For today, due to a lack of ideas, I'd like to show how I usually sketch hair.
Sketching hair requires a lot of attention towards the texture of the strands, the direction of your strokes and at the same time, the lighting. I think mastering how to draw hair is one of the best ways to improve shading and understanding how lighting works. Plus it's easier to draw since it has fewer elements than the typical frontal portrait
I'm at the point where i just pen things down right away. So here, you can see for the outlines, the braids themselves are in a teardrop shape plus there's this curved zigzag that should be followed in braids
I'd like to indicate that the lighting here is pointed at the back, thus the way I shaded it. Protruding parts of the braid will, of course, get more light so there would be little need to shade those parts
Then I made another sketch for colored hair. For colored hair, I usually go for 2 to 5 different colors, depending on the hair shade, texture, the light and if it has color then highlights, I guess? If they have. I did this with pink. That's the base color but as seen, the supposedly shaded parts aren't that noticeable, thus why I needed to add another shade of color that complimented it
The purple adds in more details too, making the hair look more realistic. More colors actually make objects look closer to the real item when blended properly
That's it for today. My motivation to draw people again is kind of hiding from me right now so please don't mind the quick sketches
You're so good. I love this. I haven't tried using pen as medium, maybe I should practice it sometimes