How To Paint Curly Brown Hair In Watercolor

Hey guys, i recently made a video showing my process for creating the dappled light effect on skin, using this beautiful image of my model, sydney - and some of you are asking me to talk about how i painted her hair. So in this video, i'm sharing my top tips for painting realistic, curly, brunette hair without tearing out your own hair and frustration start by planning your background. If you're doing an atmospheric portrait like this one, it's important to create some kind of connection between the person and the background. One useful tool employed by experienced artists is to plan ahead for lost, edges and found edges. Dark hair is a great area in a portrait to lose edges so that they disappear into the background, allowing the viewer's focus to be on the face. If you paint the hair and the background separately and without forethought, the two elements will have hard edges and appear disconnected potentially distracting. The viewer from the focal point. Watercolor is unique in that. When you put down marks, they are there to stay. You can layer over the top, but if you're using transparent paint, each layer beneath is still visible and is affecting the color and value of each additional layer. So to connect the hair to the background. In this portrait of sydney, i had to paint the dark green trees and the dark brown hair side by side almost simultaneously. This wet next to wet method helps the colors blend softly. On the paper, i used two separate brushes, a large one-inch flat brush for the background trees and a large size, 10 squirrel hair round brush for the dark hair. This way i can easily switch back and forth between the two colors apply, wet and wet face washes the wet and wet technique is probably my favorite thing about using watercolors. We define wet and wet as applying wet paint to wet or damp paper. Now, wherever the paper is wet, it will naturally soak up the paint. The result is a beautiful soft spreading out of color and there's really nothing else like it in art. This is so useful not only for getting easy soft edges, but also for quickly laying down base colors to paint some general shapes on the hair. I usually wet the paper first, there are areas in the hair that are in both light and shadow. So i want to try and create soft edges by painting the lights and darks. At the same time, i use burnt sienna for the golden base wash and then drop in some dark, sepia, wet and wet to encourage soft edges. This area is in the shadow, but the colors vary between warm and cool browns. So i try to paint a variety of browns all side by side. Moving my brush strokes in the direction of the curls i like to block in my dark values. First, in each section of hair, this allows me to make more accurate judgments about how light or dark my mid tones and highlights will need to be right. Next to these still wet dark tones. I add: lighter brush strokes, mostly burnt sienna and a little bit of alizarin crimson for a more reddish tone. Here you can see the top of the head is now dry paper. So this means that when i apply light, brown brush strokes they stay put. This is useful for avoiding highlights in the hair, and you can see i've left a few little gaps where the white of the paper is showing through. This is just to suggest shiny areas on the hair. Now, as your paper continues to dry, you can layer over it with more specific brush, strokes, varying your colors and your values. Depending on what you see in your reference photo, it is important to note where the largest portions of hair cast dark shadows and be careful not to cover up your highlights. Remember that you want your art to look like a painting. Not a slavish copy of a photo hair is complex. It'S layered! It would be easy to get lost in all those details by trying to render every single strand so allow yourself the freedom to not paint every strand of hair and unless photo realism is your jam. My guess is that you'll be a lot happier with the resulting painting if you paint the hair, more expressively, focusing on general shapes and values. First and saving the details for last so use your reference photo to guide you, but also embrace fluidity and expression in your brush strokes. If there are long curls, overlapping, the skin, you can paint a light wash to block those in, but you'll want to finish the skin before completing the hair in those areas with these base washes done, the hair is already looking pretty good. Now we can switch to a smaller brush and start painting individual shapes. I start with a dark brown, almost black, to draw all the dark strands of hair, or rather to draw the shadow shapes that are created by the overlapping pieces of hair. I try to paint on the most obvious and important shadow shapes first, my values do need to be adjusted slightly lighter and more of a golden brown towards the crown of the head, which is in the sunlight. The right side of her hair is not nearly so detailed since it's mostly in the shadow, so i can paint that area really fast, using dark, broad brush, strokes, but still always moving my brush in the direction the hair is growing. I do not have a specific order for painting, colors and values. I tend to paint whatever catches my eye in the moment now here at the top of the head. I paint these two very specific shadow shapes and then add the warm brown midtones surrounding them. Using a small brush and long sweeping brush strokes being careful to leave little gaps in between. So we have a sense of the hair's texture and shine decide which chunks of hair are the most important and spend the most time on those. Remember that anything you decide to paint in great detail is going to draw attention. So with this in mind, i paint the hair framing the face with great care using a tiny brush to paint individual strands separated by light and dark values. To make it look, curly, you need to paint darker values on either side of the curl, with the center bump of the curl being the lightest in value connect your light and dark values with mid-tones for a smooth and seamless look. If some of your highlights were lost in the initial wash, you can always lift some paint back out using a stiff, thirsty, brush areas that are further away from the focal point can be looser and less detailed. It may take quite a few layers and hundreds of small brush strokes to get the level of detail and complexity of values you want, but just enjoy the process and be patient with yourself finish: the hair by adding flyaway strands overlapping the face the neck and the Arms, if you guys found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. If you haven't done that yet check out these other videos about painting, portraits and watercolor and i'll see you in the next one