Let's Grow Together

For those of you that don’t know what 4c hair is, 4c hair is a hair texture type that contains coils to small and tight that the hair appears to be more puffy rather than curly ( like to photo below ) this is in NO WAY to be confused with curly hair. there is a drastic difference.

As a black artist that primarily draws characters with 4c hair, I’ve been asked many times to do a tutorial on 4c hair so here we go~

before we get into 4c hair, lets take a moment to fully understand it by talking about hair texture in a general sense first

let’s take a look at this example of straight hair vs curly hair ( 1 type straight hair vs 3 type curly hair )

If you take a moment to compare the two you’ll notice straight hair is flat, it has no texture. Straight hair perfectly hangs down similar to liquid-like silk. It’s lack of curl pattern is the reason as to why it hangs perfectly flat.

curly hair on the other hand doesn’t lie down flat and silky like straight hair, It’s more thick. Curly hair in it’s raw and unstyled state has a trapezoid like shape this is because the sides of the hair spread more outward.

So why is this? Why is straight hair flat and curly hair thick?

the answer to that question is a thing called piling up. When it comes to hair texture, the shape of the hair strands aren’t the only thing that matters, its how the strands coexist with each other, Curly hair strands coexist by piling up on top each other.

moisture also effects hair texture too, different hair types absorbs moisture differently, thus the thickness of each hair type is different. 

…..soooo, how does this all relate to how to draw 4c hair?? 

Well let’s take a look at the drawing below. Notice how the arrows go outward more as the hair texture gets curlier. As we’ve already discussed, this is because hair piles up, The curlier the hair texture, the more it piles up on each other, the bigger it gets, the more outward the arrows go.

Out of any hair texture, 4C hair has the most curls. Because of this, the hair piles up on each other so much that it doesn’t lie down flat like straight hair, nor does it make a trapezoid like shape like curly hair, it instead becomes more cloud like.❤️

This is what you need to take into account when it comes to drawing 4C hair.

Think of it as piling up a bunch of cotton balls on each other. The most cotton on top of top to lead to a bigger patch of  cotton. this is 4c hair.

How to not draw 4c hair:

Garnet fanart. Let’s talk about Garnet Fanart. I notice a trend that when artists draw Garnet from Steven universe, her hair texture is usually changed to 3 type curly like texture. This subtle form of White washing has confused me because this is inaccurate. 

Garnet’s hair is in the shape of a cube. Though 3 type hair piles up on each other, it isn’t curly nor thick enough for their hair to stay in the shape of a cube. Curly hair lies down more than 4c hair. So garnet’s hair being in the shape of a cube is a dead giveaway that it is 4C. Why do you think hairstyles like flat tops are usually seen on black men with 4c hair? It’s because, the 4c hair texture is thick and strong enough to stay in whatever shape you put it in.

please, if you’re drawing a character with 4c hair, avoid drawing it like curly 3 type hair, this is very anti-black and texturist.

So, how do you draw 4c hair?

honestly, its the most easy thing in the world

i wanna clarify that blobby looking 4c drawings ( like the one on the top left ) can work depending on how cartoony your art style is.

Another thing that I want to greatly clarify when it comes to drawing 4C hair is, YOU. DONT. NEED. TO. DRAW. EVERY. HAIR. STRAND!…..like, seriously. I’ve gotten many messages about how 4C hair is hard to draw, and it’s always left me confused; but then I find out that the same people that have trouble drawing 4C hair, attempt to draw every single strand of hair. This is unnecessarily time consuming because it’s merely impossible to get every single detail down, especially when you have a simple cartoon style. 4C hair does not require much effort, all you’re doing is drawing lumps. It’s that simple, nothing more nor nothing less.

The reason why I greatly advise all of you to avoid drawing every single hair strand is because in real life, when you look at a 4C textured Afro, your eyes don’t pick up on each individual hair strand like straight or curly hair. 4C hair, appears to be more undefined and cloud like, so attempting to draw each and every individual strand is unnecessary and will most likely end up looking inaccurate.

let’s see how this actually works irl, shall we?

this is lupita nyong’o, a famous actress. she is a dark-skinned black woman, just like marina from splatoon, the character who jay and i accused artists of whitewashing, prompting this comic.

this is lupita nyong’o in the sun on a beach.

notice how she did not magically turn light tan!! crazy how that works!! she is still dark-skinned.

