Do you have any tips on shading/rendering hair? Your hair always looks so fluffy and beautiful and I’m so jealous because I struggle with it a lot! To add on, any tips for rendering dyed hair, like Felix’s? Where there’s a color gradient!
Hiii~
I felt like this was best answered with visual examples, so I kind of set up a whole tutorial for this? :'DD
I'm sorry this post turned out so long LMAO I went a bit overboard ------------------------------
Firstly, something you need to know about the way I color is that I abuse the SHIT out of certain hotkeys and layer settings.
To make following along the process of the gifs I recorded for this easier to understand, I set up my recording in such a way that you can (hopefully) see more clearly when I use them.
Namely:
Then I'd also like to elaborate a bit on the two brushes I primarily use:
(1) The "turnip pen" - I use this one for the base colors and overall hair texture (I use this also for blushing on skin a lot)
it layers over itself without smudging and both opacity and size are pen pressure controlled.
(2) The "guache brush" - this is what I use for almost all of my shading.
the amount of paint applied, the density and how much it blends whatever other colors it's applied over (on the same layer) is controlled by pen pressure. Its rotation is also stylus angle sensitive, which is VERY handy for texture control!
(3) your very average, basic airbrush tool :'D this one I use very sparingly, usually to soften gradients and apply atmospheric lighting.
NOW-
STEP 1: THE BASE COLOR
as you've probably noticed, I included two/three different shades on the setup page there! I start by applying the darker one first.
(note: the gifs are all set to 2x speed)
I cut the footage a bit to the "highlights" but what you should be able to see here is how I toggle "use brush as eraser" on and off repeatedly during the process. It helps with keeping the edges of the coloring looking a bit "fluffy"! I also occasionally use the ALT GR + drag hotkey to quickly resize my brush, which helps with the tighter curls of the curly hair variant especially.
With multi-toned hair like Felix's I go about it *slightly* different because I block out the parts that won't get dye on them on one layer (i.e. sideburns + hairline in this case) and then create another layer above that to do the dyed hair on top of. It's technically not *necessary* but it lets me feel more in control with less of a hassle over where the gradient goes in the next step.
Speaking of which:
STEP 2: TEXTURING/DEFINITION
I make an extra layer and clip it to the one with the darker base color on it, then start blocking in individual strands to give the whole thing some texture - this step also carries a lot of weight in making the shading look more defined later!
Along the way with the curly hair variant you can also see me using the lasso tool to apply a bit of airbrush to the ponytail - this gives the fringe, the bound back hair around the head and the tail itself some extra definition! I also airbrushed the tips of the hair with the lighter color a bit to give it more of a wispy vibe.
Felix' hair gradient goes in on two layers instead of one - one layer for the mid-tone and one for the blond!
resulting in this:
This is the state I'd keep it at for a "flat" colored artwork.
STEP 3: SHADING (stage 1)
For the shading I start by throwing the flat colors into the same group/folder, then make a multiply layer that I clip on top of the group/folder.
Then I paint-bucket on the layer using a medium grey-ish purple (the actual color used depends on what tone of you're going for with the lighting), and add white to the other of my little color switch squares.
Using the guache brush, I can then "paint" the light on with the white and blend/correct with the purple by toggling between the two using my X hotkey.
While shading I try to keep in mind what direction the light is coming from as well as the shape it's falling onto. With the straight hair variant here you can also see that I'm using the textured shape of the guache brush to create quick highlights - I paint on a stroke of white, then use the purple with medium to high pressure to smudge it out only a tiny bit. This gives it a more hair-like texture!
The highlights usually form towards the "edges" of the surface area that's facing the light, so keeping curvature in mind helps a lot with placing them.
Lighter pressure = more blending, less color application.
Once again, Felix' hair makes for kind of an exception, since the dark and light tones in his hair make it kinda tricky to see what I'm doing, so I turn the layer back from the "multiply" setting to "normal" and temporarily reduce the opacity a tad before I continue - the rest of the process stays mostly the same though.
This completes Shading stage 1:
I like to kinda think of this stage as me chiseling out the 3D shape of what I'm shading - and with the multiply layer on the "normal" setting, it kind of almost looks like a marble statue too :'D
STEP 3: SHADING (stage 2):
Once again I make a new layer and clip it to the coloring group, above the multiply layer we just made, set it to "add" and then bucket-fill the entire layer with black - black doesn't show up on "add" and simultaneously makes it easier to blend! Think of it as "priming" the canvas in a sense?
I was unfortunately an idiot who forgot she was recording and to be mindful of how I position the canvas/keeping to a neater order for editing purposes later, so the next gif clip is kinda awkardly framed for the straight hair and slightly out of order.
I also want to note that somewhere near the start I decided to hit CTRL+U to open the hue/saturation/luminosity sliders and shifted the hue around a little, so it starts out blue but ends up more turquoise. I often do small adjustments like this along the way throughout my process. No shame in changing your mind!
This is what I like thinking of as "ambient occlusion" or "bounce light" - though in my mind I tend to just apply it to the darker areas that could use more definition or to add more shine to the highlights.
This results in the following output:
STEP 4: COLOR CORRECTION
Idk if you've noticed, but by now the base colors started looking a little bit muddy. Let's fix that!
First I copy the base color layer group in its entirety and paste it above the shading layers. I then select all layers inside that group, right click on it, and then click on "merge selected layers".
The merged result I then make a copy of and turn the merged original invisible (this is more just in case I need to copy it again than actually necessary).
I then turn the layer mode setting to "soft light", hit the CTRL+U hotkey to bring up the hue/saturation/luminosity sliders again and pull the saturation to about two thirds to the right and then pull up the luminosity to taste before clicking OK to apply the effect. I then mess with the opacity of the layer until it looks right. In this example I happened to land on circa 79% opacity.
I then decided it needs more of the original color back, so I copied that safety copy of the merged layer from earlier again, turn its mode setting to "color" and turn the opacity down until I have what feels like a good contrast. It doesn't look like much changed when you compare it to it with just the "soft light" layer, but it makes a difference to *me* okay? :'D
STEP 5: FINE TUNING
Normally Step 4 is where I finish, but if I really want to amp up the fancy rendering, I go into Step 5 next.
This one is a lot less technical than the previous ones, as I basically just make a new layer that I place above everything (including the lineart), and then just... copy colors from the image and then draw in details such as stray hairs and extra shines and adding definition. The brush I use in this case is a flat marker tool, it does essentially the same as the turnip brush, except it's flat and slightly angled :'D
Aand... that's it, pretty much!
:'D now you have a detailed run-down of how I go about coloring and shading/rendering hair!
I hope this helped, it was very fun to make haha <3<3
