Welcome to Paintable Tips and Tricks, guys!
Today I want to talk about hair.
I used to do my hair like I guess a lot of beginners, by putting a bunch of small shreds
one by one on the head of my characters.
And sort of recently, I kind of learned that I would have to think differently about the hair.
I would have to think in shape and form, like a 3d sculpture--
thinking about something that is 3D on the head of my characters,
so I can then after that, put hair in that shape.
Let me show you how.
So the best way to actually create hair, there are a few steps to it.
First, you need some references. If you don't know exactly how to do it,
--and even me, most of the time, I don't know exactly how--the first thing should be to
actually make a little research, and to find some references of hair, or of beards, like in this case.
Once you've got your references,
the next step would be to just add a really simple outline of the basic shapes.
You don't want to go and draw some lines here, you just want to do the basic shapes.
So the mustache, and the beard, and then the goatee here, because there was a goatee showing a little bit.
And the next one would be to make a really quick value study.
So you just want to block in some values. Some gray, some lighter gray, some darker gray--
to start building the shape of it.
You don't want to go in detail, and you don't want to draw hair at that stage.
You just want to go, from far away, being able to see a little bit more values.
If you don't know exactly how to do this technique,
there is a video linked below this video that you can click on,
that will give you a little bit more about this.
But from here on, I'm going to show you how to create hair from this one here.
First of all, what you need to know is that you're going to use only two tools to create your hair:
A soft round brush, such as this one.
And it's a soft round brush because as you see the edges are a little bit soft.
Now I could use a hard edge brush like this one,
but it would be really really more difficult to actually create the softness of the hair.
So by using this one, it's going to be easier.
And the next tool that you want to use is the smudge tool,
to be able to soften your hair a little bit more.
And I'm only going to use those two tools to create my hair.
So here I have my reference and my value study.
And basically what I'm going to do is start to paint on top of this one with my soft round brush.
And I don't want to paint hair like, I don't want to do this...
What I want to do...is paint blocks, shapes, values.
If I'm looking at my reference here--and I'm just going to change my color so you see what I'm talking about--
here there's a patch of white.
There's another patch of white here. That's a big patch of dark.
There are some white pieces here, but I don't want to do this now.
But there's definitely more dark part here, and that's kind of dark-ish, and that's kind of light,
and that's exactly what I'm seeing, so that's what I want to draw for now.
So, form a new layer, and with my soft brush, I'm gonna--from far away, I don't have to
be super close for this. I'm just going to pick up my value here, and I'm going
to start patching up things. So I'm painting all the patches that I see.
Not the hair, just the patches.
And I'm just going to keep on painting like this,
until all those patches are really more apparent.
So now that I've put a first layer of paint, and trying to match all the the light
zone and the dark zone that I have, like this, with the soft round brush.
Now we'll be able to actually start putting some hair that are smaller.
So what I'm going to do is from painting that big, I'm going to start painting about that big.
But I'm not going to go too small.
I'm just going to go a little bit more small, and I'll continue painting, but
this time, I'm going to try to paint in the shape of the hair pattern that I see here.
So let's continue on this.
Now that I put another layer,
as you can see, I put down the same layer but what I mean is
that I put a smaller brush stroke all over,
it starts slowly to look a little bit more like hair, and it's perfect.
At this point, I'm going to create a new layer, and I'm going to use a little bit of the smudge tool.
The smudge tool will soften a little bit the hair.
Because at some places, they're just too apparent.
I don't want those those hair to be so much apparent everywhere.
Just at some places. So I'm just going to soften a little bit.
At this point, I have a layer with the smudge tool, which is this one, just to soften a little bit,
and a layer with the hair.
I'm going to create the top layer and with this later i'm going to start
having a smaller brush stroke so I started the whole thing with something
that was about that big,
then I went to that big, now I'm going to go to this big.
So it's going to start looking more like here. And I don't want to put that everywhere,
I just want to put that in certain area,
most likely the spot where the highlights are.
Every place that is white here, I will try to put some hair with a smaller brush.
From here, I'm going to create another layer.
What I basically want is do sample layers of painting hair in different sizes and
then using the smudge tool to blur a little bit those parts at some places.
So I'm going to do that again.
I'm going to create a new layer, and on this one,
I'm going to smudge what I just did.
I don't want to smudge everything, though. I just want to smudge a few places.
Look like this.
And now I'm going to create a new layer again, and continue painting small details.
If you wish to try this exact technique, you can download the PSD as well as the brushes below this video.
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Ciao!