How to Draw Hair

Designing/Drawing Armor

STEP 1.

First, I'd like to evaluate why armor was made and for what parts. Take a look at the bare human body. Notice if someone went into a war that included swords, you'd need protection so you wouldn't get injured. Here I list a few key points for reasons why armor is placed the way they're placed. 1. The face is vulnerable, blacksmiths create a helmet to rid of this faulty. 2. A neck is something very vulnerable, especially with sharp objects. 3. The chest is a very easy part to puncture and kill someone. Swordsmen would penetrate the heart, lungs, or esophagus to kill someone quickly. 4. The stomach is a classic area to injure someone fast. It may not kill an enemy quickly, but it can slowly. 5. Legs are easy to slice and stab when dueling with a skilled warrior. 6. Arms are vulnerable to being sliced off since they're so high up and in the range of sword fighting. 7. Shoulders are easy to slice/stab. You're little warrior girl will need heavy duty army to become totally badarse!

 

STEP 2.

Woo! Look at all the pretty armor on your fighter. She'll definitely be unstoppable now but all that weight will absorb her agility. Plate armor was a very strong and popular armor used back in the medieval ages. It was upgraded from Mail. Let's take a look at what the purpose for the armors serve. 1. A helmet is very efficient for fending sword attacks. 2. The end of the customized helmet will block swords from attacking the neck. 3. The breast plate is nice and sturdy to avoid nasty slices and stabs. 4. I made a nifty - spruced up 'Fauld of Four Lames' which basically connects the breastplate, protecting the waist and thighs. 5. A continuation of 'Fauld of Four Lames'. 6. Giving your warrior gauntlets will most definitely give her maximum protection from getting her arms dismembered. Stylize your gauntlets with cool little designs and ways to keep your warrior protected well. 7. Shoulder plates, a very popular piece of armor that can be stylized in many cool ways.

 

STEP 3.

These little dots are actually bolts that keep the armor screwed together. Add bolts at ever edge where there's attachments.

 

STEP 4.

Let's take a look at a different style of shoulder plates. The girl at the left is a mage warrior, who uses magic as her main attack/defense. The shoulder plates she bares on her shoulders are stylized with cool attributes that help her magic powers writhe.

 

STEP 5.

When you want to draw shoulder plates that have no other armor beneath, you'll be needing attachments that hold the two pieces in place. 1. The thick chains hold both the pieces so they keep sturdy. Having them secured on either side of the plates only synchronize realism. 2. Adding efficient designs that spruce up the character of where the warrior originated is something very important. Keeping themes of sharp edged objects will give a different cultivation of your character. 3. Having wicked cool horns on the plates convey the character's origin. This makes her seem she's more primitive and skilled than her counterparts. There are many diverse designs you can add to your warrior. My advice would be to explore your favorite video games, magazines, artists, and cultures to get unique designs.

 

STEP 6.

Alright, onto the drawing part of learning "how to draw armor". Draw the basic structure of your warrior's figure. It's VERY important to draw the figure of your character first so you'll have a nice idea on where to place the armor. NEVER add random armor without having a solid foundation for the character wearing it.

 

STEP 7.

Let's go ahead and add the helmet and breastplate. Drawing from the head and below is best to start. Evaluate the design of your warrior's helmet, but remember; they need cutouts for vision and breathing. Nothing comfortable is fight-able!

 

STEP 8.

Go ahead and take your time drawing the gauntlets, shoulder plates, and 'Fauld of Four Lames'. Take your time and use a ruler if necessary.

 

STEP 9.

Next, add the leg guards and extra details to spruce up the design around the upper body armor.

 

STEP 10.

Lastly, use your imagination and add some spiffy designs. Don't forget to add those bolts that melt the armor together.

 

STEP 11.

Ah, your finished drawing! Take your time and erase all the un-needed guidelines and you should be set for inking! I would recommend using Micron inking pens for the best ink quality. Use line weight principles! Add thicker lines to areas with activity and depth. Use light lines for details and un-important parts. I hope this tutorial has helped! Good luck and have fun with your new drawing :)

 

