WELCOME TO MY TUTORIAL !

Hello, welcome to my little tutorial on this website !

I will be introducing my way of drawing, rendering, and lighting hair, using mostly basic tools available to everyone !

 

Tools !

For this demonstration we will be using just a few simple tool available with your copy of CSP !

-Oil Paint Flat Brush (1

-Thin Gouache Brush, (2

-Air Brush (3

-Textured Pen (4

Part 1: Understanding the topology of the skull !

Before we get into drawing hair, we must understand what lies underneath it and gives it shape and form !

-The part of the head where the hair resides is in it's most terms an large semisphere.

-In real life, hair originates from something refered to as a "hair line" but for the sake of simplicity, we will be using a dot at the middle section of the top of the head as the guiding point for our hair.

 

Once you have pinpointed the origin point for the hair on the head of your character, you can begin with the placement of the Hair Shapes,

I personally like to divide them into 3 major shapes,

-Bangs (Red) - These are the front part of the hair, they can be straight, a C curve, a S curve, or whatever you really want ! Experiment with the shapes, and try to find one which suits the personality of your character !

-Side Bangs/Side Hair (Blue) - These are partially optional, but I like them as they help add an extra flair to your character, helping frame the face and giving a more cute and effeminate vibe, if you wish to go for a more masculine character, it is reccomended to remove these !

-Back Hair (Green) - These are hair origniating from the backpoint, they tend to be the largest and most fluffiest of shapes, and allows for the most freedom of expresssion.

Quick Reminder !!

Hair is incredibly light weight, and is affected by gravity, however, due to it's light weight and tendency to form clumps you can have incredibly fluffy hair, ＠＾▽＾＠

In Anime art we tend to exaggerate not only the size of the skull, but the fluffiness of the hair as well, I personally like my hair incredibly big and fluffy, but in the end it's your choice for how much Fluffiness, you want to go for !

After you have got the basic shapes down, we can move on to actually drawing the hair !

Congrats on making it this far, you're doing great, btw (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

Part 2: Character Shorthands for Drawing Hair !

For this part, we will be understanding how altering certain parts of the hair can result in a different character and personality !

For the first one we would be creating a happy and energetic girl !

Having short hair that frames the face, and medium sized bangs, gives a young and effeminate vibe to your character

For the second one, we will be creating a mysterious and sad girl,, (T_T)

Having one of the bangs cover the eye can create a mysterious energy to the character !

Having Medium-Long hair gives it an effeminate and mature vibe, which can be used to help sadden the character !

For the third one we will be creating an older sister character !!

Having high up bangs that split in the middle helps to give a serious vibe, while having long side bangs can help frame the pretty face of the character,

For Older Character back hair can be verrry long, this gives them a strong presence and maturity.

By tying up the hair into a single large pony tail, you can give the impression of a hardworking and motherly woman,

In the end, I would reccomend using references and copying from characters you like, as this will give you the best results ! always draw with reference, it is the BEST way to improve.

 

Part 3: Lineart !!

Good job on coming so far ! we are almost coming towards the fun part !!

Keep on pushing on <3

When cleaning up hair, it's very important to remember everything we have learnt so far !

Do not be afraid of how complicated it looks, I understand it can be incredibly daunting to look at, but if you listen to my advice everything would be great !!

Remember these-

-Hair is light weight, and gets dragged down by gravity, but some of it forms clumps, and some strands of hair can deviate from the main shape !

-Hair is broken down into 3 major shapes, bangs, side bangs, and back hair, as long as these shapes are clear, the hair will look good !

A quick tip to make your lineart more dynamic is to make it follow the light source, lines facing away from the light source will be thicker, while lineart facing the light source would be thinner !

HINT: for this tutorial, we will be following a light source coming from the top so your hair should allow follow it !

For the next step, we will be colouring our lineart to give it a more anime and adorable look !

To quickly colour your lineart,

-1: Create a new layer (on top of your lineart layer)

-2: Set the layer to clipping, this will allow you to quickly apply colour to your lineart

I personally like to use highly saturated colours for this part, and make them get darker as they reach shadow, you can pick your own, or use the ones I used, once everything is done press CTRL + E, this will merge the lineart and colour and will make it easier to render !

TIP: if this doesn't work, double check if your lineart layer has anything else on it, you can do this by hiding the background layer by clicking the eye icon.

TIP2: If you're struggling with how to draw strands of hair, they are covered in the FAQ section !

Part 4: Colouring !

Congrats on getting to the 4th part, I will be teaching you how to do colouring easily !

＠＾▽＾＠

To quickly colour, first it is reccomended to create a layer for colour underneath the lineart layer for the colouring !

We will be using the bucket tool to colour in quickly !

1: First Select the Bucket Tool.

2: Refer to Other Layers subtool.

3: Turn on close gap, and set it to high !

