How To Color Hair // with colored pencils

1. What you will learn in this course: This question here was voted on by my skin tone coloring students. I asked you guys what you want to learn next and something like 90% of you voted on how to color here. So here we are. If you didn't yet take the skin tone scores, consider it after completing this one. After all, the models will be working on here we will have faeces that will also need coloring. And speaking of all models, of course, as always, I've drawn pages, especially for the course for us to play with. Now, here is a Pandora's box of a topic. There are as many hair color variation, styles and textures as there are people walking the earth. Covering all of them in one course would take a lifetime, but covering them all in one courses. And the point is, the goal of my lessons is not to hold your hand forever. It's to arm you with enough tools to set you loose into the world and apply my technique to other art by other artists. For us to practice as many cool colors and effects as possible. I've come up with some very unique characters and color combinations. Together. We'll do platinum blonde, Cherry Bomb, Raven black with highlights, black silk and honey brown. And the textures will range from silky, smooth and straight all the way to tingle dreadlocks. We'll talk about cheating technique and color selection and also using the background color to our advantage. 2. PLAY TIME 1 (platinum blonde): Before we move on, I want to play a game, a color matching game. These are the colors that I used for my platinum blonde effect. But before I reveal the actual color names, I want you to match what you see using the tools that you have. This is a very important and very effective exercise and letting go of that reliance on pencil names that so many of us suffer from. Try to match what you see. What is this color look like to you? Is it gray? Is it brown? Is it both? You have a pencil that looks like that in your collection. Try a bunch until you find one that actually looks close enough. And if you don't have a specific one, tried to combine a few colors to get to this effect. Go ahead and match all the colors samples here and set those pencils aside. You'll need them for class. And don't worry if your matches an odd 100% exact, they can't be, by definition, you're a different person, you have a different hand and different tools. And you'll be working in photographing your work in different light. Just get as close as you can. And when you're ready, I'll see you in class. 3. French grey (platinum blonde): We'll begin our platinum blonde model with French gray, 70% french, great to be exact. The percentage here is indicating how a darker gray is, 70% being the darkest and 10% being the latest. There are no hundred and 0% because that would just be black and white. This is a very attractive color and very difficult to describe. So what exactly is French gray? Is it really gray? Is it really French? Yes, it is. In fact, both. The term comes from 19th century French wallpaper designs. But is it cool gray or warm gray? And then we'll really have a whole range of cool grays and a matching range of warm greens in the Prismacolor set. Why do we also need a French gray? Well, it's kind of both ambiguously gray because the name is based on his style and mood of a wallpaper type, not just one particular die. You will find that some paint and pencil brands offer French grace that look almost bluish or violet, while others offer rather coffee inspired browns. To me, Prismacolor French grades are very attractive and kind of all over the place. The 20% one feels like a cool lavender, while the 70% has more coffee tends to it. If you don't have French grace, you probably picked a grayish brown or combination of lavender brown and gray to match the first color. Once you teach the conversion charts, you start to see color. To truly see it, color is more than just numbers. We feel it in our hearts. That's why art speaks to us. Go with what you feel. Pick a nice soft, mouseY brown color and start shading. Now, what are the areas that I'm shading and how am I picking them? Ultimately, I want her roots to be a bit darker than the rest of her hair. She's not a natural platinum blonde. So I'm adding the French gray shading to the parts of her hair that are cut freely short. These parts right here revealing the roots and also very lightly to these areas here to act as actual shadows. I can to suggest which areas will be ultimately darker with my drawing lines. You'll notice that in my line art, remember to work at your own pace and work gently. Don't press your pencil into the paper to create pigment. Glide on the surface over and over, led the pigment buildup naturally. This way, we'll be able to add many more layers without hurting the page. If you see that you're changing the texture of the page, that the areas you are coloring. Obviously flat and shiny. You're using way too much pressure. On the other hand, if you can barely see any pigment at all. And it just kinda looks like there's powder on top of the page. You're not using enough pressure. Getting the right pencil pressure