Post #599200

FWIW, here's a McQuarrie drawing of Luke with apparently brown hair (looking like Buck Rogers), done in June 1975 just as Lucas decided to keep Luke male:



However, when he reused this costume design on the cover of the ANH novelization, McQuarrie made Luke blond like Mark Hamill.




Here's another McQuarrie image which seems to show Luke with brown hair--his version of the "Lash LaRue" swing over the Death Star chasm, added to the script between the third and fourth drafts. Leia's still blonde, though (much like Wilma Deering, Buck Rogers' girlfriend).



Interestingly, McQuarrie's images of Luke with brown hair also put him in Buck Rogers-esque space-pilot costumes, similarly to his second-draft painting of Luke with short yellow hair. Conversely, both McQuarrie's and Mollo's drawings of Luke with Mark Hamill's shaggy blond haircut invariably show Luke in the white Tatooine-farmboy outfit we see on screen. (Even in the drawings made before Hamill was cast! I guess that was the design that really stuck with Lucas.)