Paint the Hair with Your Digital Art Tools!

You will need to use your digital brush, the dodge and burn functions, multiple layers, smudge tools, and the layer blend modes.

As well, you will require a lot of patience and practice as you won’t be able to paint the hair the first time around. I know I struggled quite a lot initially.

But don’t let that discourage you. Use it as motivation! Once you understand the process, it will get natural as you just know what to do.

1. Drawing the base

For the example of how to paint the hair with your digital program, I’m going to draw a bust with the hairstyle that I want.

Of course, if you have a scanner, you can always import a scanned image on paper. I just find it quicker to draw the bust in the digital art program as I am used to it.

Basically, all I did is start up two different layers: one for the brown background and a new layer for the line drawing.

The advantage of doing so is that it allows you to have a general idea how the colors will look like in the surrounding areas. You don’t need to put in a color background if you don’t want to. But it will help.

2. Coloring the hair under layer

There are a few tips you can use when you start painting. First, you need an under color to help you define what color you want the hair to be.

The key is that the color has to be dark. Two common colors are black and very dark brown. It’s seldom that digital artists deviate from this under coating.

The other trick is to learn how to use layer blend modes. For example, when you color over your line drawing, it will cover over your lines. To view it, switch the blend mode on the background color layer from normal to multiply.

In doing so, the black lines on the line drawings will show up even though it’s behind the hair’s under color layer.

Anyway, continue with painting over your line drawing until it covers as much of it as possible. Switch between the normal and multiply blend modes so you are coloring the right things on the line drawing.

3. Starting to paint the hair

The best way to do this is to use a very small brush and color in the finer strands. Moreover, use a lighter color to highlight where these clumps are.

This is where you will need to meticulously plan how the hair will look like in regards to shadows and lighting.

The trick is to draw strands where the light hits the hair. Any place that the light can’t reach, you can simply leave it empty.

You can either do this on another layer or simply continue with coloring the under color layer.

Again, this falls under the reasoning that lights bring out details while shadows hide them. Therefore, don’t waste your time doing strands where the light doesn’t reach.

When you’re done, you should have an idea of how your hair is arranged.

4. Refine it even further!

This last step is where you will be using all of the digital art tools. Normally, you will start with continuing to paint in the individual strands of color.

However, that will get your hair looking choppy. To remedy this, you will use your smudge tool to make it smooth.

At the same time, you need to also bring out some brightness. To do that, use your dodge tool to bring out the necessary color.

Then, you will need to consider where the light doesn’t hit. That means you will use the burn tool to darken areas in near the roots of the scalp.

In the end, you may need to refine it even further by adding more individual strands of hair. And so, you start at the beginning using the tools necessary to get the right colors.

One more tip is to try using the preserve transparency options so you don’t color out of the general area by accident. This is for highlighting the edge of the hair.

Sounds complicated, right? Like I said, learning to paint the hair will test your patience!

You don’t get good right away. You will need to really work on it. But remember to not get discouraged and have fun painting!

Return from Paint the Hair to Paint Faces.
Return from Paint the Hair to the 2d Digital Art Guide.