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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 3245547" data-attributes="member: 7177">The human head usually has about a 100,000 individual hair strands. Obviously, you can't draw them all - or rather, you'd go nuts if you attempted to do this, and it wouldn't show at this image resolution anyway. So you will have to hint at the individual hair strands instead of painting each and every one of them.(In fact, that's good advice for art in general. It is almost never necessary to paint every last detail - the human brain is so good at pattern recognition that it tends to make up any missing elements. This is good, since few people either have the ability or the patience to draw all those details correctly.)It took me ages to work out a technique to paint hair that I was reasonably satisfied with, and I am going to explain it now.(As a side note, if you have developed any good techniques for creating hair on your own, please share them here - I'd love to hear about them!)First create a new layer called "Hair" above the Skin and below the Sketch layer and switch to it. Then you need to set up a "range" of colors between your Foreground Color and Background Color (the box "below" the Foreground Color) to represent the fact that different hair strands will have slightly different coloration. Granted, this is easier to do for lighter hair tones than mine, but even for such dark tones you still need some variety - trust me, even if the color differences might not be immediately noticeable, the final effect will be worth it. If in doubt, just make up some slight differences! I used "1a1a1a" and "2a2a1a" for the two colors (remember the HTML notation?).Now select the Fuzzy Brush, and pick a "Fuzzy Circle (05)" brush. Set opacity to 100, and set the Pressure Sensitivity to "Color" - this means that the color of your brush will vary between the Foreground and Background colors depending on how strongly you press the pen against the tablet! This will guarantee minor color differences that give the impression of multiple hair strands.Now begin to draw hair strands, following the hair growth patterns of the reference image:<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Hair-1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />If there are noticeable color differences in the original image, vary the pressure strength accordingly. If not (as it is often the case with darker hair colors), just keep on drawing without worrying about it.Eventually, you should end up with something like this:<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Hair-2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Now use the Smudge tool to smooth out the edges of the hair. You can also use it to represent short, thin strands of hair that stick out from the main mass - this is especially noticeable for people with long hair, but even portraits of people with military haircuts like me can benefit from this technique. Finally, smudge out the minor holes in the main hair mass.Important: Always move the Smudge tool in the same direction like the growth of the hair!<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Hair-3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Now it is time to use the Dodge/Burn tool again to show the lighting differences in the hair (again, it's more noticeable in lighter hair tones - see the images I posted at the start of the thread!). You can also use it to simulate the onset of male pattern baldness, as in my case... If you use too much Dodge or Burn at some places, smooth it over with more applications of the Smudge tool until it looks acceptable (again, moving in the same direction as the hair itself).I also added the eyebrows at this point, simply because I forgot to do it earlier. You are unlikely to get the precise shape right with the brush at the first try - but instead of messing around with the eraser, simply use the Smudge tool to move the shape until you get it right...<img src="http://juergen.the-huberts.net/art/tutorial/Hair-4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />That's it for the hair! Tune in tomorrow as we move on to some other details...</blockquote>

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