Photoshop Tutorial: How to Paint Clothes and Hair Using Blending Techniques

The aim of the tutorial is to explain how to use blending techniques to paint clothes and hair. I have chosen my drawing 'First Snow' as I have received some requests from my friends about this. I would like to thank yana-stock for the snow brush.

End result:

Author:

Views: 157149

Score: 9.79 / 10

Author earned: $30

Practice tutorial

Tags:blendingbrushclotheshair

Step 1

Before going any further I just want to stress the importance of ALT modifier in Photoshop, especially with the brush tool. The brush tool behaves like a color picker when ALT is pressed and when released its just a brush tool. Trust me when I say it makes your job a whole lot easier.

Step 2

Create a new document(CTRL+N) of size preferably 2000x2000 px. I usually like to work on high resolution pictures because it lets me add a lot of details if I want to. Start with a rough sketch. It doesn't matter how it looks because that is just a skeleton. So don't dwell on it trying to make it look perfect.

Step 3

Color Palette: It's always good to have in mind, a basic color scheme (like color of the jacket/hair/scarf) and mood of the picture that you wish to portray. Choosing the right colors makes a huge difference. If you are a beginner don't think much about the color palette just ensure that your drawing has a few darker, lighter and mid tone shades of a color. Don't be afraid to experiment and have fun. If you ask me to paint 'First Snow' again, I would choose some different shades of Red color.

Step 4

You can just pick up (ALT+Brush Tool) some colors from the background and use them on your subject or foreground. Here's a little chart of the colors I have used in this painting.

Step 5

Background: For this particular piece I wanted the girl's face/scarf to be the primary focus. So I kept the background simple. Create a new group, call it 'Background'. Create a new layer 'B1' and fill it with color f7e7ce.

Step 6

I have just used 2 default brushes, a hard round brush and a soft round brush but varied opacity and flow. Take a hard round brush: size 400px, range mid tones, exposure 52% and burn the area on the top left as shown. Similarly with an exposure set to 22% dodge the area on the top right.

Step 7

Create a new layer and call it 'B2'. Even if I don’t mention it for every step in this tutorial, it’s almost always a good idea to use a separate layer for each step. If you are not happy with the result you can always delete and start over again. Take a hard round brush set to opacity 55% and flow 45% put some random dots on canvas with colors B0687B, E2AEA5 and EACCAE.

Step 8

Again on a new layer, using a hard round brush roughly draw the shape of some trees.

Step 9

It's time to block the base colors and shapes. Make sure that you create a new group for each logical section of your painting (scarf, hair, face, shirt etc).

Step 10

I am not an expert at lighting but I know the basics enough to notice that the shadows are cast opposite to the direction of the light. The light source is on the top right but not completely behind her. So the highlights would be on the right that are closer to the light source and shadows will be on the left. I have just burned and dodged it to show exactly that.

Step 11

Start laying down the shadows and highlights by adding some darker and lighter shades of the base color by using a hard brush with opacity 50-75% and flow 50%. Looks shabby in the beginning but not to worry we will work on them as we move along.

Step 12

Blending: As a beginner I used to use smudge tool a lot. But now I don't recommend smudging the colors as a technique for blending. Here is the technique that I use. Take 2 colors say 'A' and 'B'. With a soft round brush opacity set to 50% and flow 50% paint the color 'A' somewhere in between 2 colors. Now with the same brush and same settings add the color 'B' on top of it. That's the intermediate color ‘in between’ them. For a smoother finish just keep overlapping the 2 adjacent colors that's it. This technique is used through out my painting whether it's painting trees or clothes or her face. I hope you got what I am trying to say here. If not, the picture below should give you a better idea.

Step 13

Scarf: First let's go to the 'Scarf' group.

Step 14

Blend the colors in, using the technique that I have shown earlier.

Step 15

On a new layer add few folds where the scarf's being pulled down and some more here and there where you think it would wrinkle/crease.

Step 16

To make it more appealing add few white stripes to it, again on a new layer.

Step 17

For the stripes: Just pick some colors (ALT+Brush Tool) from the Red scarf for the shadows/highlights instead of going to the color picker window.

Step 18

Jacket: Now that the scarf is almost done let's move to the 'Jacket' group. We have already blocked in the colors.

Step 19

Nothing much to say, just blending the colors using the same technique.

