 Today, what we're gonna focus on is men's cutting. I really wanna get in depth with not really the fade part of it. I'm not a barber. I am a hairdresser. A lot of my guys get more natural, lived in look. So I'm gonna show you guys some texturizing techniques. I'm gonna show you some clipper techniques, ways to texturize the top. And then at the end, I'm gonna show you guys a color technique real quick that will actually blend gray, even though there's no gray really on this mannequin. I'm gonna show you guys the technique of that. And then a highlight throughout the top. I'm gonna show you guys a way that I like to do that. I sectioned off right at the parietal ridge. Curly hair and men's hair, I like to start a little bit lower because it's easy for me to blend and decide where I want that weight to shift. So I keep it a little bit lower and I work my way up. Also, when you're working with a clipper, if you go too high on the parietal ridge up here and you're working that clipper, you get too heavy right away anyway, so you end up going in and cutting it. So I go a little bit lower and I'll work my way through there. Clipper I'm gonna use, this is the Andis Envy cordless clipper. I'm gonna start off with a two guard and I'm gonna make that two guard fully open. So this would be the shortest it goes and when you spread it out, this adds a little bit of length, makes it a little bit longer than a two and I'm gonna work through that way. Also gonna use the YS Park and this is a barbering comb. It's a little bit wider. It's really flexible. I like to use a comb that's about the size of the trimmer that I'm using so that if I'm doing any trimmer over comb work, it slides right across. Also, when you use like a regular YS Park comb, it's a little rough around the bone of the comb so the clipper doesn't slide as easy. When you use this comb, it's nice, it glides right across. So I'm gonna start off. I'm gonna work my way up in the direction that the hair grows but then as I get to the top part, I'm just gonna rock out with the clipper. So I go up the hair, passing the clipper over and then when I get to that groove, I just wanna add a little bit of a weight line. So basically what I'm thinking in my mind is I wanna come up and then out at about a 45 degree angle. What that's gonna do is build me a little bit of graduation. That's the difference. This is all layering. This is graduation here. The other thing that I like to focus on is that I like to balance along the ridge of the head. So you have the parietal ridge but then I followed down the crown of the head to the occipital bone. So that weight line is almost like a pivot along the ear. So I work my way around this way. So clipper going through 45 degrees and then I'm working my way around the ear allowing that weight to drop down. So just passing that clipper out, keeping that weight dipping down. I don't wanna go all the way up into the hair and cut that off and make this super high. You could if it's a more of a high fade but for this look, I want it to be nice and natural and really work with their head shape. I'm also not worried about this blending yet because I'm just getting the length off the bottom and starting that weight line and creating that outline. Then I'll go through and fine tune it either scissor over comb or clipper over comb later. Tilt its head down and I'll go right up to the occipital bone coming up and passing that clipper out at that 45 degree angle. All right, so working up and again at that 45 degree angle building out that weight line using that the ear is a pivot point. So now let's clean up the edges. I don't really wanna focus on this part today so that's why I'm getting through it quick. This trimmer is the Andis T-Trimmer. I like this one because I like a T-Trimmer because it gets around the ears really well or any little edges that you need to get to. Now what I wanna do is I'm gonna show you guys a couple of things. I wanna show you clipper over comb and I wanna show you guys scissor over comb. So clipper over comb is kind of the same concept as rocking the clipper out at 45 degrees. So what I'm gonna do is put the comb in and tilt it back at 45 degrees. I completely closed the clipper so instead of it being out I go all the way down to the blade and then I lift the hair up into the comb and I make my first pass. Where I'm seeing my guide is what's underneath the hair. So I lift up and I can see underneath there where the hair is and I come through and I cut and we're gonna work in a diagonal back form all the way down the head shape. Just blending in that weight line. You can see the weight line coming through. As I'm working through now, on the one side I worked from the front of the head back so I wanna do the same thing on this side. So I lift the hair just like that and now I'm gonna work backhand and glide the clipper across. So I'm just lifting the hair and gliding the clipper across. One thing that works for me, it doesn't work for everybody but I like to put a couple fingers on the head as I hold the comb. That helps me keep the comb steady and where I want it to be and then I follow back from there. That works for me, sometimes with people with smaller hands it doesn't work as well but give it a shot. So I'm just following that weight all the way through down to the bottom of the head. So I've worked diagonal back here, diagonal back on the other side and now we're gonna work up the back just softening that weight line connecting everything together. So now you can see that we're starting to build up some weight in the crown area. I actually really liked that because I feel like it fills out the head shape nicely. Instead of flattening the back of the head you get this kind of build up of weight. So I'm gonna go through with my scissor we're gonna do some scissor over comb work now. Biggest difference between clipper over comb and scissor over comb is just literally the tool because the motion and how you hold the hair is the same. Lift it up into the comb and then I'm just gonna detail. The reason I choose to finish with scissor over comb is that when you're doing clipper over comb you lift the hair into the comb and then you pass over and it cuts a really blunt line. When you do scissor over comb I can actually glide the hair up as I'm working and soften any line that happens. So that's really hard to do with a clipper you have to kind of go back and forth over it. With a scissor you just glide just like that and you can lift and soften any weight lines that are