The character I’m currently drawing has pigtail braids, and they aren’t just hanging straight down, so I totally hit a wall trying to figure out how to draw them.
No choice but to slow down and practice braiding, you know?
The Troublesome Braids
Here they are. I can’t draw this. Why is it curling like that…?
It became obvious I had no idea how to draw them when I was just doing the color rough, so I stopped everything and went back to studying how to draw braids for the first time in a while.
Starting with a Template
I tried drawing based on a vague feeling, but nope, still confusing.
I’ve practiced braids before, but I’ve completely forgotten how, so I started scavenging on YouTube.
One video suggested that it’s okay to just use a template at first to get used to it.
There are a few templates, but I remembered the one where you line up the letter “Y” to create the braid.
Here’s what I drew following that method:
It kind of looks like one, but there’s something subtly creepy about it.
If you ask me where exactly, I’m not even sure myself.
The tutorial said not to worry about the structure and just get used to drawing using the template, but I got too curious and decided to research how a braid is actually structured.
And that’s how my time gets sucked away.
Anyway, I tried coloring the strands to check if it’s actually braided, just like you often see in braid tutorials.
It looks messy overall, but it is technically a braid.
I looked closely and felt that the connections between the individual strands were somewhat unnatural.
The same-colored dotted sections should be going underneath and coming out here, but I just connected them randomly, which I think is why it looks unnatural.
Still not quite right.
When you’re stuck drawing, check the real thing.
Braiding and Taking a Photo
I braided some actual hair to get a good look.
It’s beautifully braided. A true plait.
Then I added some tracing lines over the strands.
I feel like I kinda get it, and yet I kinda don’t…
I drew it side-by-side with the other one.
I wasn’t trying to do a perfect copy, so the size ratios are completely off, but looking back, I should have done a proper copy.
It’s starting to look somewhat plausible. Maybe.
When I added color, it actually looked like a braid in an illustration.
I’m happy about that!
Even though the unnaturalness remains and it’s wobbly, I think I managed to draw something that anyone would recognize as a braid.
I feel like I somewhat understood the straight braid, so I tried drawing wavy braids and looped braids too.
After drawing all this, what I learned is that if the size of the braided segments isn’t consistent, it doesn’t look like a clean braid at all.
I drew it over and over, but I just can’t get that consistency down.
My eyes and hands don’t have enough experience. I know what I want to do, but it’s just not stable.
Why is this so hard?
Ultimately, if I can’t draw the braid with a consistent width in the draft stage, it’s not going to suddenly look good in the line art or coloring phase. I guess I need to improve my fundamental drawing skill of accurately grasping and outputting shapes.
It’s a long, long road ahead.
Giving My Practice Character Braids
I gave her braids.
Since the focus is on the braids, everything else is super rough.
I want to ask myself “What kind of hairstyle is that?” but let’s ignore it for now. I looked closely at the result, and yeah, I haven’t gotten any better at all.
I know I can’t expect dramatic improvement after just a few hours of practice, but still, I’m a little bummed that I can’t see any results.
The truth is, I’m not super passionate about braids in the first place, so my enthusiasm is probably lacking.
Maybe for a while, I should draw one braid as a warm-up before I start drawing anything else…
If I can keep that up, I feel like I have to get better at braids.
But then there’s the major problem: When will Nazuna ever be finished?
Ugh, the struggle is real.
Time Spent vs. Weekly Goal
Anyway, I poured all my drawing time this week into braids. Here’s my drawing time for the week:
Starting from 13.5 hours, that’s about 6 hours and 40 minutes spent.
I’m totally not hitting the goal. LOL.
It just occurred to me: I want to add a feature to this tool to show what percentage of the goal I’ve completed.
If I start working on that, I’ll lose even more drawing time, though… What should I do…?
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