Shading and highlighting hair in digital art can be difficult, but with practice and patience, you can become an expert at it. The most important thing when shading and highlighting hair is to pay attention to the direction of the hair. You can use a variety of tools to shade and highlight hair, such as brushes, gradients, and color manipulation.
Brushes are a great way to add shadows and highlights to your digital art. Use a hard brush for sharp edges or a soft brush for softer edges.
Experiment with different brush sizes and opacity levels to get the desired effect. If you are going for a realistic look, try to mimic the direction of the hair with your brush strokes. This will help create depth in your artwork.
Gradients are also helpful when shading and highlighting hair. You can use gradients of colors that match the hue of your subject’s hair to create subtle transitions between highlights and shadows. Gradients can also be used with brushes to add more definition between light and dark areas.
Color Manipulation is another useful tool for shading and highlighting hair in digital art. You can use hue/saturation adjustments or curves adjustments to adjust the amount of light or darkness in certain sections of your artwork. This will help you create depth in your artwork by making some areas lighter or darker depending on how you want them represented.
Conclusion: Shading and highlighting hair in digital art takes patience, practice, and lots of experimentation with different tools like brushes, gradients, and color manipulation. Paying attention to the direction of the hair is key when creating realistic looking results that will make your artwork stand out from the rest!