is a skill that takes time and practice to master. Don't worry if you're not sure about yours yet, you'll get a feel for it. Just remember, build up your colors layer after layer, not with pressure. Glide and glide and glide like you're stroking a cat. And the color will be smooth and beautiful. So go ahead and get your coloring to this point using 70% French gray or your equivalent of it. And when you're ready, I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Cool grey and sepia (platinum blonde): Our second color on this page is 50 per cent cool gray. Quite a difference, right? Who said that gray is just gray. There is a rich range of tints and shades of gray and they can be either cool or warm. French, apparently, this one is quite obviously cool. It looks like polished aluminum, while the French gray is clearly more earthy, greens are great tools in your arsenal. Do not neglect them. Like I said, I don't care which brand of pencils you use. That doesn't matter. But what I want you to have to be a professional colorist is a variety of options. Make sure you have a lot of different pencils. Using different pressure variation on your black pencil to create gray effects is not a good hack. Don't make a habit of it. Pick the colors that are right for the job and apply them all with equal amount of pressure. Notice where I'm applying this new color and what it's doing to the first layer of shading. I'm going over everything that I already colored with my French gray, but I'm trailing it all further into the uncolored areas. And amazing things immediately begin to happen. The new color is changing the underlying color, giving it more body. Together these two tones of gray look quite silvery and metallic even. It's exactly the look we're going for with this platinum blonde gray pencils are crazy fun. You can achieve a lot of cool effects like these. Play with them. Take a piece of scrap paper and experiment with different grades in your collection, which combinations of grays appeal to you? It's all very personal. Your platinum blonde may have darker roots or moist, silvery undertone. And it's all correct. There is no wrong way to do this. Your way is the right way as long as you are happy with the result. Now, notice also the direction of my shading because this is more or less straight hair with clearly defined strands. I'm following the direction of the hair. I'm never coloring across or in circles. Hair is very textured. We can use our actual pencil strokes to our advantage. Pencil shading kinda naturally creates the hair effect. This is starting to look very cool. Let's add some stronger contrast, but that will need a dark brown color. Notice how I pick my colors. I test them on scrap paper first. And only what I like, what I see do I bother to look at the name? Actually, in real life when I make art for myself or for a client, I never even look at the names at all. I want you to get in the habit of doing this as well. Trust your eyes and your gut. We're looking for a very dark brown color. This one happens to appeal to me. It happens to be called sepia. Now, let's talk a bit about color and pencil names. They're not always accurate and quite often are misleading. Prismacolor tends to be mostly on point with their names, but not always. This is not what I would call savvier at all. Yeah, it's kind of in the Brown family, so technically qualifies. But Scipio was an actual natural pigment and it came from, wait for it. Squeezing cuttlefish. Yep. Back in ancient Greece and all through the Italian Renaissance, artists and architects use cuttlefish juice as drafting egg. And it was quite distinctly reddish brown. Later in the Victorian era. Pretty much anything in the reddish brown, basic brown, and even green Brown family was lumped into this category. And today there is no one sepia color. It's just vaguely the color of a brown faded photo. You'll run into this, you'll get sepia pencils that look like chestnut or burn or even olive green. This is why you can't rely on names. The point here isn't for the third color to be called Scipio. The point is to build up your layers of lighter and darker grays and browns to start creating the illusion of volume. 5. How blonde is your blonde (platinum blonde): Alright, now we have the roots and the shadows established, and we left plenty of uncolored areas. Let's add some actual colored pigment. We want her hair to be very pale blonde. So I'm going with a color called creep. Once again, pay attention to the direction of my pencil strokes and also to how far I reach into the already established colors were not coloring a mosaic where every pixel is a new color. Instead, we're approaching this as one would a painting, layer after layer with overlaps of color. It's the overlap that makes things ultimately look more realistic and professional. Now, I'm also using the gray of the paper to my advantage here. I could have primed this area to be colored with white charcoal or a white pencil before starting, or even used white paper. But I'm intentionally using the gray of the paper as my undertone for this particular color and adding lighter colors on top. On white