Hair!

Hey hey folks, Professor Longtail here with her first tutorial on...what else? HAIR. Believe it or not, hair is one of the most important definitions of your character and something you should pay special attention to. Why? Because the first thing people notice most of the time about a person is, what else? The face and head. After the eyes, people will usually notice someone's hair next, then the face shape and after that, the finer details. It's really no different in art, with people's focus naturally drawing to the face. Uh...pun intended.

Many artists start out as totally hair phobic. It LOOKS impossible. Trust, me, I've been there, done that, and curled up in a fetal position in a corner whenever it came time for me to attempt shading the stuff. To tell the truth, it's not as hard as it looks. As much as I like basking in the egotistical glow when someone prostrates themselves before me and worships my magical l33t hair coloring skills...eh. I'm a fraud. If I can learn this, ANYBODY can learn this, so pull up your tablets while I use Toby as my lovely test subject and I'll wing you through my wacky lesson of hair coloring! Then you can stroke my ego over my l33t teaching skills instead.

What I am using:

Lineart drawn with Sakura Micron pens and scanned into Photoshop at 300 DPI
Photoshop
Wacom Graphire 4x5 tablet and pen

	Step 1 - Base Color: First thing we'll have to do is fill in the base color for the hair. On a seperate layer underneath your line art, (mark the layers so you don't mix them up!) put a color layer. I prefer to do all my coloring on one layer, but you can put shading and things on as many different layers as you prefer. That actually might be your best option if you are just starting out so you can junk the layers as many times as you want without ruining the rest of it. Then, pick what the over all color of your hair is. In this case, it's brown. Grab theLASSO TOOL and trace around the edges of the area you wish to fill. Since the rest of Toby is already colored, I don't have to worry if the tracing isn't exact over the colored areas. The fill tool will only fill the empty spaces. Choose the "FILL TOOL" click inside the moving dashes to fill it in.
Step 2 - Base Shading: Ok, you've got your base color. Time to start shading! First, pick a shading color that is darker than your base color. Usually a good rule of thumb is two shades darker than the base color otherwise the contrast is too strong and it looks weird. Don't fall into the Photoshop trap of the "Dodge" and "Burn" tools. It just ends up looking stupid most of the time. I like to use the airbrush tool for shading because it gives me a better gradient of color, though you can certainly use the paintbrush if you want to. I also pick a "hard" brush size for less fuzzy color for this so I'm not smearing more color over places I don't want. Set your pressure to 50-55% up at the top left of your page. Now you have to decide where your light source is coming from. I picked it coming from Toby's overhead right. So now you gotta ask yourself, ok, if the light is coming from overhead right, what would be in shadow? Generally, shading is any edges or contourd that are pointed AWAY from the light source. In other words, if the light is coming from the right, shade the left. So I shaded the left side edges of Toby's bangs and the points to make them more rounded in appearance. Next was the part of his hair. Then I shaded next to his neck. The darkest part of hair is usually closest to the neck.
	Step 3 - Smudging: Ok, he's shaded. Now to refine it a little. The SMUDGE TOOL is your best friend! Generally I keep the pressure around 35% so I'm not over doing it. I also recommend at this high DPI to keep on eye on the brush size because if I make it too big, I can use up way too much CPU usage in a hurry and end up slowing down the action or crashing the program or my computer completely. Use the smudge tool to zig zag across the shading. This gives it a softer, more fluffy look to it. I recommend that you don't go over the same spot more than a couple of times or you will lose the effect of strands and just get a fuzzy blobby area.
Step 4 - Highlights: Ok, so we're done with shading. Highlight time! Like with shading, go with a highlight color that is about two times brighter than the base color. I choose a larger "softer" brush for the Airbrush Tool to give a more gradiated highlight (this fuzzy quality is called "anti-aliasing".) Now, here's the trick: Hair highlights go in a halo around the head. Usually the light source will hit the widest part of the contours facing it first. The more rings you make, the shinier the hair will be. Using the Airbrush, zig zag the highlight colors around in a circle around the head and any places where the light would hit normally, like the side of the hair part that is facing the light source.
	Step 5 - Smudging Again!: You still with me? Good. Back to Mr. Smudge Tool! Repeat step three over the highlighted area for a fluffier look.
Step 6 - Defining Locks: By now you have your base color, shading, and highlighting. Now it's time for details. Hair is made up of millions of strands, but it will also fall together in larger clumps called locks. Now is the time to define the locks. I use a very small sized brush for this, but it's one size larger than the one we are going to use for individual strands. Choose your shadow color again and make just a few strokes from the root base to root tip in the direction the hair is moving in one long motion. Don't try to stop and start in the middle! Notice on the top of his head I curved it slightly so it gives the impression it's lying over a rounded skull.
	Step: 7- More Locks Ok, he's getting some more definition now. But notice that in my line art I've seperated the hair into some natural locks already. I should really define that a bit more. So I pick the points where the hair seperates and shade it all the way back to the root base on his bangs.
Step 8 - Dark Strands!: Now for the fun part. Choose the size smaller brush, and staaaart strokin'! Yes, that's right. Each strand is going to be defined. Root base to root tip again, now swing that pen! whip crack Concentrate the strands a bit more on the shadowy side of things, just for a bit of extra effect. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. But beware: If you do too many swipes, you're going to make your hair too dark. The more you do, the darker it will be.
	Don't worry about it if you smudge over. We'll clean this up later. The point is to get as smooth a motion as you can.
Step 9 - More locks: Give a few extra swipes with the little brush in one spot a few times in different places around the hair. This defines individual locks a bit more and gives your picture more depth.
	Step 10 - Do it Again Highlights!: Whew! We're done with that, right? Wrong! Pick your highlight color and wash, rinse, repeat, darlings! Again, concentrate it more on the side with the light source. Also beware not to stroke too much or you'll end up making the hair too light.
Step 11: I'm sure you all hate me by now, but we're almost done and oh...oh my...look at this! Your character has real HAIR. Time to clean up. Sometimes I get lazy and and frustrated with the "root to tip" thing, and I end up starting somewhere in the middle. You can fix this with, once again, Mr. Smudge Tool! VERY gently go over the messy bits and pull just a LITTLE bit on the messy ends with the smuge tool. You want to tone down the definition of your mistakes, not erase all your work all together. Then take the smudge tool and "push" back the color off any places you've gone over the lines so it's all nice and neat.
	Step 12: You can end it there if you want, but I like to go the extra step for Uber Shiney. I choose the pure white and pick a small soft brush. Now I do that "halo" effect again. String a thin line along right in the center of your hightlight. This gives the effect of concentrated light. Also, on the outermost edges I put "blobs" of light. Hair has many facets, and will often have brighter sparkle spots in some areas than others along the outermost edge where the light hits it hardest.
And...we're done! Sing it with me now! Gimme head with hair Long beautiful hair Shining, gleaming, Streaming, flaxen, waxen Give me down to there hair Shoulder length or longer!