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Description
ok. hair. i actually quite enjoy drawing hair, i feel pretty comfortable with the technique i've developed over the last couple of years, and i thought i'd have a go at sharing what i've learnt to try and give anyone struggling with hair maybe a few ideas.
this tutorial is designed for use with adobe photoshop and a graphics tablet. all the techniques can be done in corel painter, but i'll be referring to everything as it was done in photoshop.

step 1.
find the centre line of the head, highlighted here in red. this will help you get a 3 dimensional feel for the head so you can place the hair correctly.

step 2.
start roughing in your hair on a new layer, for this pic i decided on fairly loose natural hair, think of the head as the 3 dimensional object it is, and have the hair flowing around the curves, running the centre part in the hair from the heads centre line.
this may take a fair bit of sketching to get looking good, try to keep all curves and waves in the hair as smooth and natural as possible. also notice the volume of the hair above the skull. it may be easier at this stage to think of the hair as a solid object placed over the head (if that makes any sense).

step 3.
once your happy with the shape and flow of the hair get rid of the top of the skull, and build up the lines of the hair to get a more definite feel for the overall shape, also just to make sure that without the skull showing everything still looks alright.

step 4.
at this point, i'm happy with all the linework, and i've decided i want the light source to be coming from somewhere above her, so using a soft airbrush i start loosely putting in some shading.

step 5.
happy with the look of the overhead light source, i add more shading, very loosely, and use some white to define some of the highlites. it's now starting to look a lot more solid and 3 dimensional.

step 6.
time to get rid of all the sketch lines i've left in the hair, and start to create a hair textured base to get some realism happening.
for this i have made up my own brush. here's how to make yours:
open a new document.
create a new layer.
hit F5 to show your brushes panel.
select a brush that will enable you to create a dot pattern similar to the one outlined in blue in fig.1 (the airbrush at a small size should do).
draw said pattern on your new empty layer.
select the lasso tool and circle your pattern to select it.
click on "edit" at the top of the screen to bring down the sub-menu, and select "define brush preset". it will promt you to name your new brush then hit ok.
(this new brush will be added to your brushes at the very bottom)
select the brush, and then on the left of the brushes panel, go to brush tip shape. set the diameter to whatever you want (mine's about 30px) and the spacing to 1 percent.
now click on "other dynamics" change the control for both the opacity and flow jitter to "pen pressure" but leave them at zero percent.
click smoothing to on.
none of the other boxes should be ticked.
your brush should now create a stroke similar to the one shown below the dot sample in fig 1. hopefully
good idea to save your brushes at this point if you like that brush.

ok! that was fun... now you have a spiffy new hair brush.
select the smudge tool, and using your new brush at 100 percent strength, start smudging all your shadows and sketch lines in, using flowing movements that follow the lines of the hair. see fig 1.
you can also use this brush as a paintbrush to add in some more highlites and shadows that flow with the hair.

NOTE: when you're smudging your hair, and in the next step, drawing in more hair, ALWAYS WORK FROM THE BACK TO THE FRONT, or from the hair furthest away from you to the closest. eg. the fringe had to be done last because it goes straight over the top of the hair behind it.

step 7.
step 6 gives a nice solid basis for our hair, but to my mind still looks too uniform and soft, so step 7 is to add a heap of single strands of hair in a darker shade. for this i just use the soft airbrush at a small diameter and use pen pressure to change the opacity.
draw all of your lines flowing with the hair. i zoom in so i can do nice long strokes for best control, and keep moving my hand through the same motion following the line of the hair but only applying pressure to the stroke where i need it. see fig 2 here so you can see the red line representes the movement of my hand but the blue stroke is where i apply pressure to put the stroke down.
keeping constantly moving and going right past either end of the actual stroke like this gives a nice natural feel, as your hairs will inevitably be of different lengths and opacity, so long as you keep that movement the same so it's all flowing in the right direction

step 8.
same as step 7 except using a lighter shade (or white at a lower opacity) and focusing more on the highlites.
these two steps are the most time consuming, but hopefully as you see the more complex level of depth your hair is getting you'll be inspired to keep going...

step 9.
i sometimes repeat step 7 and 8 a bit to get the detail i'm looking for, but once your happy with the texture of the hair, select the dodge tool and set it to highlites at about 30 percent, with the soft airbrush at a large diameter. the red lines indicate the direction and areas i've used it, this just further brings out the highlites. you may want to set the dodge tool to midtones and repeat if it gets too contrasty.
then change to the burn tool set to shadows with the same soft brush and opacity and darken any shadows up, depending on how your lighting the whole image.
add a few loose strands lightly around the whole head just for realism (unless your doing an ad for hair care, in which case you could probably skip steps 7 and 8 )

that's pretty much it i think. hopefully i haven't missed anything?
with any luck you now have a reasonable idea how you can draw hair. obviously this whole process takes a bit of practise, so don't be put off if your hair doesn't look just right straight away, unfortunately there is a fair bit of work involved in the whole hair thing.

hope this helps people out there! i'm sure there's other ways of tackling hair, but this is the method that works for me.
good luck with it!