Drawing Edward Elric

Step 01: As all of our returning mangakas will already know all of the blue lines you see in this tutorial are only construction lines and we'll be erasing them later on. So, it's important not to press too hard on your pencil when drawing these lines. You'll see our final lines in black towards the end of the tutorial.
We'll start with a fairly large circle in the middle of our paper. As it can be quite difficult to draw a perfect circle I recommend going around with your pencil a few times very lightly to get an outline of a circle and then draw your actual circle on top of that. It always helps to have a guide ^_^.
Step 02: Alright, mangakas, time for our center and eye lines as well as the jaw. Let's get started. In the pose I chose for Elric, his head is turned ever so slightly to the left side of our paper so we have to shift everything over slightly. And if we remember our drawing principles we should be aware of the size 3D principle where things that are closer to us appear larger. In Elric's case, this means that the features on the right will be just slightly larger and take up more space than those on the left.
Let's start with our center line. It's a pretty straight vertical that extends down below the head circle but it isn't exactly in the center but pushed just left of center. Next, we'll draw our eye line as a typical horizontal about a quarter of the way up the head circle. Next, we'll draw the jaw and chin. As you can see in the image above the chin is pretty flat, so if you'd like you can draw a short horizontal line below the head circle on the center line and then draw the curving lines from the side of the head to the chin line. You'll notice that the jaw line on the right is smoother while the jaw line on the left has more of an angle to the curve. Once you've got these construction lines in place, we'll move on.
Step 03: Time to add in some facial features. We'll begin with Elric's eyes. They are pretty rectangular but it's important that the sides of the eyes closest to the sides of the head are wider. Also, as we can see in the image above, the eye on the right is completely within the head circle while the eye on the left overlaps the bottom of the head circle on the left. Furthermore, the eye on the right is slightly larger than the eye on the left following our size 3D principle. Once you have your mis-shaped rectangles just add a "U" shape inside each to begin with, we'll add more details in the next few steps. Moving down, we'll draw the squiggle line just to the left of the center line and below the head circle for Elric's nose. Next, add the dot for his nostril to the right of the center line. Below the nose, we'll draw the straight line for the mouth that curves downward just a tad on the right end. Lastly for this step, we should draw the two lines for the neck coming off of the jaw. Please be aware that the neck line on the right is higher up on the jaw than the one on the left which is closer to the chin and shorter.
Step 04: Time to start on Elric's hair. We'll begin by drawing the large "M" shaped bangs. The middle of the bangs should be on the center line and you might want to add two small points for the tips of the bangs inside the neck on the right and outside the neck on the left. This way, you can draw the arches down to the points. The bottom lines of the block "M" will be straighter and they definitely overlap the eyes (about half the right eye and a third of the left). The upper lines of the "M" are not only larger but more curved. Once you've got the "M" to your satisfaction, we can draw the curving line for hair on the back of his head starting from near the top of the left leg of the "M" and curving around to touch the right leg of the "M" near the side of the head. Lastly, we need to begin drawing the collar of his jacket. So, let's add a "<" and ">" shape at the bottom of the head. On the right where the neck meets the jaw we'll draw our "<", and on the right we'll draw our ">" starting near the end of the right leg of the "M". You'll notice the collar doesn't close in the front and that the point of the "<" on the left is lower than the point of the ">" shape on the right.
Step 05: We're going to add some more hair in this step and spiff up the collar a bit. For the hair, as usual, there's no perfect way to do it and you can feel free to try something a little different or experiment in your own way. But here's a quick guide to my drawing, I'll go from left to right and top to bottom. So starting on the left leg of the "M" shaped bangs, I've added two large hair spikes on the side and two thinner, smaller spikes at the bottom. In the center, I've also added two hair spikes, one on each side of the "M". The spike on the right is longer and slightly thicker than the one on the right (size 3D principle again at work here). I've also added a little collic sprouting up between the arches of the "M". On the right side, I've drawn two more hair spikes to make the hair symmetrical to the left side, and forked the bottom of the right leg of the "M" just like the left leg. Now, we'll move down to the collar and we'll draw a second "<" and ">" shape just outside the one we drew in the previous step. And in the corners of the collar we'll draw a short straight vertical line down. Not finished quite yet. Now that we've got the collar we can add the two ">" shapes on the right side of the hair. These ">" shapes are more curved and softer than those for the collar and they are for his braided pony tail. Great work, everyone.
Step 06: Let's zoom in on the eyes for a moment and do some work there. Elric's eyes are a little complicated but we'll take each step in turn. Inside the large "U" shape we drew in step 3 we'll add another, though smaller, "U" shape for the iris and a small dot inside that on the eye line for the pupil. The pupil on the right should be a little larger than the one in the eye on the left. Then, we have to draw the sideways "u" shape in the upper left hand corner of both eyes that just brushes the pupils -- this spot will be a reflection spot in the eyes. Then, we can draw the eyebrows. On the left, we'll draw a strong checkmark shape with a little line in the upper right corner of the eye. Over the eye on the right, the eyebrow is an irregular line (take a look at the image above for some inspiration). Lastly, before moving on, let's draw the two small "V" shapes under the arches of the bangs with their points on the center line.
Step 07: In this step I've just added a few lines to those parts of the hair I thought were just dead white spaces and could use some depth and layers. Feel free to try out your own ideas if you'd like or use the image above as a guide. A couple of dashes can add a lot to your drawing ^_^. One thing we can't forget to draw are the lines on the eyebrows. We don't want just simple lines for the brows but a little thickness.
Step 08: Now, take out your eraser and lighten all of the lines we've drawn so far. We'll use our pen to trace our final lines in this step. One important place to pay attention to while tracing is the eyes. As you can see above, the outer part of the eyes are mostly hidden behind the hair arches so there's no need to trace those. Also, the inner parts of the eyes are unclosed and untraced. Also, when tracing the "U" shape inside the eye be sure to follow and trace the reflection spot. When you have all of your final lines in place, let's go back and do a little line quality work on the eyes and some shading. We should thicken the lines that make up the top of the eye. Also, we'll thicken the larger, outer "U" shape inside the eyes but not the reflection spot. Then moving down, we'll use our black pens to shade some areas, starting with the area just below the chin and just under the right cheek. When you've got that shadow, then we should shade the inner "<",">" shapes of the collar almost completely. You'll notice there is an empty spot on the tip of the collar on the left. Lastly, there's a small dash on Elric's neck that I forgot to add before, feel free to draw it in here in black.