Hair tutorial

So the tutorial that won out on the poll was a hair tutorial! Sorry it took so long but hopefully it's helpful :)

This is how I paint and plot out hair styles!

Painting:

Steps I use:

1) Sketch out the overall shape and direction of hair

2) Put in flat colours, the base colour or midtone of your hair

3) Fill in rough highlights and shadows with a large soft brush

4) With a hard or tapering opacity brush fill in more defined highlights and shadows

5) Blend in the highlights and shadows with the harder brush, try to avoid using a blending tool in digital, try using a brush and constantly selecting the colours around it to blend

6) Define the main sections of the hair by further blending and sharpening edges of main shadows

7) Add in any deeper, sharper highlights and shadows

8) Go in with a thin, tapered brush and select a colour from either highlight or shadow and draw in a few single strands to break up the sections, be careful not to add too many or have them be repetitive, change up the thickness, spacing and length, make sure to follow direction of the hair

9) Add flyaways and clean up the edges to finalise the hair

Important notes when painting hair:

- Fill hair in chunks as opposed to seperate stands, add in some flyaways and strands after to have the effect of lots of hair

- Add lighter and darker sections to reinforce the hair shape

- Keep your highlights consistent to the high points of the shapes

- Look at photo references for the colours and tones present in the hair colour you're looking for; for example lighter hair colours have less intense highlights and less tonal variance, whereas dark hair has very strong highlights but less obvious shadows

Braids:

- Start with the rough shapes, plan where the braid will go

- Increase the braid size slowly if hair is added to it and taper it smaller towards the end

Hairstyles/Shape:

The following are examples of hairstyles built from overall shapes. Use large shapes for your styles before adding strands or small details.

Make indicators to tell yourself the direction the hair is going, where large sections will be, and the origin of the hair sections. Look at references of different hairstyles to get an understanding of where these things sit!

-Start by mapping out where the hairlines and part will be

- Draw in rough shapes for the hairstyle, don't add sections to the hair until you've sorted out the overall shapes

- to have your hair laying above the skull shape, but not too thick

- When adding sections and details these points:

      - Keep repitition to a minimum, if there are multiple strands in a row, change up their length and thickness, try not the have multiple strands looking the same in a row

     - Don't add too many small sections/strands, this can distract from the overall shape and makes having repitition easier

- Keep balance in mind: play around with symmetry and a-symmetry, consider the overall shapes in your character design and how you can use the hairstyle to add to the composition of your drawing or character design

Please feel free to comment if you are confused about something or if I've left something out! I'll try to edit in all I can to make it more useful!

I'll be posting the step-by-step of the painting I've used as the title page and background, so keep a look out :)

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#hairtutorial