Step 20

Folds on the shirt: Think about the places where the fabric either drapes or pulls. Usually you see more wrinkles at the joints if the subject folds their arms, legs etc. In the figure, the position of her right arm is almost straight. So adding a few folds to that sleeve would be enough. But the left arm is slightly bent at her elbow so we need to add a lot of folds on to that sleeve. If you notice the folds on your clothes you wear, they aren't parallel to each other. So for the folds just add some dark and light strokes of blue color at an angle.

Step 21

Use smudge tool for this as it is very convenient to pull them or drape them around as you like.

Step 22

Face: Start sketching a general shape of the face, no need to add details at this stage just some colors from your color palette.

Step 23

I am not going into details how to paint all the features as I have already done a tutorial on how to paint faces. You can follow the same steps (eyes, nose and mouth) but instead of smudging go with the blending technique. You can check out my tutorial here if you want to.
http://www.pxleyes.com/tutorial/photoshop/1987/How-to-Paint-a-Realistic-Proportioned-Female-Face-from-Scratch.html

Step 24

Define the nostrils and add shadows and highlights on the nose and lips.

Step 25

Eyes: Getting the eyes right is very important as they convey emotion. Go with huge puppy eyes and a tiny mouth if you are looking for an innocent look. That usually works with my husband if I want to get something done ;-)

Step 26

Hair: Drawing the hair is pretty easy than most people think. Take some time to study how hair falls/curls up. If you look at some photos of hair for reference, you will notice that we usually can’t make out the individual strands of hair. The hair appears more like some individual hair meshed together to form locks of hair. So what I am trying to say is try picturing it as some sections of color and start blocking them, later you can go in and add the details.

Step 27

Create a new layer 'H1' under the Group 'hair'. Use a bigger brush to define the volume/sections/lock of hair and the smaller brush to paint in the details. Define the general shape and color of the hair. If you don’t want to spend the eternity on getting the hair right, choose a hair style that's just falling down straight.

Step 28

Make a new layer 'H2' and you can turn into a clipping mask if you don't want to color outside the shape of the hair. Pick a color darker than the base color and start adding some sections with a hard brush of size 20-25 px set to opacity 60% and flow 65%. I have used fade control instead of pen pressure because not everyone has a graphics tablet.

Step 29

On a new layer 'H3' using a hard round brush of size 15-20 set to opacity 50% and flow 50%. Play around with opacity and flow and you will notice some color variations that are fun to look at. Add some more strands with a color that's lighter than the base color keeping the light source in mind.

Step 30

Using a hard brush of size 10px keep adding some more darker and lighter shades of the base color other than the colors you have already picked.

Step 31

It’s the same technique that I mentioned earlier in this tutorial. Don't forget the ALT key to pick adjacent colors.

Step 32

Now it's time to add some details to the hair, using a brush of size 1-3 px add some fine hair.

Step 33

Picking the right shade plays a very important role here. For instance if you take this section of hair.

Step 34

Rotate your canvas if needed.

Step 35

Don't end them abruptly with hard edges. The colors should flow from one section to another.

Step 36

Some more. Add some darker fine hair here and there

Step 37

I usually zoom in to 100% while working on details but every now and then I would like to see how it's coming along. For this I have to zoom out. The constant zooming in and out used to annoy me a lot. Recently I have discovered a cool feature. I am not sure whether the older versions have this or not but cs5 does. Go to Window → Arrange → New window for . Basically you can view the same PSD file with 2 different zooms simultaneously

Step 38

I love painting each fine strand of hair myself without using custom brushes though it is time consuming and a lot of pain.

Step 39

In that shadows you can't see any detail in the hair so just burn those areas using burn tool. I know eyes hurt but the more you add the detail the more realistic it looks. Have fun!!;-)

Step 40

Trees: The trees that are closer to her are darker and more defined. The trees that are farther away from her almost fade away into the snow/fog/background. Go get your eraser tool set to mode: brush and opacity 50-80% and start erasing some trees on the right side.

Step 41

Finishing touches: I’ve added tassels to the scarf, outlined the shirt and scarf so that the girl pops out from the background adding more sharpness to the image. I’ve also shrunk the background to lessen the empty spaces to the sides for better composition.

