Tutorials] Photoshop - Painting Realistic Hair

8/6/2019 Tutorials] Photoshop - Painting Realistic Hair

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Tutorial: Painting Hair



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Painting hair isn't, obviously, like painting a face. Doing a tutorial on it is a wildly differentexperience than a face tutorial. Why? A hair doesn't have any static features. There is no way of telling you where to place a strand of hair the way I can tell you where the nose goes. There's no

anatomy of it, except that it has a certain weight and is likely to fall a certain way, and even thatyou can mess with because there is hair spray and gel and whatever else you might stick in it(blood or whatever, haha).

So. I've done the best I can. I've worked on this for a fair while (longer than I'd like to admit) andnow I've finally added the finishing touches. This tutorial is for you guys, you CGtalkers. I'll add itto my homepage later for posterity (along with my other tutorials there), but it's dedicated to thiswonderful community, and I'm hoping others will join in and keep this particular corner of CGtalkalive and kicking.

Throughout the tutorial you'll see some little tips and tricks added to the actual instruction pictures.Some of them are the brushes I'm using, some are tips directly related to the painting of hair, andsome are just thoughts I thought I'd add as I went along.



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Instructions: The firstthing you need to do is todecide on the colour of the

hair. This hair will bebrownish, but with a weetouch of gold in it. Thedarkest colour I'll pick for itis nearly black. This isusually true of ALL haircolours - even the lighterblondes where you'll end uppainting over a lot of thedark tone, but it's stillbetter to have it thereunderneath than to go toolight. Once the colours arepicked (make it onehighlighter, two midtonesand one shadow), just block

in the shape of the hair.

Important: WORK ON ALARGE CANVAS. I can'tpossibly stress this enough- if you're going to do reallynice hair, work big. If you're putting it into a full-body image and you don'tthink you can work bigenough... eep, wrong: workbig and then shrink it downto fit into the rest of thepicture.

Common mistakes:

Starting out with a brightcolour and then spendingthe rest of the time tryingto darken it down withshadows. I can't stressenough how much it helpsto do it the other way

around. With skintones, it'sbest to start with a midtone,but with hair -- it's alwayshelpful to begin dark. And

the biggest mistake of all:not realising that hair reallyneeds a level of detailingthat 500x500 pixels won'tgive you. If you want thislevel of detail (notnecessary, really, but if youdo) work much bigger thanthat.



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Instructions:

What's done next is theblocking in on the large

locks of hair. Just smoothlysketch in where you figurethe strands will fall. Thetrick is to think of the hairnot as a lot of individualstrands at this point, but of it as thick sections that youwill later work to detaildown into individual strandsin places. Pick colours atyour leisure - starting outwith the two midtones thatyou chose. No highlightingat this point.

Common mistakes:

A lot of people start

painting hair by paintingthe strands. Some won'teven block it in, initially,but start franticallysketching in strand afterstrand on top of each other.The end result of this willoften look like a clump of straw pulled together. Hairnaturally separates intolocks. It's really, really hardgetting this result if you'renot painting it in sections -you'll have to somehow,

miraculously, paint everyindividual strand and

somehow get them to flowin the right directions.



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Instructions:

Pick a spackled brush nowand try the clumps of hair

out. What I mean by that isthat you sketchily paintover the hard edges of theindividual locks and just geta feel for how the locks willend, if they'll curl up a littleand just the general 'feel'and 'flow' of the hair. Sincethere aren't, like Imentioned earlier, anystatic features of a hair it isso easily affected by theenvironment around. It'spretty good if you get theflow of it down right at thispoint.. From hereon, there

will be detailing, and

detailing, and detailing andif you realise later that youmessed it up here, you willbe more than a bit peeved.

So just get a feel for it. Seeif it falls all rightconsidering the wind, thegeneral look and check if you're actually happy withthe hairstyle.

Common mistakes:

Not considering the wind -

a skirt blowing in onedirection, for instance, and

the hair in the other. Notconsidering the weight of the hair (short hair oftenbeing fluffier, long hairheavier) or the effect thatitems might have on it(tiara weighing it down,

ribbon pulling it up).



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Instructions:

This is where the fun starts.You can now begin thinking

about the fall of the light,the effects of coloursaround the hair (I'mmaking this easy for myself,the background is prettymuch the same tone as thehair, but if it hadn't been Iwould have had to considerit here) but most of all justsmoothing out the hardblocks of hair and giving itsome smooth nice flow. I'vegot a perfect brush for this.When I just want to quicklysmooth the hair out, I'll usea regular round brush with

soft edges, but if I want to

give the locks of hair semi-sharp edges in places... Ican be clever and use abrush that has one sidethat's sharp and one that'ssoft (as seen in picture).Try making one, it'sawesome.

