LEARNING CURLS...

Digital, Clip Studio Paint

Public service announcement! If anyone tells you curls are easy to draw, they are either being an expert in their field, or they're a fucking liar.

About a month ago - March 7, 2025 if my chat logs are correct - I decided to learn curls. Like, sit down and really learn how to draw curls. My first two attempts were pretty good! But they didn't feel quite right.

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Pretty good, right? The curls in image #1 took a huge amount of time. I redid them four times! The last image, the nude one, was mostly a body study, hence the busted head angle. The hair took the second most attention, while the face was done quickly just to tie it all together. The curls are cute! But the body is definitely the star. I've been enjoying drawing zaftig women. Anyway.

I was not about to leave my curls "good enough". 11 days later, I tried again. I took a bath with a notebook and fought for my life trying to work out a fast, easy way to draw curls. Newsflash: There are none. If you're like me and you draw individual locks of hair, you're shit out of luck. You do, in fact, have to draw every curl. But I did give it a good few attempts! Don't mind the red... I like the dark, and I'm blessed with a heat bulb in our 70s bathroom.

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Yeesh. Rough, right? Well it gets worse before it gets better - the curls are fine, not so much the rest of it. March 18, I tried again - i mostly wanted to attempt drapery. I'm not happy with this piece at all, but it isn't all bad - this is what made me realize I actually quite like drawing drapery. That's for a later time, however.

Not bad, but not good enough to quit here. Then... it happened. March 25, I tried my hand at "oil painting". Not with actual oils, of course. This piece will get its own post soon, but this is the finale!

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Ta-da! Isn't she beautiful? I find the colors to be a bit flat now, but considering I haven't done very much painting period, let alone traditional portraiture, I feel I did a pretty good job.

It's tricky to get original character faces just right, but I feel pretty good about this. The hair could use some improvement - there isn't enough depth to it - but no matter your mastery, there's always room for development. For my first time painting hair, curls no less! They look very good. And thank god I went to all this trouble - a few weeks after this painting, I was assigned a portraiture assignment, and for practice I chose curly hair. And look at how that turned out!