paper or over a primer. This cream color would look a bit yellowish, which may be a cool look if that's what you're going for. But I already decided that this girl's hair will be kinda metallic and silvery blond, not yellow blonde. This cream over the gray of the paper creates a beautiful effect. Once again, I'm layering over my grays and covering more and more of the blank areas. But I'm still leaving some room for the lightest highlights, which will of course be pure white. Now, this is where a brand preference comes into play. Again, I've played with a lot of white pencils and the Prismacolor white is by far my favorite. It's just so strong and it layers really nicely over the already established colors. This is actually one of the reasons though, like prisoners for hair effects so much. Yes. I can hear some of you asking already. You can mix brands. I do it all the time. If you're working with layers and want to use one of the Prismacolor whites, that's perfectly fine. Again, play with what you have. Some people genuinely don't like prisma colors and find them difficult to work with. And others swear by it. Try different things, find what works for you. But all the while keeping the final outcome in mind. What do we want to achieve here? We want silky, shiny, very lightly colored here with a darker undertone. If your brand of pencils works better, if you start with lighter colors and then add the darker shadows. Try them. But regardless, always layer and blend. These color transitions need to be super smooth. 6. A touch of drama (platinum blonde): These colors look great, very soft, very realistic. If you want to stop here, that's perfectly fine. But me, I like to make things a touch more theatrical, just a bit exaggerated. That's just my style. So I will enhance both the lavender and the yellowish stones with a stronger color. Let's see what happens. For lavender. I chose this parma violet. Black widows have some gorgeous Violet's as well. Tulip being my absolute favorite. Be careful with this color, however, we don't want her hair to be actually purple. So very gentle strokes just glide on the surface of the paper, following all the same rules that we've already learned with the direction of the hair and over the established colors. I know it looks overwhelmingly purple and you're probably going, what are you doing? Bear with me. It will all come together in the end. One thing to keep in mind when coloring is that the intensity of a color is only perceived by contrast to what's next to it. On a plain white page, this color is overwhelmingly purple. On this gray paper, it looks like a soft light like, but later when we add a bright violet background, well, let's not get too carried away. So I'm enhancing the grayish areas with this new lavender color and I'm enhancing the yellowish areas with yellow, actual bright yellow. This is the part of the process where you get to make your own artistic decisions. Look at reference photography. Decide on the look you're going for and adjust accordingly. Perhaps you want to skip the yellow and keep only the cool metallic tones, That's totally fine. Or on the other hand, if you want this to be a more traditional blonde, take it easy on a gray and purple and go with soft brown instead, and then yellow and white. But this time around, follow along with me. Try my colors and my method first. Then on your next run, start making adjustments and push yourself further with different effects. 7. Adding shine (platinum blonde): Making hair look like it's actually silky and shiny is one of my favorite effects. If you've taken my crystal scores, you already know that we get the shine effect by establishing high contrast. Contrast is the difference of two extremes. This is a low contrast image. While this is high contrast. The ultimate and high contrast is black and white. In order for the lightest parts of the hair to look even lighter, we need to make the darkest part darker. I'm using solid black for this. I like to leave blank to the very end, but for two reasons. One, the most attractive version of black happens when it's applied over several layers of color. The undertones give that Blackmore body. It looks more real. To introducing black early may lead to unwanted smudging and unwanted color distortions. Work with all the colors first, enhance some areas with black later. Notice that I'm not adding a lot of black either, just to the areas that are already the darkest. And it immediately makes a huge difference. Now let's enhance the lightest parts. Remember when we were playing with a white pencil, sometimes that effect works really well and sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on your paper, your pencils, the pressure was which you apply your pigment, the amount and the other pencils that you used, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The point is maybe your white highlights are not coming out as well as you want them to worry, not white gel pen to the rescue. This is one of my favorite effects. It takes a bit of practice though. I highly recommend that you give this a shot on some scrap paper first. Given that this is always the