black hair tutorial

Many a moan I hear about the difficulty of making black or dark doll hair. Either it comes out looking flat and two-dimensional, or the highlights end up looking like badly executed streaks of premature gray.

Fear not! I have a moderately workable method which I shall share forthwith. For starters, download this palette:

1. Start with your fully dressed, bald doll. If your graphics program supports layers, create a new one for your doll's hair. This way it will be easier to start over if you screw up.

2. In black (#000000), draw a rough outline of the hair.

3. Tidy up the outline by erasing extra pixels. Select the second darkest shade from the palette, and carefully outline the doll's face, neck and shoulders (if your hair is long), closing all the gaps in the hair outline.

4. Select the next lightest shade, and fill in the outline. Yes, I know, it's gray and not black, but it'll look good when you're done.

5. Select black again, and draw strands in the hair to give it some texture.

6. Select the third lightest shade of gray from the palette, and fill in the strands that should be lightest: the ones on the very top of your doll's head, and the top or outermost strand in each curl or wave.

7. Select the Retouch tool, with settings as shown: Size 5, Hardness 0, Opacity 15, Step 0, Density 100. On the Options (puzzle-piece) tab, set the Retouch Mode to Darken RGB, and make sure Build up brush is checked.

8. Carefully darken the hair around the doll's face.

9. Set the brush size to 2 or 3, and darken any additional strands in the hair.

10. Change the brush size to 6, the opacity to 35 or so, and the Retouch Mode to Lighten RGB. Lightly go over the upper parts of the doll's hair, against the grain -- that is, across the strands you drew earlier.

11. Zoom out. At this point your doll should have fairly respectable-looking hair!

If you find you've overdone the highlighting, first step away from the computer for a bit, and then come back. Why? Because after working on it for all this time, it may just be that you've been looking at it too long. Go get a drink of water and then look at it again. If it still looks too "gray", just back up using your Undo button, turn down the opacity on the Retouch tool, and redo the highlights.

<--- I've done the highlights very lightly here, because my doll's hair is very short and fluffy. On longer or straighter hair, though, you can make the highlighting bolder and it will still look good. --->