In 1975, Len Wein and Dave Cockrum introduced us to Ororo Munroe, aka Storm. An amalgamation of a shapeshifting character called Black Cat and a weather controller named Typhoon, the creative team tweaked some of the details and gave us the mutant we know today. Holding on to her Black Cat origins, she had cat-like eyes and distinctive eyebrows. Her eyes became blue and her hair a long, flowing white. Her skin was a deep shade of brown.

In 1976, Chris Claremont solidified Storm’s origin: she is the daughter of an African American photojournalist and a Kenyan princess.

Fast forward to today where the latest appearance of Storm features a woman unrecognizable from her origin. In a dusk-lit panel in the first issue of Marauders #1, a woman that we’re supposed to believe is Storm appears with skin this pale:

The Black Comic Alliance, the collective of content creators behind the viral #DCSoWhite campaign, has officially announced Stage 2 of its advocacy movement: DCBlackout, a coordinated protest calling on readers, supporters, and content creators to withhold financial support and pause content creation tied to DC Comics publishing initiatives until meaningful structural changes are made around…

Just in case you needed any convincing that they made their only main black Superhero a lot lighter then the original

First photo - Dc Super Hero Girls Bumblebee 2015

Second photo - Dc Super Hero Girls Bumblebee 2019

It's not really fair to give the character the same name, make the show have the same name, but lighten her skin.

Lighter =/= Prettier

In almost every interpretation of Bumblebee she is portrayed with dark skin

But when the newest DCSG came out all of a sudden they decided to give her a lighter skin tone and green eyes

I've noticed that in DCSG Karen(Bumblebee) has a very shy and geeky and scared of her own shadow personality. That's a pretty big change for a character whose previous counterparts were all basically "sassy black woman but is really smart"

So I don't mind this current depiction of her character's personality but I will say that its disappointing to see that the creators all of a sudden lighten a dark skinned girl's complexion all because she is no longer that sassy, smart-mouth black girl. But instead the timid, doesnt want to draw attention to herself, quiet, low self-esteem, loves cheesy romance, geeky, small black girl

I like DCSHG but this has always bothered me. The only other occurring Black female character is Selina and while I adore this interpretation of Catwoman why is the only dark skinned Black girl the villain?!?!

And I see yall in the notes with your "well she is still Black ain't she?"

Yes she is still Black but we are talking about colorism here. If you can only depict Black women as soft or shy by lightening their skin that still perpetuates a harmful message. We see this in a lot of shows and movies.

You got yourselves the main Black woman who is on the lighter side and usually depicted as well adjusted, pretty and refined. And then you got their sassy, loud ghetto dark skinned friend that always gets into trouble(and its meant to indicate that women with these traits aren't "pretty")

I mean, even if we were going to pretend that sepia lighting is an excuse despite that here look, I got simple fixed proof against that...

…Even so, that his skin is as light as Aang’s in the flashback is only half the reason this character is unrecognizable as Sokka. The other half is the fact that he has an entirely different face.

Like where the hell did those super defined cheek bones sprout from? Hakoda has more defined cheeks but they still don’t have that Western European indent. And the nose I think is what really threw me off. Hell, noses get bigger with age, not smaller. Again, look at Hakoda as a comparison for what you’d more expect an aged Sokka to have:

It’s done! Well, as done as it’s gonna get. This was such a project that there is more that I could have gone into if digging deeper, but it got the point where I felt like I was just repeating myself over and over, so. It is what it is, and it is long enough as it is.

Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.

Because in the game I'm familiar with Zevran has a much darker skin tone, darker hair, darker eyes, a wider nose, and thicker lips. Looking at this, these are two completely different characters, one of them is just a blond white guy, while the other is Zevran Arainai from Dragon Age Origins, who is, canonically, a man of color.

Whitewashing isn't just drastically lightening a character's skin tone (which you did do here) but also erasing a character’s other nonwhite features to make them look more beautiful by white Eurocentric standards(from @dalishious).

I've seen from your blog that you are capable of drawing characters with darker and/or more accurate skin tones like this Fenris or this gift art- so I hope you do the same for Zevran going forward, as well as including his original nonwhite/Eurocentric facial features.

Here's some resources I'd recommend for future reference:

on character design and drawing darker skin

on color picking from an ashy canon character design

on color picking