Help with hair

[MClimbin]

I\'m at one of those points where I want to improve certain skills but am not sure how to go about it. One of these skills is the representation of hair. First of all the sculpt is a little weird (looks like a lance armstrong hat). but that is neither here nor there.

Do some of you have some suggestions on how to improve her hair? As I look at the photos, a first step might be to change to a darker hair color, perhaps black. What I would like to achieve is that great shiny multilayered look that some of you guys can do. Any suggestions?

 

[Dragonsreach]

Changing the hair to black wouldn\'t make things any easier as black hair is just as difficult to get good highlights on as blonde.
Here\'s an example of something I did recently:

In this I used a mid tone brown (VMC Leather brown) as the base coat then washed over with Extremely thin VMC Burnt Cadmium brown.
This gave the depth to the hair structure.
I used VMC Cork Brown added to the basecoat to get intermediate stages to the hair and kept adding Cork brown to get the highlights.
Hope that this helps.

 

[Primeval]

I usually basecoat, then overbrush for the first several layers of highlights, followed by a glaze of the basecoat or 2, then go to a very fine brush to paint the final highlights. I find it gives nice depth as well as bringing out the main highlights.

 

[Itchy]

i SUCK at painting, but just had to complement on your sig. Slice-in\' up eyeballs, i wantcha ta know! (Pixies fanboy)

 

[Shawn R. L.]

I think one of the mistakes that can be made in sculpting mini hair is to try to sculpt too much detail. If you can pull off minute detail, by all means, go for it. If not, some good results are still within reach. I think whatever you do keep the lines smooth and wavy and the rest should take care of itself.

 

[Itchy]

Wait... is he repainting the hair, or resculpting the hair? Erm, know the common tricks for sculpting hair, but i thought he was painting???

 

[vincegamer]

whoa. Crossdressing assassin.

 

[MClimbin]

vince, I assume you are speaking of her 5 o\'clock shadow? Guess it doesn\'t work to use browns as shadows on the faces of female figs...not too late to change it. Though change it I should before I give it to my friend to use in a game, I don\'t think she would like the beard thing.

Itchy, yeah, you got it. The only popular song I know of that was written about Dadaism. We should make a smilie with a sliced eyeball, what do you think?

And yeah I was talking about painting. I\'m challenging myself with sculpting stone floors right now, that is the extent of my sculpting.

 

[Itchy]

Yeah, i heard it was a cow eyeball in a plaster mold of her face, but still:|~

Sorry, i still suck at painting thoughlol

 

[EricJ]

I think I got some degree of success with the hair on my last mini here:

Hyrekia

And I think what\'s important and makes hair look really shiney and reflecty is when the highlights are across the \"grain\" of the hair rather than along it. What I did here was first completely paint and highlight as though there was no grain to the hair which almost gave it a SE-NMM look to it, and then once I started highlighting/shadowing a little bit up and down the grain to make it look like hair again. Overall I think it was a success

 

[Sim>on]

Hi ! can you tell me how to achieve effect of white hair like on this Hyrekia ? Is it only black, codex grey and white ?

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by Sim>on
Hi ! can you tell me how to achieve effect of white hair like on this Hyrekia ? Is it only black, codex grey and white ?

Having looked at this Hyrekia I would suggest that the base is something closer to Fortress grey with a Number of well controlled washes/glases of Codex grey.
Then highlighted with mixes of Fortress & White.
If there is any Black in there it\'s very thin and subtly applied.

 

[MClimbin]

Thanks

Thanks to DR and and Primeval for the advice. Especially thanks to EricJ. Somehow the way you explained it worked really well for me, I understood right away. Her hair is still not as good as Eric\'s or DR\'s, but it is better than before and I have ideas on how to improve. Thanks!:bouncy:

 

[EricJ]

I\'m glad it worked for you

let us know when you have some pictures?

 

[Dragonsreach]

This is possibly one of the best examples of finely painted hair I have seen and It might give you some help.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/99235

 

[Wren]

Darkstar does a lot of \'shiny\' effects work, including hair. He explained some of his technique on a mini with white hair over on the Reaper forums. I\'ve also long admired Sue (PaintMinion\'s) paintwork on hair, particularly the pics of her work on the Darksword Miniatures site.

As much as I admired those sort of highlights, it took me a while to get the notion of them from my brain to the mini. I\'d get caught up in highlighting the individual strands along most of their length instead of focusing on the crown of the head and major curls/locks. And even once I got that down, I wasn\'t taking the highlights up bright enough. I only recently feel like I\'m really starting to get this.

 

[MClimbin]

Wow Mike, that is really beautiful. I have to go check out the GenCon site to see the how good the one that won was! :wow:

Well, here she is in her latest incarnation (read: paintjob). The hair did not turn out as nice as all of the examples you guys posted, but I think I have an idea of how to get there from here. By the way, my friend who I am painting her for requested a red head.

My problem now is the cuffs of her boots, the paint went on too thick so it looks chunky. I might try to carefully strip that off and do them over. I was having problems getting darklines around the brass studs...

And just for fun, here she is with her scenic base:

Thanks everyone for all your great help!

 

[Wren]

The hair looks much nicer now, and that\'s a great base within a base you\'ve done there!