How to draw braids

Among various hairstyles, haven’t you felt that drawing braids is difficult?

This time I’ll be presenting a method to make drawing braids easy!

1. The structure of braids

Before I get to how it is drawn, I’ll touch on the structure of braids.

First of all, make three tufts of hair.

Take hold of a tuft on the outside, and cross it over the tuft in the middle to take its place.

Next, cross the tuft on the opposite end over the one in the middle to take its place, and repeat alternating that.

 

When pulled tight, it will look like the braid in the following diagram.

 

２．It’s heart-shaped from the front

Now that you understand its structure, I will present how to draw a simple braid.

First of all, draw a series of hearts as a rough sketch.

In a new layer, either on the right or the left side, think of one side of the first hearts as a tuft of hair and sketch it in.

Next, diagonally erase across the ends of this tuft in a straight line.

Now similarly for the tuft of hair on the opposite side, draw it towards the center to make it look like a heart.

Diagonally erase the ends of this hair, too.

Return to the original side, and make a tuft of hair on one side of the heart.

Repeat this until all of the hearts are filled.

The braids are complete.

If the tufts of hair are not erased and are drawn as long as possible, they will look like loose braids.

 

３．Turn sideways for a teardrop shape

When drawing sideways braids, draw teardrops as a rough sketch.

４．Let’s try to actually draw it!

Now let’s draw them onto a character.

Start out by sketching a character.

You can easily estimate the movement, direction, length, and thickness of the braids.

By stacking layers, sketch in heart shapes.

There are a lot this time, so I will simplify it.

(It’s color coded to make it easier to understand.)

Open up a new layer, and start by simply drawing the outlines of the hearts.

Fill out some detailed portions like with the flow of the hair to bring out the feeling of hair.

Color it to complete it.

It ended up a little long, but what did you think?

If you master the basic way to draw it, you can arrange various hairstyles.

If you get used to it, you will be able to draw it without having to sketch in the hearts, so be sure to try it out.

Your drawings will have a wider range!

Arrangement 1: Reverse braiding

Arrangement 2: French braid and highlights