Ballpoint Pen Hair Drawing : How to Draw Chewbacca

1. Course Summary & Materials: Hello, everyone. Welcome to my brand new sculpture class number seven. And this is another class in the series that I started with my sketchbook, and we are drawing Chu Baca. Before we get started, my name is Ivan Florentino Ramirez. I graduated from California State University Fullerton. I have experience with life drawing, life painting, gesture drawing, graphic design. Simple animation, also digital drawing and painting. And with the shorter course, going to teach you how to use ballpoint. Now, this tiny sketchbook, this is a pocket sketchbook. This one is a tiny, tiny size. This one is only 3.5 by 5 ", and this is a perfect size because not only are we able to dedicate ourselves to a tiny surface, we don't have to draw something large, and it's going to be a quick one, especially for a fast course like this. And just like my previous class before, where I drew a spider monkey, and it was also under 15 minutes, this one is going to go all in on how to draw hair in a way where I quickly will break down hair shapes, patterns and how to apply strands of hair while using pop culture as our subject matter. And even better, this course is aimed for beginners, but anyone from intermediate to advanced artists can participate in this class. And all you're going to need for this is a few materials. The best part of it all is that we only need literally three materials. We need our sketch number two pencil for our underdrawing and several black cheap ballpoint pens. You can also use the dark blue ones as well. And I will be providing a high resolution photo of our subject so that you can follow along. So do you have your materials ready? Let's begin. 2. Chewbacca Sketchbook Drawing: So for my tiny sketchbook that I'm almost finished with, I wanted to draw Chubaka from Star Wars. And one of the reasons I wanted to do so was because Jubaka is all covered in lots and lots of hair, lots of fur. So I wanted to see how much I can push the detail with these cheap ballpoint pens. These are black ballpoint pens. One of them is almost running out, so it does give it that gray middle tone look, while the newer one is more of a solid black, and that will help out with those shadows under the eyes, the black nose, the mouth, and some of the dark hair on the bottom and below his mouth. And for this course, all we need is a small sketchbook, anything from a size 4 " by 5 " or four by seven. Anything very small? Because again, this is going to be something that we're going to use as a tool to learn realism, especially drawing hair because chubaca is literally covered in fur and lots of curly strands of hair. This is going to help us when we do want to create something larger and when we do want to invest time in drawing human hair, female hair, and things like that. So all you need is a sketchbook or just draw smaller on a piece of paper, a drafting pencil or any light to be pencil, a few black ballpoint pens. And if you do need one, eraser. And again, I started drawing with a drafting pencil, and it's a very light HB drafting pencil. And this, I wanted to make sure that the proportions were correct. So I always start off with using an under drawing with pencil. This makes it a lot easier for less mistakes when I'm using my pen, which can be permanent. And with your reference vote already, I started this drawing with the nose first because it is in the middle of the drawing, and I worked my way out. And again, think about it in shapes. The nose looks like a diamond, and very lightly, I drew that diamond and started working my way into the eyes, and I started curving his very tiny eyes and around that and worked my way down to his mouth and slowly started creating the teeth, and without going into super details because we're thinking everything in shapes before we start applying our ink. And if you notice this red arrow that I provided, everything is in shape. So what I'm leaving solid black areas is because I'm going to fill that in with my black bolt point pen. So you'll notice the solid nose around the eye area and his mouth and some of the top of his hair and the bottom of his chin, I'm going to purposely leave that in larger shapes because we don't need to waste our time filling that in with pencil. And looking back at this footage, I do apologize that there was a few parts that I completely forgot that my battery died. So please bear with me as I know that it kind of just jumped from one area to another, especially with the pen. But I will be adding some helpful examples on the top in this video just to kind of show you how hair works. It doesn't matter if you're using pencil or pen. But what I tend to do is draw from where the hair is growing from. So you'll notice that I draw in a few lines starting from the nose, working my way up and around his head and just start curving them. So what you want to avoid is doing completely straight lines next to each other because that will make the form feel flat. So, this means that you're going to work around and curve lines, and this is going to give it dimension and that three D look, that realistic look that we're going for. And I'm going to emphasize this. The skull is spherical. So most hairstyles you will draw will be affected by the skull underneath. So it's very important to think of the ball when working on the overall value changes when drawing strands of hair. So what we're going to do is add volume to the hair. So this means that hair strands are grouped together into locks. So it's important to simplify and think about the geometric shape of the locks before adding texture. So adding texture to the strands should not take away