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Mar 2021

Inspired by a comment from @Lady_T_Musings, I thought I'd share a little bit about how I approach drawing beards!

Of course the best way to start drawing is to check out photos of real people with beards, and there are lots of great tutorials on the internet too!
But this is how I go about the stylized beards that I often use in my comics and illustrations.

So first is the easiest way of simply following your character's jawline. I like using simple lines to show sparse facial hair and stubble. Another way of doing stubble is painting a shape over the face while still following the character's jaws. This works for close-shave beards too, just darken the shape to suggest it's thick and full, past the stubble stage.

For beards where the hair has grown a bit longer, I still start by picturing a base shape over the face (1). I eyeball it, but you can sketch it in and delete later. I then add on hair (2), just as I would scalp hair. Remember that lots of beard hair have a flow and curl to them. Check out photo refs for these if you don't have thick facial hair of your own!

For beards where the hair is far away from the face, time to go back to drawing 101 and treat the beard as its own shape! Tight curly facial hair will hold a more defined shape. And the fuller the facial hair, the cleaner the cheek lines can be.

Play around and see what works for your drawing style!
For my more graphic styles, sometimes a zigzag will work just fine~

Feel free to share your characters with beards and how you go about drawing them below!

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    Mar '21
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    Mar '21
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Ironically, every male I have drawn to date are baby face XD. So, I will just share my icons instead.

I go about the same way, just follow the jawline to get the shape. After that, I fill them in. For thin areas, using hatching as seen in pfp and then show strands in the fuller part if the look is close enough.


If farther away, I kinda just simplify it like here below v, but I'll still use hatching to show of any thin areas if they can be seen.

The same goes for the mustache

I don't have many characters who have facial hair. And the only recurring one who has is me.:sweat_02:

So, basically, how I draw myself is as followed:
1. Start with the head.
2. Then doing the outline above.
3.Add this little "thingy" where the part of the underlip goes to the corners.
4. Doing the messy part and erasing the jawline. E viola.:tapa_pop:

bit hard to talk about what I do with dimitri since its changed over the years after ive gotten used to drawing his face. But lets talk about what i used to do and what I do when im trying to develop a new character

With dimitri I used to always draw his face completely and then i would draw his beard connecting from his cheeks and would measure the bottom of his chin down to where I want the length of his hair to be

At some point i got tired of drawing his entire chin because i got sad that i had to erase it every time XD so i just started to get used to the length of his jaw and where his hair would normally end.

The idea with Dimitri tho is usually this:

figuring out how "tamed" his hair is at the time adds to his own character and can add to other characters as well as how you tell them apart

Due to him trying to keep his beard Tamed but doing it poorly with his non dominant hand, He shaves his neck and keep his cheeks leveled but dosnt do much with the rest of it, hence why i make the stache part of his beard hang over his lips slightly.

I often like to just copy pasta when playing with new styles

Its also important to me to remember that more hair = more volume so if its suposed to be a thin cut or something thats been growing for a while it will come off from the cheeks more

:sweat_02:

I realize i dont have many "Steps" when drawing but I supose it helps that I do most of that thought prossess when Im doing major characters Ref sheet

I ususally just copy visually and like i said- after drawing him for 3 years i just start to figure out where his jaw is to cover it with fur XD

this is prob also why some of the characters in the comic who arnt main characters sometimes look a little funny if they have facial hair XD maybe one panel it seems shorter then it was before.

Fun to see how other people draw beards, I usually just use a lot of stripes, unless it is a really thick beard.

With Subo I always kinda imagine that it's not really a proper beard yet he just... has left it a couple of days too long since shaving. Though he definitely gets more stubble as the comic goes on so maybe his facial hair just grows really fast, which I can buy, because he's a pretty hirsute guy, inspired by real Punjabi friends.

Subo at the start of chapter 1:


Subo by the start of chapter 2, which is only a few hours later...

This is like those "me at the start of 2020, me at the start of 2021" memes. :rofl:

I mostly just draw lines for him. Maybe some day he'll grow a beard... but his beard would be green and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
.....

Oh my god, he looks like a dad.

When it comes to beards, I usually skecth a regular beardless face and add fluffy beard to it, treating it like fur.

If the beard is not fluffy, i keep the original jawline but erase bits here and there, drawing some small spikes in the missing bits. Then I trace very basic long stripes to establish the "beard area" on the face and keep adding more shorter stripes, crossing them, where the jawline is (so that it becomes darker). Finally, i draw some short stripes where the beard is supposed to end, creating a fading effect.

Here's an example, sketched directly with a pen:

Yo, this is fantastic! After reading this I definitely want to try mapping our facial hair before just trying to draw it on. When I draw facial hair, it looks so glued on to me since I haven't treated it like an integral part of a character's design, but I defo want to try doing it the way you've outlined. True I'm not the biggest fan of facial hair, but when done right, it's pretty neat and so I totally find it valuable to know how to do it with justice! Block it in then draw it, Lady! Seems like such common sense, but sometimes you just need another perspective to shine some light for you :purple_heart:!