in it. So I think of the clipper as the mass cutter like so going through and taking out a lot of the bulk the weight getting the length where you want it because that happens quick and then fine tune and detail everything with the scissor. So here we go just softening through. All right so now I'm gonna split this right down the center and I'm gonna start to blend the sides the back and the top of the haircut. So we're working on the calic in the back. Now obviously mannequin doesn't have a strong calic but anytime I have a guest that has a calic in the back I'll leave a little extra length. Also you can see that it's not directly in the center where this little spin is built out of. So after I get it combed down the center I'll take a look at where that hair really wants to fall and that's where I'm gonna comb it to. I might part it down the center but I want this swirl to go where it's gonna live and then I'm gonna build the haircut off of that because there's no way that a guy is going to be forcing this hair in the back of his head that he can't even see that he's gonna force it to live somewhere where it doesn't wanna live in the first place. So I comb everything in the direction off of that swirl. If they have two I build it off of all of that I would separate one of them, do my cut on one side and then do the cut on the other but then I'm gonna build all of my lines and weight removal off of that swirl in the cut. All right so now I'm gonna bring the hair out. I'm gonna give it a slight elevation. This is 90 out from that the swirl point. So I want it to be at about 45 degrees. That's gonna have it lay nice with a nice soft graduation to it. So I'll go through and I start cutting. Then I comb that down, I pivot like a pizza and then I shift that to the previous section. So we're gonna work with a traveling guide. I'm gonna work around. So point from here, bring this up, bring it back to the previous. And that's how I like to cut almost all calyx and then if it's even more extreme then what I'll do is teach them to blow it dry if it really bothers them. But you can see it lays nice and soft and this also keeps the flow of the head shape with the weight. So I'll do the same thing on the opposite side from the swirl, take my parting, bring it back to the previous section, keeping the top of my fingers at that 45 degree angle keeping a little bit of length. And I work my way all the way around until I get behind the ear and then I can start working on the sides and the top. So that is the calyx area. Now everything that I do here is gonna be traveling until I get to wherever the point is where I wanna push extra weight. So I'm combing everything forward. So now I bring this up and I'm still connecting it to this bottom point here. And that's where if you left that bottom point too long with your clipper work then you would have a very extreme weight happening. So we go through, we connect it and then this elevation goes up into the center point and this is gonna be a little bit longer, a little more length to work with. This lays pretty flat because it's completely layered at this point. And then once I get, I'm gonna go one more step and then this is now gonna become a stationary guide. So now the rest of the hair all the way to the front will get pulled back to that point. I think with creating length in the front of a haircut sometimes people will over direct too far back and when you over direct too far back you push way too much weight into the front. You don't really need that much but it is good to have on your guys to have a little extra length in the front to mess with later. You're gonna see how much length this in just this little bit of time we pushed forward which is quite a bit. And we're gonna do the same thing on the opposite side here still standing behind the head and working that length just back to the previous. So one more and then that's where I'll start my over direction. So now all this is gonna come back to that point now. What people don't take into consideration is when you get to the front what happens with the head shape is it starts to bend forward. So this over direction this last inch of hair is actually way more extreme than what's up here on the very top of the head. So you have to take that curve into consideration with the density that you're building up or the length. So now you can see this shorter texture through here but then it gets nice and long in the front. We can cut into that and we're gonna do some texturizing techniques. So now what I'm gonna do is blow it dry real quick. Blow drying everything flat, flat wrapping it. And I'm gonna take my texturizing scissor just like this and I'm gonna pass at a diagonal all the way through cutting channels. And I'm gonna work my way through just like that creating those kind of gaps and shorter pieces in the hair. So what that's doing is it's taking out some bulk at the base of the hair but also not doing it in like horizontal chunks. You're going at a diagonal it's just taking it a little bit softer. So you pass through the one way coming through. You could do this with a normal scissor as well but I think using a blending scissor is a little safer and then coming back the opposite direction across the head this way. Now I'm gonna go through and do a little bit of point cutting just in the actual shape that I did right on the sides just to soften things up a little bit. The softer these lines the easier it is for your guys to style it. And I'm going in really vertical or kind of parallel to the hair so that I don't remove the line necessarily I just soften it. So now the last little bit I wanna take even more of this weight out and I also want to have kind of like an angle to it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna section off a diagonal line across here and I'm gonna clip away some of the hair and just keep out about an inch of the hairline and I'm gonna start slide cutting on this side of the head. So what I'll do is I'll keep my scissor here and I'll slide down, remove a little bit of this weight and I'll pull pieces of this hair over to me. So it becomes more stationary. Just keep pulling them over. It's another good way if somebody's got receding hair to not be elevating and cutting keeping it at the length that you want it and going in and cutting and texturizing. So just removing that weight because any time you have that bulky and you want the texture and you want it to kind of shoot up in the air you need it to be nice and light but we still want