As heavily (really heavily) requested, I now bring to you all a tutorial on drawing kinky coily curly beautiful hair. I personally don’t think there is any one way to draw natural hair, but for the tutorial below I use a custom made brush pack. Any square pastel brush will work wonders for you though! Unlike the last tutorial there won’t be do’s and don’ts but I will again start off with this warning.
If you have a character who is canonically black and wears wears their hair unprocessed and you choose to only draw them with straight hair instead thats #wrong. Let black hair be represented unstraightened.
First thing is first. You have to understand the basic shape of all curly hair.
Curly hair has a corkscrew shape called a Helix. What changes the look and overall denseness of the hair is how tight the helix shape of the hair is. The looser the curls the longer and more more S shaped the hair will be.The tighter the curls the shorter and coarser the hair will be in appearance. This is why black people with tighter curls appear to have shorter hair before they stretch out their coils. This is called shrinkage.
The hair types can be kind of tricky to navigate if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for. They range from 1-4 depending on who you ask. For this tutorial we’re only going to be paying attention to these six as they are the predominant hair types in the black community. The further down the scale you go the less S shaped the hair will be when stretched.
3A hair is the loosest of the curly bunch. It comes in a few variations and can even look like straight up ringlets depending on the person. Ringlets are sometimes most apparent at the end of the hair. 3A hair has a really noticeable S shape and spiral pattern. This hair isn’t really textured it’s quite smooth in comparison but I love texture so :/
3B and 3C can sometimes overlap on the same head. It all depends on the person and other factors like whether or not they styled their hair. 3B hair is looser than 3C with the curls being around the size of a thin marker. This hair is very springy,voluminous,and dense. 3C hair is also called coily curly because of how tight the curls are. This is the densest and coarsest of the 3 category but it also has the most volume.
To draw this hair use square pastel brushes or any square textured brush you may already have. Use a hard round brush to really define the ends and to draw fly aways.
Even though this curly hair is so tightly packed it doesn’t hang straight down from the head. The curls push each other outwards and thats what gives the hair a big appearance. This leaves a lot of room for extra shadows and pockets of space you don’t see with straight hair. So jot that down
Now we are getting into the coily and kinky hair types. This hair is very fine and is sometimes composed of multiple thin strands curling around each other to form one coil. It’s also dense! 4A hair is distinguishable from 4B because of its distinct S shape. 4B hair has a unique angled zig zag pattern. Both these hair types can be wiry and are less defined than other curl patterns. (Styling makes these curls pop severely tho)
4C is kinda new, but old to everyone who has this hair type. What’s fun and gorgeous about this hair type is that it can be wiry, coarse, dense, soft, fine or thin. Like 4B hair this hair type is very packed and less defined. Like all the other hair types this hair can be stretched and straightened. The amount of heat and method of styling will vary the results but a gentle styling of the hair will still leave it fluffy and textured. (But v much stretched.)
For this kind of hair I love using really rough edged round brushes on a medium opacity. This gives the hair a soft finished look.
Fun fact: the afro textures are so dense they hold shapes easily. This makes for some real interesting styling potential wink wonk
So the most fun part is coloring everything in. My favorite way to color is shown here and will be explained more in a Youtube video!
1. ) Block in the shape of the hair with a solid color. Start off with your shadows first and keep them close to the face.
2.Add your mid-tone second. Leave the edges and tops of the hair free for your lightest colors.
3. Depending on the hair type you are drawing you can go in with a lighter color to add the highlights of curls. This will really make them pop but this isn’t necessary. If you are like me you really just focus on how the outline of the hair looks.
4. On the outer edges of the hair I use the lowest opacity and lightest colors. For me this helps create a wispy and coiled look at the ends which is what I personally like on afros the most. Feel free to not do that. If you are not doing an Afro you can use a hard round brush to draw in defined s curls and coils at the ends.
Remember fly aways are your friends. Not all black people just walk around rocking afros so learn to draw other natural styles. The hairline is usually solid for 4 type textures but you can add baby hairs if the hair is styled.
If you’d like to purchase my custom brush pack for only $1 you can DM me (preferred) for details or fill out the order form on my commissions page. Be sure to add your email. Don’t want neat brushes? Support my Ko-Fi instead.