final effect, it's also kinda nerve-racking. What if it ruins everything? Here's the trick. Whatever brand of white gel pen you use, the principle is the same. Add one or two small marks and immediately smudge them with a Q-tip. Make sure to literally not press the Q-tip into the paper though. Imagine that you are brushing an eyelash of your cheek. That low pressure, the cotton of the Q tip will get the job done on its own. Just very lightly swish. And immediately you get a proper shine effect will be using this trick a lot in this course, especially with straight hair. So do take the time to practice it. Of course, remember to always apply the white gel effect with the direction of the hair as well. So cool. But we're not done yet. There's one final and possibly the most important thing yet left to do. 8. The magic of contrast (platinum blonde): We talked a little bit about contrast already. Black and white images being the highest contrast and gray scale images being low contrast. But contrast applies to more than just black and white. It applies to everything actually, it's just the measure of how similar or different things are. We even use the term contrast to describe ideas and beliefs. E.g. my dog believes that he protects the house that we all live in as a pack. By contrast, my cat beliefs that he allows us all to live in his castle. The same way the concept of contrast applies to colors. We've just taken the coloring of a very pale silvery hair colored over pale gray paper and added lilac and yellow tones to it. It suddenly started to look a bit more like a comic book illustration. It's bright and vivid a bit over the top even. But look what happens when we add a bright purple background. Suddenly the whole head of hair looks more delicate and obviously platinum blonde. This is the magic of coloring. It's about the whole presentation and how colors interact with each other on the page. Throughout this course, I will talk a lot about backgrounds and how to use them to our advantage. How do you decide which color to go with for the background? Anyway? I like to refer to complimentary colors when picking backgrounds. On the color wheel, the colors directly opposite each other are complimentary colors. They're called that because they literally complement each other. And it's not just something that some artists decided on eons ago and it's stuck. It will never change. They literally compliment each other. They make each other stronger, and they're each other's goofed colors. When you look at a red shape for a few seconds and then that object is taken away. The afterimage will be the shape of the object, but it will also appear green. This is especially fun to do with glowing objects. Yellow and violet happened to be complimentary colors. It's no accident that I chose them for my platinum blonde effects. I use them to my advantage twice. The first time when I chose to introduce light violet and light yellow to the hair highlights. And the second time, when I chose to make the background bright purple with a touch of warm yellow. Purple is an obvious choice for background here because it complements the yellow and the hair. While making the purple on the hair appear quite gray. All of a sudden. It's amazing how you can change just the perception of color with, without actually changing the color. Could we use any other background color? What if purple wasn't available or made any sense for the page that she's actually on. What if there's a landscape behind her or a bookshelf or something, certainly other colors can work. If you had to pick a different color to frame her, I would say darkness matters more than color here. She's a blonde. The way to enhance it is to put her on a darker background. If it has to be dark green or brown or even read, so be it, it can still look amazing. What I would avoid is adding more of the same colors in the same intensity all over the page. Your characters should stand out. They can be darker than the background or lighter than the background. That's a good use of contrast. Fun, right? Go ahead and play with this page. Post your colorings, send me private messages if you need guidance. And when you're ready, we'll move on to cherry red. 9. Lesson 1 HOMEWORK: Congratulations, you've completed the first of five hair colors in this course, the Platinum Blonde. I hope you've been following along with me and have a complete coloring for your platinum blonde assignment, please submit a finished coloring of this model. It can match my colors exactly, or it can be used version of blonde hair with your choice of a background. Either way, I'd love to see it. 10. Priming (cherry bomb): I hope you had fun with platinum blonde. Let's switch gears. This is Cherry Bomb. Her hair is flawlessly straight, shiny, and of course, bright red. This is a playground for a colorist. I intentionally designed these models in such a way that we can practice not only different hair colors, but also textures, styles, and ways of coloring. Let me show you how I use primate and why. My absolute favorite or tool is white charcoal. It's bordering on addiction. Actually, I use white charcoal a lot