For me, creating hair is simply a matter of trial and error, and playing with the following tools: dodge, burn, airbrush in color mode, smudge and, most importantly, the undo tool. It was a long and intense process, but not overly difficult once I got started.
Primarily, it was a case of weaving dark strands over light areas and light strands over dark areas with the smudge tool (the smaller the brush and the lower the pressure, the finer the hairs will be), constantly adding light and dark dots and pixels with burn and dodge, and stretching them out with the smudge tool.
To demonstrate, I have repainted some of the basic steps in the following examples:
1. Basic highlight added where hair is most prominent.
2. General direction of the hair created by smearing highlights into shadows with the smudge tool (hard 3 pixel brush on 80% pressure).
3. Streaks of hair fined out using smudge tool and small hard brushes.
4. Highlights and shadow added with burn and dodge tool, to give hair a sense of depth.
5. Finer strands pulled out using smudge tool and 1 pixel hard brush. The pressure is varied constantly.
6. Highlights faded into black areas with burn tool. More fine strands pulled into place. Strands of hair coloured purple and grey with airbrush in color mode.
To fine down the hair, I generally smudge darker lines through the centre of each streak with 3 pixel sized hard brush, gradually lowering the pressure before switching to a 1 pixel brush:
(Sometimes I apply the Paint Daub filter from the Filters/Artistic pull down before doing this, but it's probably better not to)
1. Loose flow of hair painted with airbrush, line tool and smudge.
2. Dark blobs added in the middle of each lock of hair.
3. Blobs smeared along the lock with smudge tool, 3 pixel hard brush and 80% pressure.
4. Pressure lowered. More dark streaks smeared along the lock of hair.
5. Light blobs added between dark strands.
6. Light blobs smeared along the lock with smudge tool (80% pressure).
7. Pressure lowered. More strands pulled along locks.
8. 1 pixel brush used to smear light strands between dark streaks and dark strands between light streaks.
After applying more details (sweat, freckles, stippling, strands of hair, additional colours) using the aforementioned tools and techniques, I darkened the background and added an unobtrusive pattern. I merged the layers and blended them together by darkening the edges of the woman's face using the burn tool and soft brushes, and by pulling strands of hair over background.
1. Strands of hair pulled over background using smudge tool.
2. Faint green and grey tones added to hair with airbrush on color mode.
3. Hair pulled over background with smudge tool on low pressure. Blended into darkness with burn tool and soft brushes.
4. Freckles added around nose. Touch of green added to the shadow.
5. Freckles and stippling over man's nose using burn tool on low exposure.
6. Highlights added to hair with dodge tool. Touches of red, grey and green added to hair with airbrush on color mode.
Hopefully by now you can look at this image without too many remaining questions, though if you do have any questions regarding any techniques used here or any specific aspect of this image, please feel free to email me at wadedan@softhome.net and I will try to answer and demonstrate these in a separate Q & A tutorial.
