Adobe Photoshop Painting Hair Tutorial

I use Photoshop pretty extensively. It's a program that is almost always opened on a daily basis on my computer. I've spent a great deal of time learning my way around the program and thanks to various tutorials have become somewhat of a master at utilizing its tools.

I have searched high and low for more hours than I can count to find the perfect tutorials. Because I use Photoshop for the post work in my 3D renderings I've learned to spot a good tutorial when I see one.

There are literally hundreds of hair tutorials for Photoshop on the internet. Some of them are very complex and difficult to achieve success with, while others are minimal at best and leave you wondering what's missing.

When it comes to painting hair not every technique will work for everyone. Some digital designers use equipment not specified in their tutorials such as computerized sketch pad. Some artists paint their hair using a regular mouse which seems to be the norm. Whatever method you use, or tutorial you find, experiment with all of them to find the technique that works best for you.

Here is a comprehensive guide to some of the best hair painting tutorials on the internet.

Xythi's Tutorial on Hair provides an excellent tutorial on creating simple and fast manga style hair for your characters. This is a ten step tutorial that is basic at best and aimed towards those just getting started with painting hair.

Daz Productions provides a very detailed tutorial for achieving a more realistic look with hair for those who are a bit more advanced in working with Adobe Photoshop. While this tutorial only has eight steps, it is very advanced and requires a lot of time to complete. The end result though is beautiful life-like hair.

Farlow Studios uses another method all together. Their tutorial is aimed towards those that have line art already drawn as their figure's hair. They take you through several steps to color the already drawn hair and teach you how to give it a cartoon-ish look.

CandeeKis Unique Designs has an excellent tutorial that lies somewhere between beginner and advanced. With a little more post work her techniques can render some awesomely beautiful hair.

Psionic 3D Design has a great tutorial with a lot of picture references. I'm not sure though, if even they have managed to perfect their own hair painting techniques. They hair doesn't look the greatest but it's still a good tutorial for learning how to use Adobe Photoshop's tools.

Gas 13 provides a two part tutorial that is fantastic for creating realistic looking hair. The steps are fairly easy and don't require great amounts of time to finish. The author, Jezebel prefers to use only round brushes in Photoshop to achieve her look and I must say it's a technique that works.

Hextasy is perhaps my favorite tutorial site of all time. They are right up my alley with morbid and often frightening depictions of cartoon dolls. Some of their work reminds me of Tim Burton even though their characters look nothing like those in the movie Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride. SinSister's painting techniques achieve bright, vividly colored cartoon hair that you often see on teens or comic book characters.