Tuesday, November 4, 2008

How to Draw Hats - Men's Classic Fedora Hat

If you want to learn how to draw hats -- y'know...those 1940's detective-style fedoras that you see in the movies -- then take a look at these scans from a couple of old drawing books...

Old-school fedora hats can be kind of tricky to draw...and we have to draw a lot of them on Phineas and Ferb. Secret agent Perry the Platypus wears his fedora hat in every episode, so we end up having to draw hats from all kinds of angles a few dozen times in every storyboard.

Drawing the hat - How to Draw classic 1940's hats fedora

Click on the image above for FULL-SIZED page on How To Draw Hats


I recently found a couple pieces of excellent hat drawing reference that I shared with some other artists on Phineas & Ferb, and I thought I'd spread the wealth and share it with everybody else, too.

How to draw men's hats Drawing a fedora
"Draw the crown as if it fits directly over the skull, not the hair, no matter what angle is used for the hat. Some of the crown will not touch the skull because of the shape of the hat.
Center the hat on the face, using as your guide the imaginary line running from the center of the crown down to the chin."
Fedora How to Draw Hats tutorial - Taper of the crown
"Study the taper of the crown; Pay close attention to the correct angle of the taper of the crown as this is a style feature...The taper may vary with style changes."
How to Draw Fedora Hats - Brim and Face
One big reason that "how to draw hats" reference is so helpful is that you just don't see fedora hats very often these days. There's lots of great hat images in classic Bogart movies and other Film Noirs. I just watched The Big Heat a few weeks ago, and I couldn't stop looking at Glenn Ford's grey fedora (well, it was a black and white movie, so everything's grey...).
How to Draw the Hat on a Man's Head Fedora drawing lesson
How to Draw a Hat Fedora three quarter view
How to draw a Fedora Hat drawing tutorial reference drawings
Men wearing Fedora hats - Drawing reference classic film noir hats


UPDATE: Here's a link to an amazing page about how the creases are formed in hats. This guy takes ONE basic hat-shape and puts a bunch of different creases in the crown to form a whole bunch of different hat styles.

reference photos for how to draw hats and their creases at The Fedora Lounge

TRUST me...it's worth a look. This page will change the way you see (and DRAW) hats from now on. http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=10272