How to Draw Anime Hair Buns Step by Step

Posted on by animeoutline

This tutorial shows how to draw hair buns in the anime or manga style. It consists of six steps with illustrated examples and easy to follow instructions.

Hair buns are an interesting and easily distinguishable hairstyle. Although they are not as common as some other hairdos a few famous anime characters do have them. This tutorial looks at how to draw such hair in a somewhat simplified way that is common for the anime/manga style.

As you will need to erase parts of the drawing in some of the steps it’s recommended that you do the tutorial in pencil (unless drawing digitally). Begin with light lines and darken them once you have all parts of the hairstyle outlined.

Above is the video version of drawing the hair buns. You can watch it for a detailed breakdown of the drawing process (shown line by line) and read the more in depth instructions below.

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Step 1 – Make an Outline Drawing of the Head & Shoulders

Before starting on the hair make a basic outline drawing of the head, neck and shoulders.

For a detailed explanation on drawing these see the following:

How to Draw an Anime Face (Structure & Proportions)

Step 2 – Draw the Hair Along the Forehead

For this particular hairstyle you can begin drawing the hair with the section that runs along the forehead (shown in red). As is traditional for the anime/manga style draw it as a series of pointy clumps. Start with the large on in the middle and then add the ones to each of it’s sides.

If you would like the read more on this drawing approach see:

How to Draw Anime and Manga Hair – Female

Step 3 – Draw the Hair Along the Sides

After you have the part along the forehead outline the hair along the sides and on top of the head.

Draw the side sections covering the ears and lightly curving around each side of the face with splits on their ends. Draw the top area curving around the upper part of the head. As this is anime hair you can give it quite a bit of volume.

Step 4 – Draw the Hair Buns

Finally, for the defining part of the hairstyle add the buns. Draw these partially hidden behind the head/hair and make them fairly spherical/circular in shape (but not perfectly so).

To indicate that the hair is wrapped up (like a ball of yarn), inside each bun draw several curves that will give a hint of the different layers.

Once you have all parts of the hair outlined you can erase the areas of the head that it covers. You can also trace over the drawing to darken your lines.

Step 5 – Outline the Hair Highlights

This last step of the line drawing is optional.

Inside the hair you can outline several sets of highlights that will show light reflecting form it’s surface. This will help convey that it has a smooth texture and give it a shiny look.

Draw the highlights along the forehead and the sides in streaks. For the hair buns you can make their placement a little more random as their folds will tend to catch the light in different places.

Alternatively you can create the highlights as you shade without outlining them beforehand or add then in over top of the shading with a white correction pen. If drawing digitally you can add them in a new layer.

For more ways to draw anime and manga style hair highlights see:

Different Ways to Draw Anime Hair Highlights

Step 6 – Add Shading to Finish the Hair Buns Drawing

To shade the hair first fill in it’s entire area with a solid grey (or color). Leaving the highlights white.

Anime hair buns forehead shadows drawing

Next, add the shadows along it’s different sections beginning with those along the forehead.

Generally shadows are created opposite the light source. In this case the shading will be done in a very generic way where the hair is in a well lit environment with the main light source somewhere above it. This means that the shadows will tend to run along the bottoms of the various clumps and folds (as shown in the example above).

Add the shadows along the sides similar to those along the forehead (along their bottoms).

Finally, add the shadows for the buns. Place a pair of larger shadows along each of their bottoms with smaller/narrower shadows along the bottom or side facing folds.

With all of the shadows in place you should have a finished drawing of the hair buns.

Conclusion

As mentioned at the start of the tutorial, when it comes to anime and manga, hair buns are not as common as some other hairstyles. However, it is a very distinct style that can be interesting to draw.

In this example the buns are drawn in a fairly generic way but there are plenty of variations in the anime/manga style. Some artists may draw them much closer to real hair while others simplify them even further and show each bun as just a sphere.

If you like these kinds of easy to follow step by step guides also be sure to try the following: