V. Where did I get the idea to write this book?

After years of doing the same haircuts in the same way, I began to lose clients.  I was losing my cutting edge and creativity, as well as my business.  I decided to invest every dollar I made in education and advanced training.

Before I knew it, I was drawing hair diagrams to document all of the haircuts I saw, learned and did, rather than writing everything down.  As I see it, hair diagram drawing serves as the shorthand of hair design.  My salon has served as my laboratory every since, allowing me to experiment with what I learn, discover and invent.

By drawing innumerable hair diagrams over the years, I have come to understand a great deal about creating and constructing haircuts.  This has led to the discovery of more and more haircuts, and more and more ways to cut hair.  Through my years of research and study, I have discovered that drawing hair diagrams is essential to haircutting and hair design.

After years of drawing and thinking about haircuts, I started to have a better idea of what I was going to do and to plan each haircut before I started cutting.  As I learned more and more ways to cut hair, I began to understand how to create unlimited customized haircuts.  Before I knew it, I could custom design haircuts for all of my clients. I started to design hair, rather than just cutting it, which completely changed the way I look at haircutting.

It is my belief that if you can draw it, you can cut it.  Once you begin drawing, you start to understand why, as well as what haircuts you can create and how to construct and execute them.  The more you draw, the more you will understand haircutting and hair design.  There is only one way to learn hair design—by obtaining the necessary tools and learning how to use them.  In this case, the tool is hair diagram drawing.  In order to learn hair design, hairdressers have to learn how to draw, and what to draw. Knowing how to draw hair diagrams can significantly improve the way we learn and teach haircutting.

Learning one haircut at a time will soon be a thing of the past for hairdressers—the future lies in learning how to create, construct and deliver all of the unlimited haircuts in your imagination!

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