Step 42

Snow: For the snow I have used a brush by [TODO] and varied the transparency. I saw to it that the face isn't entirely covered with snow because I wanted to showoff her pretty face ;-)

Step 43

If you have any questions please feel free to ask me. I would be happy to answer you. I hope this tutorial will be of some help.

41 Comments:

nishagandhi says:

thanks for sharing! cool tutorial!

(5 years and 718 days ago)

George55 says:

Beautiful tutorial. I also started to use the blending mode instead of smudging, and it works much better, what you did here, is just awsome. Thanks for sharing it with us.

(5 years and 708 days ago)

loopyluv says:

Amazing

(5 years and 695 days ago)

Guest says:

Greatly Appreciated!

(5 years and 695 days ago)

asim says:

realy very good tutorial

(5 years and 694 days ago)

tk says:

Thanks a lot for this tutorial! I learned lots

(5 years and 693 days ago)

Guest says:

greattt...cool.

(5 years and 692 days ago)

[banned] says:

Very Nice

(5 years and 689 days ago)

madamemonty says:

Excellent tutorial Usha, thank you

(5 years and 687 days ago)

nicehotcupoftea says:

Thanks Usha for informative and entertaining tutorial. I learnt a lot from this.

(5 years and 684 days ago)

Guest says:

really cool work

(5 years and 683 days ago)

Guest says:

good job!!

(5 years and 679 days ago)

ushurani says:

Thanks a lot guys . I am really glad that it's helpful to at least some people out there.

(5 years and 678 days ago)

Guest says:

Is good.

(5 years and 673 days ago)

carlos1ma says:

Waooo.. Nunca vi antes un tutorial a si es genial..

(5 years and 656 days ago)

Chrys Rizzo says:

You posted a wonderful tutorial, congratulations!

(5 years and 653 days ago)

Guest says:

This is awesome! GREAT WORK! Very very nice of you to post the workarounds! Thanks!

(5 years and 653 days ago)

Guest says:

very nice

(5 years and 650 days ago)

[banned] says:

Beautiful tutorial. I also started to use the blending mode instead of smudging, and it works much better, what you did here, is just awsome.

(5 years and 643 days ago)

Guest says:

sch nice tutorial.Thanks

(5 years and 640 days ago)

Guest says:

very nice

(5 years and 636 days ago)

Guest says:

WOW! Your work is AWESOME and you ROCK! Thank you for such a GREAT tutorial.

(5 years and 629 days ago)

Guest says:

difficult steps

(5 years and 627 days ago)

[banned] says:

love ur work

(5 years and 622 days ago)

gleizzable says:

cool.! gonna this one.

(5 years and 614 days ago)

awesomefrog says:

cool, very nice

(5 years and 605 days ago)

[banned] says:

Really informative tutorial! Learned alot! Thank you for putting it out like this for us beginners!

(5 years and 573 days ago)

ekatwalker says:

Great Tutorial!

(5 years and 571 days ago)

[banned] says:

So much beautiful Work
Thanks for sharing.

(5 years and 569 days ago)

Guest says:

u r best

(5 years and 567 days ago)

ferobanjo says:

Yes man, nice work

(5 years and 554 days ago)

Lorena_99 says:

Perfect!

(5 years and 552 days ago)

cookiebaby says:

Wow, im so happy to have found this site, thank you this picture and how-to is awesome now im really going to learn how to photoshop the rite way! thank you so much

(5 years and 543 days ago)

badr says:

Parfait!

(5 years and 532 days ago)

ProofOfHell says:

Thank you for taking the time for us to create this tut. I just joined pxleyes.com and plan to work on this tonight. I hope to learn a lot here. And hopefully have fun with contests.

(5 years and 528 days ago)

Prasad Kaddi says:

Very nice tutorial

(5 years and 527 days ago)

ghie says:

thank you for this tutorial.... i am still new at this web and i decide to love it... and i really love your tutorial too

(5 years and 500 days ago)

vinshine says:

A very good one. Thanks for sharing!

(5 years and 449 days ago)

mansury says:

Awesome.

(5 years and 393 days ago)

Qanea says:

It's easier with AI

(5 years and 383 days ago)

Guest says:

where do I find the snow brush, cant find it anywhere and it is very nice so I would like to use it too... Cool tutorial by the way, have done all of it now

(5 years and 354 days ago)

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