Just click on the hair, with the colour of your choice selected and it should work !

If it doesn't, you can always fill it in manually, there is nothing wrong with that (^.^)

 

TIP: if the lineart colour looks weird, you should set the lineart layer mode to multiply, if you do not know how to do that, worry not it will be covered just on the top of the first section !

Part 5: Rendering !!

Phew, the last step was fairly easy, but things get more difficult from here, so let's dive in !!!

For this tutorial, we will be using the help of the blending layer modes !

To understand how to create them, follow these images !

Follow the steps after you have created a new layer !

-1: On the layer sidepan, there should be an option above the lock named "Normal", click on it.

-2: It will open a drop down list, and depending on if you're doing the shadows (Multiply) or the lights (Add (Glow)) pick one of them.

-3: Click on the clipping layer option, this will make sure your blendering mode is only applied to your character's hair, and not anything else !

If you're confused by the second step, here is a quick gif to explain how both of the blending mode works, pay close attention to which modes I select and which buttons I press !

For the shadows, I personally enjoy using the oilpaint flat brush,

For the lights, I personally enjoy using the air brush.

It's finally time to render your hair, follow these steps !

-Create a new layer, and put it above the colour layer

-Set it to multiply blending mode !

-Turn Clipping Mode on (from now on whenever blending modes are mentioned, I will assume you turn oned clipping mode)

Then using a dark saturated colour, paint over the areas in shadow according to the light source (top) !

If you're having trouble with that, I'd like to imagine the hair as a very big ball with little cuts for hair strands !

 

For the next step, we will be creating an Add Glow layer, and setting it to clipping mode (follow the gif above, if you're having trouble with that)

We will then use dark colours to air brush the top and bottom of the hair, and parts of the chin !

Using one strong light source (yellow), and one weak light source (purple) can create a strong effect, airbrush to your heart's desire and then press CTRL + E (this will merge the layers) once you're done.

The highlight stage !

This is one of my most favourite parts of rendering hair, as it is always the most fun for me, haha, once again create an add glow layer, set it to clipping and air brush the areas a little bit to increase the contrast, I provided some colour samples you can use !

After you merge them (ctrl + e), you can start using the oil paint flat brush to paint little hair lights and create a darker higlight shape on the top !

Woooohoo, you reached the final stage !

Give yourself a pat on the back, you have done incredibly well to make it this far (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

In this stage you can really do what you want, I like to paint over the remaining lineart, add some extra shapes and strands, maybe add some more shapes at the bottom, just have general fun !

 

Part 6: Lighting ! (Optional)

Normally you don't need to much after the last step, as that works for everything

However, if you wish to go above and beyond ! (✧ω✧)

You may continue by adding fancy lighting, and effects, this is for intermediate artists so be careful about approaching it

First, we will create a multiply layer, and draw some diagonal lines with a light blue colour using the oil paint flat brush, after that we will air brush the edges with a really light colour !

We can erase some lines, to create a more unique scattering effects !

Next using the polyline tool select the area not affected by shadow, and create an Add Glow Layer, and set it to clipping mode.

After that take a dark bright yellow-orange colour, and paint over it with an oil paint flat brush.

You should get an effect similar to this, merge it (ctrl + E) and then make another add glow layer, this time we will be exclusively using the air brush to add in glow !

For the final step, we will be creating an addglow layer, on clipping mode, and using the air brush with a bright purple colour until desired effects are achieved,

I have made little green arrows as pointers to where you can airbrush, but in reality just feel free to do it everywhere !! if things looks bad you can always Ctrl + Z !

FAQs

Welcome to the last section, this is to answer and give some tips and tricks I couldn't fit into the main tutorial !

We will be covering,

-How to Draw Strands !

-How to create more uniqueness in hair shape !

1) To draw slightly wavy hair, I'd suggest making an S, but a bit squeezed, and then connecting the lines to the middle, you can add a split at the end to give more shape variety !

2) For really curvy hair, I'd suggest making a very squigly line, and making the same shape, but having it connect and invert in the middle.

3) For Straight hair, I just draw a wavy retangle and put some lines and strands on it, you can use the liquify tool to help make it wavy.

4) For ringlets, I draw spring, and then I draw the back part of the hair, then I erase some of the back part and draw the front part.

5) For really strong ringlets, I draw a bunch of Cs with a slight V shape for the edge, then I connected them together with straight lines~

To create more uniqueness on your hair, you should try following the rule of big medium and small

This can be used for bangs, or anything really from dresses to swords !

It's a very powerful technique, try to use it !

Final Message !

Thank you so much for readin the tutorial till the end, I genuinely apperciate it, and I hope you learned something new along the way !

 

 

and, as a final send off gift, here are some brushes I use by the amazing artists on the Clip studio Asset Store

These are by no means neccesary, but having good tools can really help with speeding up the process !!