Paint Tool Sai Brushes Hair

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Hair Tutorial

Hair Tutorial

Start with selecting the area you'll color and fill it with a dark hair base color.

Next, use the Airbrush tool and select a brush texture, like Rough_Round_1 (at 50% brush shape affection) For the "Density", set it at 80% to 90% for now.

Look at your image, and on a new layer above the base color, start to paint and drag your cursor in single strokes along sections of hair that you think would pick up light.

Click on the box next to the Mask box (the blank layer box) to work in it. If you don't, then you'll alter the area the Mask affects. You'll know if you're working on the layer if the symbol under the eye changes from a grey box with a circle to a pen/brush/whatever it is.

Working with a larger brush size gives each "hair" more definition.

When you're satisfied that you've covered highlighted areas of hair, you can think about what the shadows do to the hair. Mostly, this means areas of shaded hair around the highlights you did to give each grouping of hair more dimension.

⟵ ⟵ ⟵ ⟵ Don't forget: Select the area of the base coat to work inside the selection as not to paint on the skin.

Here, I used a 40px size brush, set at 55% airbrush density, as darker colors come out bolder if using the same 90% as before.

Use the same painting technique of dragging strokes one direction to taper the ends off gradually. It helps to have a pressure-sensitive digital pen tablet.

I varied it up a little by changing the brush texture to Rough_Round_2. Please experiment!

Then come everyone's favorite bits, the concentrated bright areas of highlight where the hair shines the most in light. It's usually in the middle of a section of fiat hair and somewhere on the bangs, closer to the light source.

Look at photos of real hair, and if you're drawing anime/manga style, look at other colored examples of professional work.

As a last step, set your airbrush to a small size, (2 to 4) and make strokes to simulate loose hairs or fly-aways. This happens around bangs, at the base of the hairline at the neck, and on top of the head, like around a parting of the hair.

This is also a good device to show a character traits! Frizzy hair and many fly-aways can show them as absent-minded, unkempt, or stressed out.