jesse

Description
ok. hair. i actually quite enjoy drawing hair, i feel pretty comfortable with the technique i've developed over the last couple of years, and i thought i'd have a go at sharing what i've learnt to try and give anyone struggling with hair maybe a few ideas.
this tutorial is designed for use with adobe photoshop and a graphics tablet. all the techniques can be done in corel painter, but i'll be referring to everything as it was done in photoshop.

step 1.
find the centre line of the head, highlighted here in red. this will help you get a 3 dimensional feel for the head so you can place the hair correctly.

step 2.
start roughing in your hair on a new layer, for this pic i decided on fairly loose natural hair, think of the head as the 3 dimensional object it is, and have the hair flowing around the curves, running the centre part in the hair from the heads centre line.
this may take a fair bit of sketching to get looking good, try to keep all curves and waves in the hair as smooth and natural as possible. also notice the volume of the hair above the skull. it may be easier at this stage to think of the hair as a solid object placed over the head (if that makes any sense).

step 3.
once your happy with the shape and flow of the hair get rid of the top of the skull, and build up the lines of the hair to get a more definite feel for the overall shape, also just to make sure that without the skull showing everything still looks alright.

step 4.
at this point, i'm happy with all the linework, and i've decided i want the light source to be coming from somewhere above her, so using a soft airbrush i start loosely putting in some shading.

step 5.
happy with the look of the overhead light source, i add more shading, very loosely, and use some white to define some of the highlites. it's now starting to look a lot more solid and 3 dimensional.

step 6.
time to get rid of all the sketch lines i've left in the hair, and start to create a hair textured base to get some realism happening.
for this i have made up my own brush. here's how to make yours:
open a new document.
create a new layer.
hit F5 to show your brushes panel.
select a brush that will enable you to create a dot pattern similar to the one outlined in blue in fig.1 (the airbrush at a small size should do).
draw said pattern on your new empty layer.
select the lasso tool and circle your pattern to select it.
click on "edit" at the top of the screen to bring down the sub-menu, and select "define brush preset". it will promt you to name your new brush then hit ok.
(this new brush will be added to your brushes at the very bottom)
select the brush, and then on the left of the brushes panel, go to brush tip shape. set the diameter to whatever you want (mine's about 30px) and the spacing to 1 percent.
now click on "other dynamics" change the control for both the opacity and flow jitter to "pen pressure" but leave them at zero percent.
click smoothing to on.
none of the other boxes should be ticked.
your brush should now create a stroke similar to the one shown below the dot sample in fig 1. hopefully
good idea to save your brushes at this point if you like that brush.

ok! that was fun... now you have a spiffy new hair brush.
select the smudge tool, and using your new brush at 100 percent strength, start smudging all your shadows and sketch lines in, using flowing movements that follow the lines of the hair. see fig 1.
you can also use this brush as a paintbrush to add in some more highlites and shadows that flow with the hair.

NOTE: when you're smudging your hair, and in the next step, drawing in more hair, ALWAYS WORK FROM THE BACK TO THE FRONT, or from the hair furthest away from you to the closest. eg. the fringe had to be done last because it goes straight over the top of the hair behind it.

step 7.
step 6 gives a nice solid basis for our hair, but to my mind still looks too uniform and soft, so step 7 is to add a heap of single strands of hair in a darker shade. for this i just use the soft airbrush at a small diameter and use pen pressure to change the opacity.
draw all of your lines flowing with the hair. i zoom in so i can do nice long strokes for best control, and keep moving my hand through the same motion following the line of the hair but only applying pressure to the stroke where i need it. see fig 2 here so you can see the red line representes the movement of my hand but the blue stroke is where i apply pressure to put the stroke down.
keeping constantly moving and going right past either end of the actual stroke like this gives a nice natural feel, as your hairs will inevitably be of different lengths and opacity, so long as you keep that movement the same so it's all flowing in the right direction

step 8.
same as step 7 except using a lighter shade (or white at a lower opacity) and focusing more on the highlites.
these two steps are the most time consuming, but hopefully as you see the more complex level of depth your hair is getting you'll be inspired to keep going...

step 9.
i sometimes repeat step 7 and 8 a bit to get the detail i'm looking for, but once your happy with the texture of the hair, select the dodge tool and set it to highlites at about 30 percent, with the soft airbrush at a large diameter. the red lines indicate the direction and areas i've used it, this just further brings out the highlites. you may want to set the dodge tool to midtones and repeat if it gets too contrasty.
then change to the burn tool set to shadows with the same soft brush and opacity and darken any shadows up, depending on how your lighting the whole image.
add a few loose strands lightly around the whole head just for realism (unless your doing an ad for hair care, in which case you could probably skip steps 7 and 8 )

that's pretty much it i think. hopefully i haven't missed anything?
with any luck you now have a reasonable idea how you can draw hair. obviously this whole process takes a bit of practise, so don't be put off if your hair doesn't look just right straight away, unfortunately there is a fair bit of work involved in the whole hair thing.

hope this helps people out there! i'm sure there's other ways of tackling hair, but this is the method that works for me.
good luck with it!

jesse