How to draw short swept-up hair

Short hair swept up off the forehead leaves the face open and puts the mass on top and at the back. The outline stays smooth, without the lobes of curly or wavy hair, so the shape itself does the drawing. Three edges place it: the hairline over the forehead, the edge around the ear and the end of the hair at the nape.

The figures are pencil plates of head 59 from our head rotation library, pencil, which draws each head from one 3D head at 22.5-degree steps. Head 59 wears short hair swept up and to one side from a low hairline, the ears clear, the back covering the top of the neck.

Head 59 at 0, 45, 90 and 180 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. How to draw a bald head covers the shape you're drawing first.

2. Measure the hairline and the top against the face

Head 59 from the front and in profile. Front: the top of the hair, the hairline, the brow and the base of the nose. Profile: the top and bottom of the ear and the end of the hair at the nape, carried back across the head. On a phone the front view comes first.

From the front, use the distance from the brow to the base of the nose, one face-third, as the measure. On head 59 the hairline in the middle of the forehead sits about three quarters of a face-third above the brow, a little lower than the usual one face-third, so the forehead looks short. The top of the hair sits about two face-thirds above the brow. Below the temples the sides of the hair fall nearly straight to the tops of the ears, so from the front the hair reads as a tall block with rounded corners.

Those numbers belong to head 59. Take the same two on your own reference: the hairline and the top of the hair, both against the face-third.

3. Measure the back against the ear

Head 59 from three-quarters behind and from behind. The upper line is the bottom of the ear (the near ear in the three-quarter view), the lower one the end of the hair at the nape. On a phone the three-quarter view comes first.

In profile, the hair's edge passes over the top of the ear. In front of the ear it runs forward and up to the temple, and below that line the side of the face is bare, with no sideburn. Behind the ear the edge stays close to the ear. At the nape the hair ends about half an ear's height below the bottom of the ear, as the lowest red line shows.

From three-quarters behind, the edge runs from behind the near ear down and back to the nape, and the hair ends at the same height, about half an ear below the ear. From behind, the hair narrows under the ears and wraps the back of the neck. Its bottom edge runs nearly straight across the middle, with the corners turning up toward the ears, and it is drawn with several short overlapping strokes rather than one hard line.

4. Draw the outline view by view

From the front, draw the tall block: up from the hairline to a slightly uneven top, then nearly straight down the sides to the tops of the ears. In profile and from behind, draw one rounded shape: from the front of the hair up over the top, round the back of the skull, then in under it to the neck. The turn toward the neck comes below the ears, where the hair wraps the neck.

Then the inside edges. From the front the hairline is a slightly wavy line with a notch where the hair sweeps to one side. In profile a short lock at the front stands a little forward of the forehead.

5. Show the direction with a few strokes

Inside the shape, a few long strokes show which way the hair lies. From the front, wavy strokes cross the top toward the side the hair sweeps to. In profile, they run from the top of the head back and down toward the nape. From behind the shape is mostly plain, with a few strokes in the middle and more at the sides near the ears and along the bottom edge.

Leave most of the shape as plain paper. The hair is short, and a shape filled with strokes reads as thick hair.

Three things that go wrong

A high, clean forehead. On head 59 the hairline sits lower than the usual one face-third above the brow. Raise it and the face gets longer and the hair loses its weight at the front.

Ears covered. Hair drawn down over the ears makes it read longer than it is. On head 59 the edge passes over the top of the ear, and the whole ear shows.

A back that stops at the skull. If the outline turns in under the skull above the ears, the hair looks cropped at the back. On head 59 it runs on past the ears and covers the top of the neck.

Practice it

Copy head 59 at 0, 45, 90 and 180 degrees. Each time, draw the skull first, mark the face-third and the ear, place the three edges, then draw the outline. Then draw head 59 at an angle the article doesn't show, such as 67.5 degrees, and check it against the library's plate.

For other kinds of hair, how to draw short hair with short sides, how to draw short wavy hair, how to draw short curly hair and how to draw a bob haircut measure the hair against the face and the ear in the same way, 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.