Hair is a fascinating theme for the artist, whether it be the bobbed and shingled hair of the modern girl, the floating locks of the mermaid, the small boy's cropped poll, or the silvery ringlets of old age.
Hair is a strangely deceptive substance. It expresses, though it veils, the form from which it springs. It may lie thick as a cloak, or as lightly as the fluff of a feather; it can be coiled as massively as gleaming metal, or crimped with strange outstanding puffs and bushes; it may be clipped short as a beard or trained in wisps of whiskers. There is no end to the tricks played by (and upon) the hairs of our head.
Small wonder that we find hair a difficult, baffling subject!
Says Mary Plaintively:
"My hair"—she is of course speaking of a drawing—"looks like a wig."
"And mine like a doormat," adds Madge, even more plaintively.
The reason why the hair in our drawings resembles wigs and doormats is that when drawing the substance of the hair itself we forget the shape beneath the hair. Also, that hair has very peculiar qualities of its own. Every coil, every cluster of curls, every curl, has its own shape, its own light and shade. It has a beginning and an ending. Hair doesn't rise stiff and stark from the face and head like a new brush, but in soft down, in short, silky hairs merging into long locks. False hair and false beards look false because they do not grow gradually as hair grows from the skin.
Note the way in which the hair springs from the scalp, the thickness of the roots, the silky tendrils of the temples, the soft down at the nape of the neck. When we are young our hair springs thick and long. When we approach old age the hairs thin, not suddenly, but gradually. And the reason that shingled hair has an artificial appearance when seen from the back lies in the fact that the barbers shave the smooth fine hairs on the nape of the neck.
Look at Rosemary's little curls. The hair clasps the little