when working with colored pencils on toned paper. If you've taken any other one of my courses already, you already know all about this stuff and how to use it if you're new to my teaching, however, here's what this stuff is. White charcoal is a synthetic bland of chalk binder and theory does. It's not in any way related to real charcoal. It's just a name that stuck. Doesn't behave like charcoal either or like pastels or like traditional chalk. It behaves very much like a colored pencil, but a little bit more powdery and a lot stronger and pigment. It comes in this stick form and in regular pencil form. But it's the same stuff regardless which form you choose. I prefer the stick form and the brand that I get is generals brand. When getting white charcoal, it's important to get something that's actually called white charcoal, not white pencil, not white pastel, and not white chalk. White charcoal. It's important because like I mentioned, it's a whole different chemical formula. The only acceptable substitute for this stuff for our purposes would be a Prismacolor white pencil, but that's gonna get pretty costly, pretty quick. To prime this head of hair, I'm using white charcoal just as it would have pencil, following the direction of the hair strands and already establishing the lightest highlights. I'm covering all of the hair with white charcoal. Once everything is nicely covered, I take a Q-tip and gently, very gently smooth out the pigment. That locks the pigment into the page. Now it won't smudge powder or crumble. And we have a nice smooth white base. Now, why do we do this at all when working on toned paper, no matter how vivid your pencils are, the colors will get slightly muted. This actually work to our advantage when we did the platinum blonde hair. But here, I don't want my colors to be diluted at all. See the difference. It's slight, but it's important. So why not work on white paper to begin with? You can, That's one option for sure. But with an already toned background, the bright colors and the white highlights will look just that much more striking by contrast. It's just a more professional look. Plus, we get to choose which elements of the color and get to be primed and enhanced. For instance, I may not prime her skin and end at all, making only the hair really stand out with saturation of colors. 11. PLAY TIME 2 (cherry bomb): Before we move on to color on this one, I want you to take some time and play with priming. Grab your white charcoal and practice shading with it, and then smoothing out the shaded area with acute tip. Here are a few things to keep in mind. When shading with white charcoal. Treat it as you would a pencil, not like an actual black charcoal stick. Meaning you can just roughly apply some pigment shaped squiggles and then smudge them and expect it to be a soft, smooth, shaded surface. It does not work that way with this stuff. You need to take care to shade systematically and thoroughly. Don't rely on the Q-tip for blending. The Q-tip should be an afterthought. It's only there to get rid of the powder and to log the pigment in nicely. Remember to use the Q-tip gently. Don't actually rub the pigment into the paper for other, brush the colored areas that you would brush a cat. Softly. Practice this and when you're ready with this head of hair primed, we'll move on to adding our colors together. 12. Undercoat (cherry bomb): Now that it's all primed, let's add some color. I'm starting with a Sienna brown. And let me show you the difference between this color tested over a prime area versus overgrazed paper. It's not a huge difference. Prismacolor is a very high-quality pencils with very vibrant colors. And yet the over the white charcoal version is somehow cleaner. This is my undercoat color. It looks very much like chestnuts over. There isn't one correct color for the job. Play with what you have and what you like. Go through your collection of brown colors and find a strong, not very dark brown, but that's a little bit on the reddish side. That's all there is to picking colors. Don't overthink it. Keep adding stroke after stroke of this color. Remember, very low pressure, rather more layers, always with the direction of the hair. Notice that I'm leaving the latest ports on colored or barely colored. These will be the light reflections, the shine of the hair. Of course, I suggested the lighter and the darker areas for you with my drawing lines. My next color is dark brown. It's actually called dark brown. Nothing tricky here. Big the darkest brown you have. Remember what we talked about when we talked about contrast for that child to be even shinier, we need a second darker color. I'm only adding it to the areas that are already shaping up to be the darkest. It's a small detail, but it will go a long way. This is an excellent start. We can take this in many directions. Now, this is a great base for brown hair, any kind of brown here. And of course, for all the possible shades of red. 13. Chchcherry bomb! (cherry bomb): Now for the real fun stuff, this is where the primer will really shine. This is poppy red. Pick the brightest most of noxious red. You have a neon red. Even