Well, Shart, I'd like to hear about your techniques for drawing hair. I'd also like to see some of your artwork. I'm just curious because
you sound like you have it down pat.

Leo

trans: "boy, you seem to blow a lot of hot air. why don't you back it up with some work, ha ha."

and "no fair, you beat on jae's tute but don't expose your method to counterabuse."

ok, fair enough. i released a few things under cia and hrg, more trickles out now and then. i don't keep a page, so you'll have to bug
me or find cia/hrg packs.

my hair technique, if i can do it, is to literally look at someone's hair and copy exactly what i see, omitting what i obviously don't
see. i'm assuming the goal is basically realism.

when you're drawing a dog from above, and the dog is standing, you can't see its genitals generally. they're obscured by its body. so
you don't draw them, even though you know they're there. just the same, when you're fifty feet from the dog, you can't see any of its
hairs, only a mass of fur. so you draw what you can see, which is a sort of mass, and not what you know is there, which is individual
hairs. the case doesn't have to be so extreme. the dog might only be five feet away, or the light might be very low. in these cases
the detail is reduced.

let's say you're doing a huge mural portrait of the dog, and he fills the canvas. obviously the amount of detail you'll have to put into it
will be incredible, but you can deliberately omit some of it (a "painterly" style) or deliberately bring it out (this is a lot like what durer
and all those old german painters did.) so even when it is possible to see almost all the hairs, you might opt not to do them all and
still be in the realm of a "realistic" style (although it won't be photorealistic.)

something that jae mentions but doesn't dwell on is that hair rests in flows and clumps (same thing really.) these will have a
common highlight or shadow, like a big blob of darkness or light. areas in more extreme darkness don't need any strand painting at
all, and painting something there will usually involve putting in brighter values than exist. this looks dumb. a lot of people paint all the
strands all the time because they KNOW they're there, not because they see them (or would see them.) anyway, in the highlight the
detail is brought out more.

my favorite alternative to actually doing the strands in the highlighted portion is to streak it, which suggests strands without actually
making any entire lines representing a strand. you only see it when it's in the light.

lastly you will see individual strands sometimes, especially at the edges (like cowlicks, bangs etc.) of course these are usually
high-contrast against white skin and you'll see them, so of course they get drawn.
overall, you don't actually have to draw any whole strands 90% of the time because you can suggest their existence visually through
the portions visible in highlight, etc.
there really are shortcuts, and sometimes they can look better than doing it the long way.

this whole thing could use some illustration, if i get around to it i'll post an addr or something. maybe i explained it badly, but the
only thing to keep in mind is that it's drawn how it's seen.

naturally other approaches to hair are perfectly valid. it's the outcome that matters, if it matches the style you're looking for, great.

sorry if this is interpreted as talking down or condescending, i don't know how much people use the same techniques as i do or what
their backgrounds are.

shart.

HEy Funbaby...
even though you're done with the pic now, i just wanted to say i REALLY liked it - reminded me alot of the art you see in the Heavy
Metal comics.
Very cool.
Who are you releasing with?

Thanks. :) I've been getting into the Heavy Metal kinda fantasy/sci-fi art thing lately. I joined iCE last month, and had 2 pics in the
9901 pack.

Funbaby: you did join ice?
Can you teach me a tecnique how to draw very cool
babes with big boobs, cos my photoshop doens't have that filter...sniff

Well, my babes' boobs aren't that big (alliteration!), so I can't help ya. I think there's a filter from Alien Skin that'll do it, though.

Actually, you can just use the Luis Royo filter, those boobs of his babes are outrageous! =]

Hahaha...I was really getting into Luis Royo about the time I was drawing that pic. :P

Blup:thx man, the luis royo-filter did a great job
gonna try it on my grandma.

Man, aren't they gonna sag to her ankles on yer grandmother!?!... i shudder at the thought of that..

heh

! I coulda sworn there was a base where we said updates to our webpages. Anyhow my webpage has been updated

http://www.lit.org/bluedevil

There is -- Artists Webpage Updates, in the Reviews/Comments/Feedback section.

Now please, PLEASE let this thread die in peace. :P

Yeah I just saw it

heh