Try starting to break up theblocks - into smallersections while still keepingthe bigger ones. Not aseasy as it sounds.

Common Mistakes:

Just painting over theblocks of hair. Big no-no.We still need the blocks, it's just that we're adding somemore.



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Instructions:

Continue to both soften thehair AND break the blocks

of hair up. Since we havethose individual sectionsflowing in differentdirections, it will alreadystart looking like 'hair' atthis point. Continually useonly soft-edged brushesand don't care if the resultlooks too-smooth orsmudgey at this point. Itwon't later. Don't forgetthat the different locks of hair will have impact oneach other. Where theymeet, they might eithershadow one another or

merge together.

Common mistakes:

Starting to draw inindividual strands already. Iknow it's a bitch to wait forso long - the detailing is thefun part - but when itcomes to hair, there's reallyno rushing ahead.



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Instructions:

Now. Here's the real trick.Even though we'll detail the

entire hair, there's no needto super-detail all of it. Pickout one lock that willreceive the most attention.Everything you do to theentire hair, you'll do twiceas much to this strand. Thetexture and detail level of this one lock will havemajor impact on the rest of the picture even withouteverything else being quiteso detailed. Just trust meon this one.

I'll pick the lock falling

down along the side of her

head. Once you've got alock singled out, use aspackled brush and veeeerylight pressure to softlyfollow the flow of the lockdown to where it ends.Repeat over and over againin short strokes -- and keepyour finger on the colourpicker ( the alt key whileyou're using the brush) touse the right colour in theright place. This way, youwill bring out the shape of

the lock while keeping theseparated, thinner sections

The spackled brush will helpto, even at this early stage,add some nice texture.

Common mistakes:

Unnatural fall. Take sometime to study how hair

actually falls. How the curlsor locks wrap themselvesand how they affect oneanother. Unless the hair is

heavily styled with lots of hairspray and fussing, thereare some things it generallywon't do.



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Instructions:

Stop a moment and take alook at what you've done so

far. This is as good a pointas any to really considerthe curves of the hairbecause we're about to gointo detailing, and it's helland some more trying tochange it much after that.A successful looking hairwill have nice, clean,natural lines to it. Evenwildly curly hair looksbetter if the locks flow andwork well together, than if it looks like they're justlumped together randomly.Do a separate layer and

follow the locks of hair with

some brightly paintedarrows. Are they allpointing in differentdirections? If they are,chances are you mightwant to adjust them unlessyou're painting hair inmotion or some prettyunnatural looking hair.

If it's looking okay, repeatstep 6 over the rest of thehead.

Common mistakes:Getting carried away with

how fun it is to paintflowing hair. Yes, bigbouncy hair is nice, but theeighties are over and gone(hopefully buried) and it'sbetter to keep this inperspective, unless

something over-the-top iswhat you're aiming for.Subtle is often far prettierthan overdone.



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Instructions:

We're finally getting to thedetails. There's not really

any 'trick' right here. Whatyou do is make a new layer.You pick a normal, sharpedged round brush and youpaint strands following thegeneral shape of the locksyou have. You use a darkcolour to begin with. Youpause, you smudge it alittle with a spackled brush- still in the hair'sdirection... and then youpaint new strands on top of it in a slightly lightercolour... pause, smudge...repeat. Keep picking

colours from the hair

underneath and make surenot to remove the generalshapes you've alreadycreated - and since you'rekeeping all of this on aseparate layer... feel free toerase away in places tobring forth the nicetexturing you've alreadydone underneath.

Because you've preparedand textured the hair sonicely already, there is no

need to overdo this and youdon't have to be so careful

all over the place. The hairwas already looking prettynice before you got to thispoint.

Common mistakes:

Completely abandoning the

shapes you've already setdown. At this point, it's SOeasy to fall back on the old'every hair for itself'

principle. These might beindividual strands, but theySHOULD be moving ingroup. They should betogether. Flowing in unison.One crossing over the othernow and then and breakingeach other up.



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Instructions:

Texture, texture, texture.Once the flow is done, it's

all about the texture. Areally, really nice way toaccomplish that wild puzzleof strands that makes up ahair is to paint strand afterstrand after strand on topof each other, then on topof those on a new layer,strand after strand. Do upto five different layers withdifferent colours, set themto different opacity, blurthe strands individuallyeither with smudge or withthe blur tool and just keepat it.

Varying between a slightlybigger brush and a reallysmall one, you'll trick theeye into seeing smallstrands even where therearen't any. Remember thatone lock that will havesuper-details? Focus onthat one.

Common mistakes:

Thinking that everyindividual strand has to bepainted all over the head.

When I say a lot of detailsare nice, I don't really

mean that level of detail.



