I need some help idk how to start or even shade the hair for this piece. I’ve never drawn a male before (ref included)
#Realistic hair shading help
sage moon
cinder gull
From what I can see you're going in the right direction! This is an awesome looking portrait!
With the hair you got the right idea with starting out with hairstyle general shape and then breaking into the details. However, when it comes to realistic portraits, it's best not to give a hard outline of the hairstyle but better to focus on the giving off the texture/feeling of the hair.
You do this by drawing the hair strands! It's is true when drawing hair you don't need to draw every strand and can just fill in the dark parts as shapes and it'll be enough to show the hair, but when it comes to the outline of the hair - in this case thin straight hair - as they reflect light the least cause they're thin, they kind of just blend into the background.
Since you're using a pencil since the hair is outlined by light to show the shape, I recommend coloring the bg into the hair and then erasing it to show the hair strands, and rince and repeat until you can get the softness of the hair quality in the ref. I've attached a ref of what I mean.
Also because you're using an hb pencil it might be hard to make the line with the softness you want since hb is pretty sturdy comared to b pencils, so if it's not giving you that texture you want, I recommend switching to a 2b pencil. Happy drawing!
sage moon
Oh my gosh! This is the help I have been waiting for!! Thank you so so so so much
sage moon
It’s still getting there but I feel more confident doing it now!
