Coloring Hair

We'll be using Holden as our subject for today. ^^ First of all, let's start with showing you what the original lineart looks like. There.
I've made little thumbnails for easy viewing, but you can also click on them to get the entire screencap of the Painter program, so you
can see the settings and a closer view of the picture.

Also, I'm using Painter Classic here, which lets you paint with watercolors over an airbrushed lineart, and not lose the lines. If you're
using Photoshop, you'll need to go through a lot of other steps to acheive this effect. Julie Dillon explains it nicely in her Photoshop
tutorial. She also has lots of drawing and coloring tutorials you can look through, if you read mine and decide I'm on crack. ^_^

All right. First of all, you just paint a solid color for the hair, preferably
a light one, even if the person is supposed to have dark hair. Once you're
done adding all the layers of coloring, even light hair ends up getting
pretty dark. I recommend using the medium watercolor brush, with 0%
grain and 0% wet edge, to make things look smooth. Also, try to keep
the size of the brush and the opacity at about the same percentage as each
other. It doesn't matter so much when you're shading, but when you're doing one
continuous color, the colors start to get weird if these levels aren't kept equal.

It's also important that you do not save the picture while you're doing detail
on one area! People who use Painter should know this, but, y'know... You
can save it as a .riff file, but don't dry the canvas before you're done of one
section, like the hair, or shirt, or whatever.




I chose the light source to be in the upper left corner, so then you take a darker shade
go back over the lighter one, on the sides of the hair opposite the light source. You
should really only use a medium shade, since you can always go darker, but it's more
difficult to go lighter.

Also, this isn't necessary, but it is the way I do things -- make sure the dark shades
mostly go all the way to the top of the head, to give the effect of sort of clumps of
hair . When you color cel-style, this doesn't always happen. I just think it looks better.









When shading where there aren't any majorly defined sections of hair (like there
are on the forehead or around the ears), just make sure you leave long, thin
spaces of the base color, surrounded by the darker shade. This makes the hair
look a lot more involved. ^^ Drawing all the clumps of hair in with the airbrush
makes it look crowded, so just make up for the lack of lines by shading wherever
it looks right.

Try looking out for other pictures/tutorials for shading examples. I remember
reading this one tutorial that taught how to draw Spawn's cloak, and that helped
me immensely, especially when it comes to making areas of hair look isolated,
like it is here.







Time for the third shade. You can use more than this, but I usually only use
three or four shades when coloring hair. Darken the color some more, and use it
in the areas of hair that would be furthest from the light source. Since the light is
on the left, you'd use it mostly on the right side of the forehead-sections of hair,
and especially in that point on the top of the head where the hair seems to meet.
Don't go overboard with the darkest shade though, since you don't want it
overpowering the middle one.

I recommend waiting until you've colored almost everything around the hair until
doing this next step, but it is part of the hair coloring, so I'll put it here now. After
you've got as much shading as you want on there, take the airbrush (feather tip,
at one pixel and 100% opacity), and start drawing lines from that point at the top of
the head, downward to make it look like individual hair strands. Use a light color to
make strands over the shaded areas, and a darker color to make strands against the
face and over the light areas. Go nuts. ~_^ Doing this fills in all the spaces nicely,
and is a very easy way to make some detail.

But, again, you should wait until you've colored the skin and background before
doing this, to make sure all the strands show up the way you want them to.

Now the highlights! Just keep using the airbrush, but use white this time. Keep
making little vertical lines side by side across the area you want to have highlights,
until it starts to look...shiny. An area of the size I've circled is usually good, but
it'll depend on how strong your light source is and things like that.

Don't necessarily make horizontal airbrush lines for highlights, or use big blobs of color,
at least, not right away. It comes out looking rather bold and awkward. These tiny
lines are more subtle, but tend to look nicer. ^^

 

Voila, tis done! It'll take practice, but the whole process isn't very
difficult at all. The biggest things to remember are making the sections of hair
go right to the top of the head, and to use the airbrush to make detailed,
individual strands. Of course, if you decide to color this way, you'll have to
make sure your shading is consistent throughout the whole picture -- having
cel-style skin next to this kind of hair would clash very badly.







.... I hope this tutorial turned out okay. ^_^;;;