How to draw short wavy hair

Short wavy hair looks thick, but on top and at the back much of that thickness is the skull. The hair is a shell over it, lifted off the forehead at the front, and the waves live in its outline and in a few long strokes inside it. Draw the skull, wrap the shell around it, then break the edges into waves.

The figures are pencil plates of head 72 from our head rotation library, pencil, which draws each head from one 3D head at 22.5-degree steps. Head 72 wears a short wavy cut swept up and back from the forehead into a loose quiff, clearing the tops of the ears and ending at the nape.

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. Start from the wavy outline instead and the waves become the edge of the head, with the face too small inside them. How to draw a bald head covers the shape you're drawing first.

2. Measure the shell against the face and the ear

From the front, start with height. On head 72 the top of the hair sits a little higher above the hairline than the hairline sits above the brow, about one and a fifth times the forehead's height. Then width: just below the hairline the hair is about one and a half times as wide as the face at the brow, and the sides come down to the tops of the ears.

In profile, use the ear. The top two lines mark the top of the hair and the top of the plate's faint construction circle: the hair stands only about a seventh of the ear's height above it, so the height you measured from the front is mostly skull. Only the front sweep lifts well off the head. Below, carry the bottom of the ear back across the head: the hair ends at the nape nearly three quarters of the ear's height below that line, where it meets the neck.

Those numbers belong to one haircut. Take the same three on your own reference: the height above the hairline against the forehead, the width against the face, and the end at the nape against the ear.

3. Draw the outline in a few long curves

Draw the outer edge of the shell first, as a few long, smooth curves: up from the temples, over the top, down the back to the nape. Keep it smooth at this stage. The waves come next, and they read better as breaks in a clear shape than as a shape made of nothing but bumps.

The inside edge, where the hair meets the face, matters as much. From the front it arches over the forehead and drops to the tops of the ears. In profile it dips in front of the ear, to about a quarter of the ear's height below its top, then curves up over the ear and down behind it, so the whole ear shows.

4. Break the outline into waves

Now cut the smooth outline into lobes. On head 72 the edge is a run of bulges and notches of uneven size, some rounded, some jagged, and from the front the lobes over the forehead are bigger than the ones down the sides. The side outlines are broken into several lobes each, while the line over the top stays calmer.

Vary them, since lobes of matching size, evenly spaced, read as a pattern rather than hair. On the plates neighboring lobes differ in size, and some stretches of the edge run straight before the next break.

5. Add S-shaped strokes inside

Inside the shell, a handful of long strokes show the direction of the hair. On head 72 they bend like a stretched S, so the waves inside match the lobes on the edge. From the front they fan out from the middle of the forehead and curl over the temples. At 45 degrees and in profile they sweep back from the forehead over the ear. At 135 degrees longer diagonal strokes cross the back, shorter and broken toward the nape, and the bottom edge there is ragged.

Leave most of the shell as plain paper. A few strokes describe the flow; filling every gap flattens the mass into texture.

Three things that go wrong

Hair drawn as a hat. The outline is the biggest shape on the head, and it's easy to give the hair the thickness of a cap. Check the profile: on head 72 the shell is thin on top and at the back, and the skull does the work.

Waves all the same size. Even lobes read as a pattern. Make them uneven and let the outline run smooth in places.

Strokes that ignore the wave. Straight strokes inside a wavy outline split the drawing into two hairstyles. Bend the inside strokes the same way the edge bends.

Practice it

Copy head 72 at 0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees. Each time, draw the skull first, take the three measurements, draw the smooth outline, then break it. Then draw head 72 at 180 degrees from memory and compare where the hair ends at the nape with that plate.

For other kinds of hair, how to draw short curly hair, how to draw hair pulled back into a bun, how to draw a bob haircut and how to draw short hair with short sides 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.