Painting Hair for a Portrait in a Unique Way - Corel Painter Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood July 15, 2004   1 Here is the painting so far. We need to fill in the hair. I'll show you an interesting way to do that.   2 Here is the photo I have been working from.   3 This is the setup for the layers.   4 Make sure the hair layer is the selected layer. Start by selecting Blenders and then choose Soft Blender Stump 10.    5 Make sure Opacity is set to 100%.   6 Hide the face and background layers by clicking the eyeball.   7 I've turned off the photo layer for the moment to show you the hair is proceeding. I first block in strands of hair and then hide the photo layer and unhide the face layer to see how I am progressing. As you can see, I'm still in the initial stages. You can increase and decrease the size of the brush as you are working by pressing [ or ], so keep that in mind.   8 You do not want to randomly swish the brush around. Keep in mind that there is scalp skin showing and we have to make that as realistic as possible. The process is basically like using a paint brush, you would just use the brush in wide swipes otherwise there would be no detail. We're laying in the basic hair for the moment. As you can see below, I use short strokes to capture the hair color of individual color changes.    9 Click the photo layer on and off to see the empty spaces, then fill them in as you see them.   10 Here's where I am so far. I'm going to continue using the same method to complete the initial stage of the hair.    11 Here you can see the progress I am achieving.   12 As you reach near the end of filling in the hair, turn on the background layer and use that to blend in the edge of the hair, otherwise the hair will have a hard edge.   13 Here is what we have so far.    14 I want you to change to Photo and select Dodge. You may have to reduce the size of the brush. Be careful here. What we want to do is bring out the highlights in the hair more definately.   15 Change to Grainy Blender 10 and begin blending in the hair. Move the brush in the direction of the hair. Make sure Opacity is 100%. Begin to lay in the brush strokes. This will make the hair look more real and it will soften the raw edges.   16 Change to Blender>Grainy Water and reduce the size of the brush. Opacity is set to 100%. Use this brush to bring out he fine detail of individual hairs starting in the hair color.   17 I fixed the eye by using soft charcoal and adding some detail. After finishing everything, drop all layers. Select Equalize from Tonal Control and keep at it's default setting.   18 Here is the final painting next to the original photo.   Copyright 1998-2004, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved