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The 3rd in our technical art-making series, we're talking hair, feathers, and fur today. How do you draw those highly complicated, textured things? Well the complicated, difficult way is to draw every single strand of hair, every follicle of fur, and every filament of feather… But that has a lot of disadvantages! So how else do you approach it?

The simplest way is to draw the overall shape that the full thing makes up and just do an outline of the rough edges. So for a hair style that would be the full shape with some hairs sticking out at the edges, with fur that's sort of the same thing though it's a lot less smooth than hair, with feathers just draw the whole wing with a few edge feathers and for the feathers themselves draw some parting in the filaments. Then what you do is add some texture within the shape, but only enough to suggest the rest, the viewer's brain will fill in everything else.

If you want to get more advanced and painterly then you use the colours of the thing (feathers, fur, or hair), to create impressions of texture, shape, shadow, and highlights within it. The straighter hair is the more shine it will have, and conversely the curlier it is the less it can have, the same goes for fur, unless the hairs are facing you end on, in which case it has no shine.

How do you approach these things?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Grapeshot - A charmingly, whimsical, sea themed folky tune, promising adventure, action, booty, and freely flowing grog. Dance a little jig to the joyous violin!

Topics and shownotes

Links


Featured comic:
Pos Adventure - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/feb/24/featured-comic-pos-adventure/

Featured music:
Grapeshot - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Grapeshot/ - by Mercuryviruscomic, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/


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