Let’s Learn How To Draw Wavy & Curly Anime Hair

Curly & wavy hair one of the common & most attractive hair styles you see in Anime. It comes in many varieties too. One of them is the one we are going to learn how to draw in this lesson, where I chose to draw Lolita Caramel protagonist , Lolita de Calémia, who has an elegant curly hair, mainly made so to imitate her childhood friend, princess Sophie.

Here’s the final result we are going to achieve:-

Tip:- It’s important to take your time drawing each line, having control over the lines is important. I know it’s tempting to draw fast, and it’s okay to do so for the lines you’re already good at, just don’t make that a goal in itself.

To make things easier, you can always use guidelines to make things better.

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The Tools I Used:-

• Photoshop CC:- This is the Photoshop version I use, but you could use almost any other version or drawing program, as long as it works with your graphics tablet. If you would like another drawing application, like Paint Tool Sai or Clip Studio Pro, you can do that too. Just make sure to use a brush that supports pressure sensitivity.
• Huion Kamvas 191 (reviewed here):- Literally speaking, you can use any graphics tablet you like. Graphics tablet size is the most important thing here

How To Draw Curly Anime Hair, Step By Step

For the same of keeping this tutorial simple, I had drawn most of Lolita’s head, including the bangs. I only left the curly part of the hair to draw. You can practice on the base drawing here if you like:-

I started to draw the strands on the side, which is the simplest part of her hair. If you’re new to drawing, don’t be frustrated if you can’t do them easily, repeatedly drawing them will get you to do that easily. It takes time & patience to get there.

Now it’s time to start drawing the hair strands, there are unlimited ways to go about it, and you don’t really have to follow the specific lines I did here, but you can use them as a reference if you like. It’s all about knowing the pattern they follow, and to draw them to match that pattern. Some randomness are always welcome here too. As a learning experience, you can try drawing the lines I did, but it’s important that you later spend the time to understand the patterns.

I almost always start the next step by drawing the hair at the back. Doing so makes it easier to measure the space the hair is going to take. This is so the hair won’t become bigger or smaller than needed (In other words, it’s good for proportions).

I complete the strands here. Make sure to draw the lines one by one slowly, small mistakes are okay, don’t bother erasing them. Drawing slowly that way makes it easier to produce lines on my graphics tablets & pen displays, including the ones with parallax on them. Drawing some lines fast will come naturally later on (you can practice drawing them at a later time too)

I then fill the gap created by drawing some of the other strands. The good part about making mistakes while drawing the hair is that the additional lines can be used as part of the details. That’s not usually possible with all the other parts of the character.

Note:- At some point while you’re drawing, the hair may sound a bit repetitive, unless you drew many similar-looking strands, that’s okay. As we will add variety to the hair at a later stage.

Notice how the curls tend to go in various directions. The more you look and analyze the patterns, and the more you practice them, the better you will be good at drawing them. I know I keep saying this, but this is one of the essences of drawing (besides practicing the important things first).

Drawing the strands on the other side is the same process, we just don’t have the same space as the side facing us. Also, some of the strands are hidden by Lolita’s face.

I added the strands one by one here:-

To make it easier to add the back hair. I drew Lolita’s neck,

Since the back hair will be in the space between her hair and the neck. I drew the shoulder to know mark the area I am going to fill.

I added details to the hair to add some depth to it, you can do that after drawing each strand, or right after you finish drawing all of them. I even added some additional tips to the hair tips, that makes the hair look very natural.

Again, don’t be frustrated if you couldn’t produce the same result, I have been drawing Lolita for years, and I used to suck at it. I will consider posting some of my bad drawings in the past to show you how I used to be like, and how I am now.

We can proceed and add more details to the pictures, like coloring the eyes, or maybe draw her body. I will cover some of these things in a later tutorial.

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How To Draw Curly/Wavy Anime Hair In Action

You can see me do the whole drawing in the following video. Since I took my time to draw the lines slowly, I have sped up the playback speed a bit, but not too much to make it a speed drawing, so you can still see & learn from it.

And Finally

I hope this lesson made it easier for you to draw curly hair, there are much more to learn about this style of hair. Looking at all sorts of hairstyles can be a huge asset to do it better & better. And more importantly, practicing is a key.

If you have any question regarding this lesson, I am all ears.

If you’re curious about Lolita herself, I make short skits featuring her & the other characters, which you can download & play for free here. The short stories are slice-of-life snippets of their daily life. I plan to make the main story at some point in the future.