Painting Realistic Hair

By: Magdalena Proszowska

In this tutorial, Magdalena Proszowska provides some helpful tips for painting hair in Painter Essentials. Starting with a rough sketch of where the hair will be, she envisions the strands of hair like ribbons and determines how the light will hit different areas, creating shadows and highlights.

The next step is to block in the main colors and primary shape of the hair, adding rough highlights on the hair that is directed upwards, and shadows on the hair that is directed downwards. Remember to also add some shadowing to any parts of the face that the hair would cover.

Once the blocking is done, you can work on refining your painting by blending the large shapes together and adding in fine details, like individual strands and light shining through at the ends of the hair.

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