the length. So just going through cutting, sliding out with your blending scissor gives it that texture movement. I wanna show you guys how I like to set myself up for the color and that's with blow drying the hair up directly up in the air first then going in and coloring it. So I'm gonna start off. I brush the hair so I can get it untangled get all those loose hairs that we cut out of it and I'm gonna use the heat from the blow dryer to get the hair up in the air. Really blow drying the hair in the direction you normally wouldn't just to get that height. So I'm gonna take a little bit of hair product very little but I'm gonna take, this is the Maverick dry paste and here's why I use a little bit of product before I lighten the hair. Right now the hair is very fluffy so what I'll do is I'll take and I'm going to create almost like little spikes in the hair with my hands. When I have those pieces separated then it's easier to apply lightener to the ends. So what I'm gonna do for gray blending what I like to do and this is gray blending not fully covering if you need to fully cover somebody it's a different technique but for gray blending this is the Paul Mitchell 10 minute color for men. So this is dark warm natural good for like levels one to three and I'm gonna paint that into the sides. So what I'll do is I'll start feathering it diagonally and working it through. I don't cover everything. I like to just kind of paint it on diagonally first then what I'll do is comb it through at the very end. So painting it on a diagonal into the hair really work it into the sideburns because they're usually the most resistant and then working down the sides. I always keep my brush kind of sideways as I paint through and I'll work into the parietal ridge area but I'll leave out some of the parts that I wanna do the lightener on. This is Paul Mitchell Synchro Lift which I'll show you guys with 20 volume. I'm just trying to pop the brightness in here and not get it to be too crazy. So we'll go through here and I'm going to take some of these pieces that we've added the product to and paint it on those and just working these pieces. That's why using the product helps because it separates the hair really well for you to go in and then paint. I'm not going all the way to the root. This is just for the ends of the hair just to paint onto the tips. So I'm picking up some of these pieces. I don't need it to be heavily saturated with lightener. This isn't like women's hair. I'm really just trying to pop some lightness. So then what I'll do is I let that process for the same amount of time usually with my guys trying to keep it more natural. I let this process for the same 10 minutes that this is on and it's usually light enough and didn't go too extreme. All right, so this product that we're going to use first is the grooming cream. Thing I like about this product, obviously cream base doesn't have a strong hold to it. I put in the grooming cream and now I'm going to start to blow it dry. I want to work everything down the way it wants to naturally fall and then the top I'm going to blow dry up and kind of kick it back a little bit. So we'll start our blow dry around definitely in this calic area let the swirl kind of take life here. And the grooming cream will give it a nice little shine too as we're styling it. The dry paste that we're going to use on it after we'll give it more of a matte. So it's nice to have a little shine to it first. Okay, so now I'm going to separate a little bit of the front. I'll brush this down and I'm just going to start working the middle top to the crown, working that kind of up and getting a little bit of volume into it. Just to pop some volume in the root and then I'll start blow drying it forward. So getting some height and kicking it forward. So there's volume, but it's still kind of moving in that forward direction. And then at the very end, then I start popping this front up. All right, so now that grooming cream definitely has given it a little bit of hold to it. The final product that I would choose is going to be the dry paste which will give me just a little extra kind of all day hold when you're blow drying men's hair, a lot of people just blow dry it to get it dry and then try to use the product to do all the work. You don't want the product to do the work like the heat made this stay up. The grooming cream did a little bit of the work but the heat molded the hair into this shape. Also gave me that lift in the back gave me the smoothness on the sides. So all of that stuff came from not necessarily the product but mostly the blow drying. Also, if they put product in their wet hair most men's products and really products in general are meant to kind of dissolve to go away their water soluble so when you shampoo it, you wash it, it goes out of the hair really easily. So if you put a men's product on top of hair that's already wet, you're going to see the effects of it breaking down on the hair and not actually holding it the way that you want it to. Now I'm gonna use the Maverick dry paste. I cover my hands with a little bit of the dry paste and then I'm just gonna go through just like I did when I highlighted it and I'm gonna work that into the hair. I don't wanna run my hands into it too much. I'm not trying to soak the base of the hair with it. We did that with the blow dry and the grooming cream. So now this is just to add that separation smooth down the sides. This is the same product I used in my hair today. Just in case you're wondering. And then this little bit of weight that we built in the back of the cut you could see that's what I really like about leaving a little extra weight how it kind of builds out instead of coming up and kind of cutting off the back of their head and creating a flatness to it. That's why to me that this is more kind of a hairdresser's men's cutting video because in the salon this is what I get a lot of requests for is this textured a little bit longer length. I don't think this is probably a typical barber shop request is to get this kind of texture and the color and all that stuff. So when somebody comes in they're looking for something new whether it's the highlights or just creating the texture, utilizing those techniques hopefully you'll have this as a go to for you guys in the salon. So you can see some highlights through it but you can see all the texture and what I love about the color part of it is that it really kind of pops the texture into it shows it off. So hope you guys like it. Let me know.