would look very cool here. Go crazy and look at our sample. It's on lighter and brighter colors that the primer really shows its value. Look how much more vibrant this poppy red is overweight charcoal. Huge difference. Now we just add this color all over, leaving just a small area for the future, shine uncolored, but pretty much all over. Notice that I'm coloring over everything that's already colored. Always building up my layers. Therefore, strengthening my pigment. No. And speaking of strengthening color, Let's add some more red in there. Again, look at the difference between the red or white charcoal and read over just the gray of the paper. I just can't get enough of it. It's a great strategy to use on gemstones and crystals as well. Imagine you have a coloring page where your character is wearing jewels or it's a steam punk page and there's magical crystals coming out of your character or out of the machinery next to them. The way to make those crystal standout is to color everything on gray paper and prime only the stones. And if the two types of red point enough, this orange should leave no doubt in your mind about the effectiveness of white charcoal as a primer. I'm just going to let this color speak for itself. 14. Shine (cherry bomb): Okay, read was a blast and this hair is most definitely already silky and smooth. But now let's make it shiny. I'm using the Prismacolor white pencil to blend my highlights and to add little strands here and there. This isn't pure white, not overall the colors that we've already established, but that's okay. We don't want it to be pure white yet. What we want is a little bit more definition, a little bit more detail. Since we're going for shine here, how do we make things look more shiny? If you answered by increasing the contrast, you are absolutely correct. Adding pure black to the darkest parts of the hair will increase the illusion of shine. And now for my final trick, the true white highlights. These are the areas that are actually reflecting light because the hair is so shiny. For this, I will need a white gel pen. There's so many brands of white gel pens out there. I can't tell you which one to buy. I use Posca lot. I recently switched to this one. Honestly, they all work some better than others. Try different ones, see which ones work for you. And make sure to test this effect on scrap paper first, that little color tests simple page that we've been creating along the way is a great test or for your pins. This takes some getting used to the ideas to get just a few marks down and then to smudge them very quickly with a Q-tip before the ink had a chance to dry. Always mark and smudge with the direction of the Shine, which in this case is also the direction of the hair. I know it's a bit scary, which is why you should practice on scrap paper. 15. "Socially complementary" (cherry bomb): I'm super happy with how this is turning out. There's one last thing left to do, and that's the background. We talked about backgrounds already a little bit in the previous lesson on blonde hair. I explained complimentary colors and how to use them to our advantage. But it doesn't have to be a complimentary color. Let me show you how else we can pick a fun background that will bring out the hair color. The complimentary color to red is green. Green would certainly work. Here is a background. Any kind of green, hunter green, emerald green salad green, lime green chartreuse. But I think we can do something even stronger. Some colors are complimentary by reputation. They're not technically across from each other on the color wheel, nor are they each other's after images in our retina. But they are socially accepted to look good together, like purple and blue, green and yellow, or orange and yellow. These are usually colors that are actually near each other on the color wheel. And they look great together because of that proximity, upright tangerine will make this red really pop and keep everything in the same truthful sunshine color scheme at the same time. Again, this doesn't mean that every time you call a red head, you need to place her on a yellow background. She can be anywhere. Maybe there's a dark, stormy sky behind her. It doesn't matter. It all depends on the composition and the mood you're going for. But you have to make a decision. Do you want this hair to stand out on the page? I do. I wanted it up seemingly read and remember. So I chose the brightest, happiest color I could imagine to bring that up. And this one less bid on backgrounds. I like to always introduce even the slightest gradient. Instead of using just one flat color. That's just an artist habit. My characters rarely have solid flat backgrounds here as well as on the last piece, there's a slight change in color from the bottom of the page to the top. It just makes things a little bit more interesting and dynamic. Go ahead and spend some quality time with your red head. And when you're ready, we'll move on to shiny black curls together. 16. Lesson 2 HOMEWORK: Two out of five, You're getting there. I hope you had fun with Cherry Bomb. Your assignment for this character is to submit a complete coloring of this redhead with your choice of a background. I can't wait to see what you create. 