How to Draw a Braid

One of my greatest drawing feats was a total fluke.

For years I had it in my head I was going to draw braids. From the influence of Rapunzel to my endless fascination with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, I drew and drew. But I could not figure out how to draw believable braids. You can fake it for only so long.

When I was about 11, I had an epiphany. Whilst sprawled on top of my grandparents' bed in their magnificent house in Minnesota, it came to me. I don't know how, but I was drawing and decided to put a few interlocking lines together. I wasn't trying to draw braids per se - I had given that up. But braids I drew. And they looked like braids. Once I saw what I had done, I panicked. Would I remember how to do it again? I drew the same sequence of shapes again. Braids! It was like I had spent all my unconscious hours in my brain trying to figure out this braid pattern. Never having had long hair myself or any sisters, I had no one to practice on. My brain must have been putting it together piece by piece over the years, because this winter day was pivotal. If I could draw braids, what else could I do?

And with that, please enjoy the first time I have done a braid drawing demo. 

And that is how I did it then. I wonder if I have that first successful attempt locked away somewhere with childhood memories in boxes? Maybe one day I'll find it. 

The funniest thing is that I remember exactly where I was when I figured out a drawing problem that evaded me for years. 

It was the first time I began to really understand how practice pays off.

Drawings © Johanna Westerman 2016

I so much wanted long hair when I was little - we twisted yarn into "braids" and those were my flowing locks. And I sit here with my hero grandpa.