Are you in Hair Jail? (post your current WIP that put you in Hair Jail)

[rajillustration]

So there's this part of doing art, where you get to the hair, and sometimes you can simplify it to make it go fast, and then other times--you have to draw the entire hair anatomy...Whenever that happens, I like to call it "hair jail" where I just have to commit to drawing only hair for like an hour. There's not many ways to get around it, if you skip it you'll regret it, so you're just...stuck in hair jail. Doesn't happen to me as often in comics, but man it still happens.

So...since it's late at night, I'm just curious, am I alone or is anyone else currently in hair jail? If so, post your current hair torture so we can all commiserate together.

This is mine currently. Realllllly don't want to draw highlights and I might not. I might just say it's stylized and pretend I never heard of highlights in my life.

Also, if you aren't in hair jail, but want to post hair tips to support those of us in Hair Jail, feel free to post hair tips, too. We'll make this just a fun hair thread.

here's a hair tip I saw on twitter that isn't in English but you can kinda tell what they were saying--it's good stuff.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ebimoji3/status/977441154965712896

[arbiterswake]

Pretty sure I'm serving a life sentence without parole in hair jail atm.

[rajillustration]

Haha, it's a state of mind, hair jail. One Punch man did it right with a completely bald main character.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I am probably in hair death penalty. I actually like drawing hair, so in this dramatisation I'd die for it.

Yesterday, I compared two methods of drawing black-colored hair. One is to pick a dark color near black, shade, and highlight it. Another is to pick a light color, and shade it. This is not a tutorial. I use Ibis Paint X.

Here is the flat color

Here is the first layer of shading (I use multiply layer). You can note that in the second method, the shading make it as if the base color is the highlights. I think it is recommended for styles that does not need elaborate rendering and when you are in a hurry.

First layer of highlights (I use add layer). The second method hair has brighter highlights.

Second layer of highlights and shading, and up to this step is what I normally do for hair (minus finishing). Notice that they look almost the same, although I think the first method result is more natural.

TL;DR: Second method is good for saving time and practicality like when you are making comic, but if you are the type who over-render like me it will yield roughly the same result.

---

And here is the piece that currently put me in hair jail. Textured hair and light-colored hair are my weaknesses, so I am in torture chamber.

[arbiterswake]

I don't even understand how people have the dexterity to draw such smoothly flowing lines for hair tbh. I'm still pretty new to digital art so are there specific brushes or settings? My lines are always so chunky and wobbly.

Also, I love the broccoli hair. Very cute but yes. Right to hair jail you go.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

There are many factors about it I think:

• I don't know if your hardware such as tablet has something to do with it (because I don't use one), but I have heard some tablets or stylus is better than others. The setting like pressure sensitivity also play a role, but I cannot speak about this because I don't use one.
• Your strokes matter. Use a light and quick stroke because the longer you hold it the more it become wobbly. Do expect of repeating some strokes, sometimes it just can't get out perfectly.
• Brush can play a factor. Some brushes looks rougher than the other, some are softer/more textured so it hides the wobbliness.
• You can also use the stabilizer feature (CSP, SAI, Ibis Paint X, and Medibang have it) and set it to create more stable image.
• More importantly:
  
  

[nathanKmcwilliams]

All of my hair is just blobs and spikes. Easy peasy. This is where being a cartoonist is handy hair jail can't touch me.

[seiraph]

Try increasing brush stabilisation

[rajillustration]

@uselessgoddess oh hey, I think this painting will look really cool when it's done. It is tricky when you have hair where there isn't a lot of reference for it, but you have some really nice colors going on here in the hair.

@arbiterswake I've used a tablet for a long time, and there's brush settings you can absolutely do. Look into "line smoothing" to help generate a smoother line--it comes with most art programs noways, even Photoshop. There is a learning curve to line smoothing, so it doesn't help immediately, but you will see a help over time. It's also helpful to use a brush that is intended for linework, as those have been fine tuned for long, precise, graceful strokes. So if your brush is just a normal round brush...that's more for painting and fill, and they may have settings that are purposely making things wobbly and chunky to get a painterly look.

It took a while to get used to, but now I like to finesse my brushes when I get them, so I'd recommend just doing a few tutorials on making brushes from scratch so you can familiarize yourself with what may be going wrong with the brushes you're using right now.

You may also want to replace your drawing nib. If you just got a new tablet there's a papery texture on that puppy that eats through drawing nibs like candy. The papery texture goes away after a while, but in the beginning you'll have to replace your pen nib more often. There's also several different types of nibs--wacom has like 3 different versions, and I didn't even know they came with my tablet. It was hidden inside my pen holder. So, I dunno if you got the replaceable nib type of pen, but I found a huge difference in my style when I use a different type of nib or if my nib is getting old and beat up. (this actually just reminded me I desperate need to replace my nib lol)

And then for non-digital help, it helps a lot to use my whole arm and not drawing with my wrist movements. You want to sort of lock your wrist, and draw with your whole arm--no tiny brush strokes--and that makes really big clean fluid strokes. Getting those strokes to be precise takes some time but that's what we have ctrl-z for.

Kinda hard to explain without showing you so hopefully that made sense, but what's fun about digital is that you can always just draw on paper, and then scan it into Photoshop and do the linework on top of that. I did that for yearsss because I found that my style was less confident in digital, and I didn't like the style, and so going off of a traditional base layer helped me in that process of switching over.

But that was a lot of info, hopefully it wasn't a ramble.

@nathanKmcwilliams this was my last comic I did and I resent switching over to the realm of hair. :o

[joannekwan]

[joannekwan]