How to Draw Hair - Realistic Graphite Hair in 8 Steps

With an HB and very little pressure, sketch the main clumps and waves of the hair as they fall from the parting, following the direction each one flows. Do not draw a hard outline of the whole hairstyle and fill it in. That is the first beginner mistake, and it produces hair that looks like a helmet.

Hair is a set of overlapping sections. The sketch only needs to show where each one starts and where it goes.

Switch to a B and start shading where the shadows sit: under each clump that overlaps another, close to the scalp, and along the inside curve of every wave. Leave the highlight areas completely bare. You are laying out a plan of light and dark, not finishing anything, so keep it soft and adjustable.

Each pencil stroke should move in the direction the hair grows and curve the way the wave curves. Long, flowing lines, laid down in thin layers. Never stiff back-and-forth scribbling, which is the mistake that leaves hard, ugly highlight edges and makes a section look like a scribble instead of hair.

Build tone by adding layers rather than pressing harder. Pressure is what makes graphite go shiny.

Blend the layers with a colourless blender pencil, working in the same direction as the strokes so the gradient still flows. A blending stump or a soft brush does the same job. What you must not use is a finger: skin oil sinks into the paper, the shading goes uneven, and every layer you add afterwards is patchy.

Go into the deepest shadows, under and between the clumps, with a darker pencil, a 4B or 6B, and use the B for the mid-tones between the shadows and the highlights. Blend again, keeping every stroke in the direction of the hair. The drawing should now read as light, medium and dark with soft transitions between them.

Take a small, sharp eraser and lift graphite out along the crown of each wave, where the light would catch the hair. Pull the eraser in the direction of the strand. Vary the highlights, some bright and long, some faint and short, so they do not turn into stripes.

Uniform highlights are the fastest way to make a hair drawing look fake.

Move through the rest of the hair one section at a time, giving each the same sequence: map the shadow, lay the mid-tones, blend, lift the highlights. Trying to do the whole head at once loses the plan. Keep the pressure light throughout so the graphite stays matte under the light, and step back often to check the sections agree with each other.

When everything is blocked in, go back over the drawing and add detail only where a clump meets a shadow: a few darker lines drawn into the gap, and a few bright strands lifted out beside it. That contrast between a deep shadow and a bright strand right next to it is what makes hair read as real from across the room.

You are not drawing individual hairs. Nobody sees hair as strands; they see clumps with light on them.