Ok so I am trying to sprite some simple looking sprites for my 1st game, but I'm stuck on how to do hair. I'm sure I can figure out how to do spikey hair, but I'm stuck on how to do long hairstyles,,,Here I want this guy -------> <-------- to have dreadlocks, but im not sure how to even begin doing that. Can anyone help me with this?

1. Use references.

2. Check out these tutorials:

(Warning: There may be partial nudity images under the "see others" category of these tutorials. The actual tutorials contain no nudity and it's just Deviantart doing this, which they shouldn't, so it's outside my control.)

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Hair-Tutorial-STOP-READ-DESC-59878695

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Hair-Tutorial-32613877

http://bloodyblackroses.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Hair-Tutorial-24455158

3. See if you can find a RPG character generator and see how it does hair.

4. I'm sure someone else can provide additional help.

Your sprite is very small and hair only covers about 1/6th of the size so it's needless to say you don't have too many pixels to cover. That means your expression is seriously limited and you can't really easily depict complex hairstyles recognizably.

1) Find a reference image (here's something from google search)

2) Decide on the hair color (preferably anything but black or close to skin color) and try to find 3 tones to use

3) Decide on scale. You probably want 1 dreadlock to be 1 pixel row thick so start drawing lines. If you look at the reference picture you can almost see the different shade lines you need to draw if you squint your eyes.

4) Feel free to step outside of your reference image and "what it should look like". The most important thing in pixel art is just to get the viewer interpret the shape and style correctly.

Dreadlocks aren't the easiest hairstyle to depict with small space but pick up GIMP and start clicking on the squares :) Pixel art on this level doesn't really require steady hand or eye for proportions like traditional drawing, trial and error plus patience will get you far.

Good luck :)