All about the hair

A "Gibson" Girl by Charles Dana Gibson.

Charles Dana Gibson (September 14, 1867 – December 23, 1944) was an American graphic artist, best known for his creation of the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century (from Wikipedia).

Primarily, Gibson was a pen & ink artist and boy was he good! His drawings (of "Gibson" girls and everything else) were wonderful and his lines sharp. The illustration I'm working on at the moment requires one of the characters to have some pretty righteous hair and I referred to Gibson when thinking about how to draw it. For my money, Gibson is the best choice to study if you want to understand how hair moves in ink.

As I contemplated Gibson at breakfast yesterday, I took a look Matt's curly hair. Fascinated, I picked up a pen and a napkin and did a very fast sketch of him working on his laptop. Here's the sketch. Although very rough, I think I successfully captured the movement of his (at that moment) very messy hair with just a few pen strokes.

Matt working on his laptop.