17. Dark primer (raven black): In our previous lesson on red hair, we practiced the priming method that uses white charcoal, but primer isn't white by definition. It's just the primary layer of colors that everything else goes on top of. Here. We're coloring here that will ultimately be black with some highlights, but mostly black. Now, black hair is pretty tricky. Eating that it's easy because it's just black. I mean, how hard can that be? But Flack is in fact the one kind of hair that colorists struggle with the most, that end curly hair. Which is why I decided to combine the two. There are a few reasons why black hair is tricky with pencils. One reason is that once everything is painted black, a lot of the definition on the drawing is lost, which sometimes is okay or even desired. But in case of this very detailed curly hair, we want to keep as much of the shape of the cross as possible while keeping the hair block. Another reason is how black looks on paper. We talked a lot about layering already. Most colorists don't player. They just pick a pencil that seems like a good match for the final color and go with that one layer done. It's not really enough though. If you just shade all of this with a single black pencil, there will be a lot of texture on the page showing through the black will look kinda like a kid's doodle and that's when things just kinda fall apart. Will priming this head of hair with a nice solid brown. To prevent that from happening, we will build up several layers of natural and unnatural colors before we even get to black. In fact, for our amazing black hair, we won't even use a black pencil until the very end. Again, good art is not made by quality tools. It's made by qualified artists. A prismacolor black is a fantastic high-quality tool, but applied directly to this page, it will fail to create a beautiful shiny black head of hair. The trick is in how you get there, which is why I'm here to show you the way. Go ahead and prime everything that will be here with really any shade of brown. Don't worry about shadows and highlights. Just call it everything in this flat sheet. And when that's done, we'll move on with more colors and more definition. Hi. Okay. Hi. 18. Purple (raven black): I'm really into purple these days. So I decided to give this models and purple highlights in addition to making her hair look shiny and black. Now we work in the details around the curls. I'm applying this dark purple color to the areas that appear to be deeper into the curls, leaving the curls themselves in the foreground, lighter. And now I want to add some vibrance. Pick a color that makes you happy. Really. This isn't a formula. This is just what looks attractive to you. Me, I take this gorgeous lilac, is I apply it over my dark purple. Really cool blending effects start to happen. This genuinely makes me happy to look at. Okay, hi. And for some minor shiny effects, as well as additional blending on the purple tones. I'm adding just a touch of cool blue. This was a little sidetrack or the purple highlights. You can skip this step if you want. You can just make it shiny black hair. I find it fun to do more than just a single color though, you may have noticed that I'm really into color and highlights. 19. PLAY TIME 3 (raven black): I dare you to try different color highlights in addition to purple. Start a separate coloring of the same page and pick a totally different color for your highlights. Maybe pink or mint green or baby blue. Go crazy. 20. Adding blue (raven black): Now that I got those highlights out of my system, I can start building up that black hair effect. And we start with blue. This is going to be Raven black hair. So a touch of blue iridescence is always a cool effect. The blue that I picked is on the indigo side, like navy blue. And I'm coloring over pretty much everything, but not in a single flat sheet like we did with the primer color. This time, I went definition in detail. Curls. Take a lot of time and care to color. Don't rush this. Good art takes time. You should take the time to pause the lessons and color at your own speed. As long as it takes. Put some music on a movie that you already know in Lake. Just relax and set our landfill long stretch of coloring. Notice once again, I'm adding more pigment to the parts of the hair that look like they're deeper in there, leaving the protruding curls a little bit lighter. I'm also leaving my purple highlights mostly alone. But with some spill. You decide how much purple you want her hair to keep and how much will ultimately be black. Hello. Once everything is nicely colored with blue, I'm just adding hue, pale blue, Shane effects here and there. That doesn't seem to be that significant of a change. So let's just add pure white as well. 21. When to add black (raven black): Let's take the purple can be a bit stronger. That's better. Okay? Okay, now onto actual black, I'm adding black in gradient transitions and pretty much filling in everything between the really obvious curls. This creates an illusion of volume. Now a lot of the drawing