A digital painting practice image of Gerard Way in his “Danger Days” album red hair, using the photo reference below as a guideline.
This year, I’d quietly resolved to try and learn digital painting. But try as I might, I couldn’t work out how to do hair — I was trying to avoid using the smudge tool, which I’ve heard called ‘cheating’ and a dangerous technique to get in to. Then I watched this tutorial for drawing hair. Now life is beautiful and wonderful and also good.
And screw it. Using the smudge tool for hair is easy, works well, and it’s freakin’ fun. I still avoid using smudge for my other shading, but oh man am I pleased I started using it on hair.
Time taken is roughly two hours. I also switched from Sketchbook Pro to Photoshop for this one, because I think I’m finally comfortable enough with my tablets and the tools to be comfortable with Photoshop.
Oh, and if anyone’s curious why Gerard Way… while some artists pick hot girls, as their go-to ‘nice thing to paint’ I pick effeminate rock stars. I bet nobody is surprised, heh.