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Instructions:

All right. Flatten. Justflatten all the layers if you

haven't already. Chancesare you'll have way, way,way too many layers at thispoint. Then, on top of yourneat, nice one-layeredimage, add a new layer andset it to soft light.

Now you're going to dosomething that likely looksweird, but it really adds tothe effect when viewedfrom a slight distance. Picka brush, almost any brush,and make it decently small.Then, pick a colour from

the canvas - set it as your

background colour and thenpick another colour asforeground. Go into brushsettings and set the penpressure to colour, and...scribble. Just scribble overthe hair, shifting colours asyou go, using a low opacityon the layer, and addingtexture and depth to thehair. If you use darkcolours, you'll also add anice amount of contrastthat will help the realism

along a fair deal.

Common Mistakes:

Just skipping the randomtexturing. It really helps toadd life to hair even if itseems like pure madness,so don't leave it out.



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Instructions:

Zooming out, you'll see thatthe hair looks really nice

already. If you don't care todo that much more, youcan stop here.

What I generally do at thispoint, though, is to fix thehairstyle. I've usuallypainted using the firstclumsy blocked in shapeand now that I can see theflow of the hair better, I'llgo in and just fix the edgesup. I'll push it in in oneplace and out in another,perhaps, so that the shapeof it follows the locks I've

painted. Using the trick of

painting individual strandsof hair on a separate layerand very lightly blurring orsmudging them, follow theoutline of the hair and addsome 'frizz' to it. It stilllooks smooth and sleek butthere's more life to it, now.



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Instructions:

For added effect, go to theedges of the hair and use a

soft, nice brush to featherthe ends of the locks.There's really no overdoingthis unless you totally gomad with it, and if you usea nice, dark colour - someof it will look like niceshadows, and some of itwill look like shadowedstrands. If the hair isshoulder-long, as it is here,it really breaks upmonotony of skin... and if the hair has bangs, pleasedo something similar withthe bangs but not quite as

feathery - or the hair ends

up having a slightly frazzledlook.

Common mistakes:

Just leaving the hair blocky.Generally, the edges havealready been softened upby now, but even so, give ita once-over just for safety'ssake.



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Instructions:

I said something aboutsuper-detailing, didn't I?

This effect is extremelydifficult to get if youhaven't followed the othersteps, and if you haven'tgot a pretty good idea of how hair 'works'. If you'rehaving a rough time of it,please find some photos tostudy - it will really help...or just set a mirror up nextto the computer (hard if you've got short hair, like Ido, but even short hair ishelpful).

The trick is to use a really

small brush and first follow

the flow of the hair withlight pressure, and thenswerve out from it andacross the other strands.This is what really makes adifference, and also whattakes painstakingly muchtime. It's not necessary, Igive you that, but the endresult is really nice. Theseseparate strands shouldalways be made on layersof their own and carefullytreated before they're

flattened down. The bigupside of doing the strands

on individual layers is thatyou can lock the layer andthey paint and shade theindividual strands to fit intotheir surroundingenvironment. Treat themthe way you did those large

sections of hair, withshading according to howthey fall and where thelight is.

The other great bit aboutthem being in separatelayers is that you can erase,smudge, blur, and adjustyour happy hearts out untilthey look just the way youwant them to. This allsounds really serious, but it's not. It's just serious and difficult until you get the hang of how to dothem, then they're pretty quick work.

Common mistakes:

Making too many of these errant strands and ending up with static looking hair... making them tooobvious or too starkly contrasting, which generally just looks dumb, or alternatively not adding a

single wayward strand of hair into an entire hairstyle, and ending up with something akin to abrand new Barbie-doll style.



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Instructions:

Finally, and yes, we're atthe last couple of steps now,

add a few more 'obvious'strands that fall acrossentire sections of hair. If you skip the previous stepbecause it's just too muchinto tiny details that youfeel you don't need, at leastdon't skip this one. It really,really adds to the look of ahairstyle with a few of these playful locks.

The trick here is to make itseem as if they're actuallyescaping from a larger lockof hair and just sort of

floating out across the rest

of the hair, perhaps tuggedaway by the wind. To addto the effect, a very faintshadow from the strandmight fall across the rest of the hair, just making itmore visible and alsoenhancing the appearanceof it flying free.

Common mistakes:

Unless it's windy or you'repainting a wild-hairedperson, these 'errant

strands' won't be that many,that obvious or that big.

This is one of those discreetkind of touches that reallymakes a picture - but likeall those kind of touches, itcan also break something.



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And now you're done, andI hope it was a littlehelpful :]

I'm going away over theweek again, and justwanted to drop this by youguys in case you havesome vacation time tospare for painting. Enjoy,have fun, and I hopeyou're having a gorgeoussummer so far!

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Tutorials] Photoshop - Painting Realistic Hair