Step 8 - Shading the Boots

I have decided that my lovely rock chick lady is going to be a redhead just for variety in the colour.

Using a medium orangy colour (not too saturated otherwise the hair will be too bright) I used my 1 px brush to draw in the hair using my sketch as a guide. Don’t worry about the hairline around the fringe though, we’re going to sort that next. Then hide the sketch layer because we don’t need that anymore.

Here I’m going to use a little trick of mine to give a soft fringe because hard pixels don’t look good for hair. Use the Magic Wand tool and make sure “sample all layers” is checked and “contagious” is unchecked. Then select the outside of the doll (in this case that greeny colour) and all the areas that are the same green colour should be selected. Invert the selection. (Shift+Ctrl+I)

In the hair layer use the brush tool (1 px thick, opacity 100 flow 100) and draw in the hair that covers the face and smooth off the edges. Because of the selection you won’t go outside what’s already opaque so no stray pixels. Deselect and lock the transparency.

I use a colour just a tad darker than the flat colour to mark in areas of shadows such as under the neck and the parting. I then use long sweeping strokes because the hair is long and sweeping. Just follow the flow of the hair. The strokes are easier to see on this example. (1 px thick, opacity and flow 50-70)

The strokes define the hair but you don’t need to shade every strand. Pixels are so small it’s all about the illusion.

Once again using long strokes I add a layer of highlights in. Don’t paint over the shadows.

Using quite a dramaticly darker shade I define more of the areas of shadow.

For the next layer of highlights I changed the hue slightly to a yellowier colour. This time I only highlighted areas where the light was directly hitting leaving the shadows as they are.

I have not finished shading the hair but I looked at the doll and decided that I am unhappy about the colour. So I used the hue/saturation tool to play about with different kinds of red and settle on this one which looks a much more vibrant ginger without being gaudily orange.

Using a more vibrant orange I add more highlights.

Lastly I add another little bit of shadows to the darkest areas and to the outside of the hair to avoid it looking flat. Zoom out and take a look.

After zooming out I personally decided that the natural ginger look didn’t quite fit so I added some very dark roots and a couple of very dark streaks to make it look a slightly like it was died that colour. You could leave your doll's hair natural, but this was a personal preference of mine, the dark roots tie the hair back to the dark jacket. And now the hair is done.

Now this is the point where most people would look at their doll and go “oh she’s finished, she’s got hair, clothes and shoes, what more can I do?” well take a good look at your doll. The hair clothes and boots have high contrast shading and looking at the skin it’s so flat. Her face is just the one that came with the base, which I leave very neutral on my own bases for people to edit in their own make up expressions etc. So what are you waiting for?

<< Previous

Next >>