from the illusion of volume. We can simplify a lock of hair into its basic form using three elements, the highlights, the half tones, and the shadows. So here's an example. And again, feel free to pause whenever you like, because this is a course of taking your time with how you're drawing. You can always go at your own pace. And I left a lot of helpful arrows like you do here. These red arrows are showing you which way to curve the hair. And again, you can always turn your paper or sketchbook to make sure that your hand is comfortable, especially since we are going to be curving his long strands of hair all the way around from his nose, all the way to the top of his head. And even when we're working in his mustache and beard area, where we're creating lines from left to right. And again, the more lines you put next to each other, the darker it becomes. So right now I'm purposely leaving everything fairly light because we will be going into those deeper shadows later on. So the most important thing in the beginning of this type of a drawing is finding where the hair is growing. So if you check out here in the mustache area, you can start curving lines to the left, some to the right, and where his lips are at the bottom, you can start curving the lines downward. And that solid area around the eyes, we can start slowly darkening that because it's going to be in complete shadow in the end. And now, because this is a monochrome black and white sketch that we are drawing, we do have to think about the way we're going to approach his brown hair, which is more of a middle tone. And if we do leave some of the areas here that I'm pointing in the red arrows as paper white to represent bright white highlights, this is going to give us a nice contrast to our overall finished drawing. So the more and more I start darkening the nose around the area of the eye, the pupil, the iris, because it does have really tiny eyes, and also in this mouth, it's really coming together with a nice contrast between light and dark. And now that we have our basic shape of his entire head, we can start drawing more and more lines, and they can even be quick strokes and start making everything completely dense in those dark areas. And again, just avoid the lines being completely straight because you don't want it to have that flat look in the end. And because we have our handy reference photo right next to us, it's easier to have it on your phone. You can zoom in and out as much as you like to get those details that you want. And as I'm working my way towards the outer part of his head, I'm working my way all the way to the right. I'm still curving those lines all the way from the nose. And just a word of advice is you don't have to draw every single strand of hair. That is just literally impossible. And that's why it's important to have the entire face shaped first because it does give the suggestion that we drew thousands and thousands of strands of hair when we actually didn't. When we have a combination of solid shapes, a few strands here and there, and also the way that you thicken those strands of hair, the more pressure that you put, the thicker the strands of hair become. The less pressure, the thinner they become. I'm also adding very quick strokes of lines when I do want to just cover an area really quick while still remaining very light because, again, chubaca has different tones of hair, which are brown, a dark brown, and more of a mocha coffee to its entire color palette. So again, as you see right here, I'm more and more lines, and it's darkening everything. And if you want, what I'm doing is go into those areas that are somewhat dark, and just when all of those strands of hair start overlapping, as well, this is going to give it that dense and full look that very thick strands of hair represent in a lot of animals, like certain breeds of dogs and even the mane and tail of a horse. So take your time, and you actually, as an artist, can choose how far you want to push this hair detail. And lucky for us, again, leave some of that paper, whatever tone it is. Mine happens to be a tan sketchbook, so that's going to help us leave some of those tones for that white highlights that he does have in his hair, and those teeth can actually be almost the color of the paper as well. And I'm going to emphasize this. The skull is spherical. So most hairstyles you will draw will be affected by the skull underneath. So it's very important to think of the ball when working on the overall value changes when drawing strands of hair. So what we're going to do is add volume to the hair. So it's important to simplify and think about the geometric shape of the locks before adding texture. So adding texture to the strands should not take away from the illusion of volume. We can simplify a lock of hair into its basic form using three elements, the highlights, the half tones, and the shadows. So here's an example. So, what did you think of this Chubaka sketchbook drawing and what it is to create hair, lifelike hair. And hopefully you will be applying this type of lesson into your own drawings, into your own sketches and hopefully even into a full size drawing where you can take advantage in getting into a lot of detail while drawing human hair or even drawing animals like dogs or cats with lots of fur. And as an addition that you can use to do some corrections, I do have a white jelly roll pen, or you can even use some whiteout pens as well, just to kind of correct any huge mistakes that you have done, but that is very optional if you would like. So thank you guys so much for watching and make sure to upload your drawing in the project section of this course and see you in the next one. Bye bye.