a few strands over the top of the ear.

4. Put the ears in front of the hair

Head 20's hair is tucked behind the ears. From the front the ears sit over the mass, and its outline runs outside them. In profile the hair's front edge curves behind the ear, so the whole ear shows. If the hair covers the ears on your reference, place the ears anyway and draw the hair over them, so the head keeps its size under the hair.

5. Shape the bottom edge

The bottom edge matters most, because a bob is defined by where it ends. On the plates it breaks into short, uneven ends, and at 135 degrees you can see the whole edge across the back of the head, broken in the same way.

Keep the edge as one shape that follows the slope you measured, then break it with small notches and curves of different sizes, since notches that all match look as stiff as a ruled line.

6. Add a few long strokes

Inside the mass, a few long strokes show the hair falling from the crown to the bottom edge, curving around the head as they go. From the front and at 45 degrees they are light and sparse on head 20, and most of the mass is plain paper; the 135-degree view carries more texture, heaviest low down near the edge.

Three things that go wrong

A helmet. A smooth, even outline with a straight bottom edge looks like a hat, so break the bottom edge and let the outline swell at the back.

No skull under the hair. The hair outline is the biggest shape on the head, and it's easy to read it as the skull's edge, so the hair ends up with no thickness. Draw the skull first, and check the hair's width at the brow against the face.

A level bottom edge in profile. On head 20 the edge drops from the ear to a low point partway back and curves up at the back, so a level edge makes the bob look pasted on.

Practice it

Copy head 20 at 0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees. Each time, draw the skull first, measure the width at the brow and the bottom edge against the ear, and then draw the outline. Then draw head 20 at 67.5 degrees from memory and compare the width and the slope of the bottom edge with that plate.

For other kinds of hair, how to draw short curly hair and how to draw hair pulled back into a bun use the same measurements, and how to draw a hairline places the edge where the hair meets the face. The head rotation library, pencil has 110 heads drawn in pencil at 22.5-degree steps, with a range of hair, short and long, straight, curly and tied back.

This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.