details will get lost here. And that's okay. That's actually desired. When we're dealing with really dark hair in real life. We don't actually see all the detail. We just see this Keep of dark hair. Here. We're not losing so much detail that we can't see the general shape of the curls. The area that is here on this drawing doesn't look flat and shapeless. We took care to build up the volume and shape it without previous colors and highlights. So if all that remains from the curl is just a couple of highlights, that's fine. That's actually what we want. And because of all the layers of colors that we've built up, adding black is now effortless. You don't need to apply any pressure at all to the page. Just gently shade in the dark areas. It's like magic. Okay. Okay. All right. 22. Fineliner detail (raven black): Now, if you're really into fine detail, you're going to love this next part. Grab a fine liner or a very sharp tip black marker, and start adding little hair strokes to the parts that you want to be truly black. You can also use this fine line into outline some of the curls. So even to add new ones if you want. This step achieves two things. It enhances the contrast by introducing true black, and it allows us to sharpen details. Okay, now for the extra chain effect, Let's add some white highlights with the white gel pen. Just a few, literally, don't overdo this part. We don't want to go adding these little highlights all over the place. Just a few little curl. 23. Final presentation (raven black): And now, of course, onto the background. Let's do a color we haven't used for background yet. Obviously, we can't go dark because then it will be difficult to see her hair. We want a light and cheerful color here. Lemon yellow would look great, baby blue. But I always liked the combination of black and pink. It's one of my favorites. So I'm going with peachy pink. As always, I introduce a very gentle color gradient to the background just to keep things interesting. And it's done. Go ahead and play with this really awesome hair color effect. And when you're ready, we'll do another block will work on this geisha style together. 24. Lesson 3 HOMEWORK: Three out of five, you're on a roll. This was probably the most involved coloring so far. Take your time with it. Pick your colors, play with those curls. And when you're ready, submit either a coloring of this model that matches mine, or if you took the side mission earlier, aversion with different highlights. I can't wait to see it. 25. Cool primer (black silk): In our last lesson on curly black hair, we primed the area to be colored with brown and purple here, even though the hair will ultimately also be black. Let's start with something cool and silvery. Like this cool gray. Cool in both senses, it's actually 50% cool gray. This models here is very straight and very shiny. My cherry bombs here it was in the red head section. Our approach to coloring it will be very similar as well. However, unlike Cherry Bomb, this girl doesn't have brightly colored hair. Therefore, there are no colors that we need to exaggerate. Therefore, no primer is needed. We still need to build up the layers to create beautiful full solid black effects though. Of course, priming is still an option. For instance, if you prefer to prime the areas that will be the shiniest part of the hair right now. Instead of adding them later on, there's nothing wrong with that. You can prime those parts with white charcoal. There's just no point in priming the whole head. There's more than one way to skin a cat. They say, some buddy says, I don't know anyone who says that actually, but there's more than one way to color here. 26. Black as night (black silk): For truly strong black effect. Later on, I am now priming all of these areas that will be dark with strong blue. But unlike with our previous model here, none of the blue will be visible in the end. Its only purpose is to build up body for that solid black that's coming next. And I'm using this blue quite generously, covering pretty much everything except the few areas that I know will be the shine effects. And how do I know which areas those are? It's always have suggested them with my drawing lines for you. But you can also look at reference photography and place your highlights anywhere you want. You don't have to follow my lines. They're just there to guide you. Were dealing with straight and shiny here again, there is no reason not to use pencil shading lines to our advantage. Hello. Once we have a nice strong layer of blue down and we can add actual black. All the same principles apply. Very low pressure. Follow the hair lines, buildup, smooth color gradients. If you're following my lessons in order, you already have plenty of practice with this. Should be a walk in the park. Never grind to pigment in. I know it's tempting especially with black. Just glide. Remember, good art takes time. 27. Silky smooth (black silk): I'm only halfway through this coloring, but the black is already complete. What's left to do? The shine? They shine on this hair is almost its own character. I want to really show off silky smooth hair on this one. So now's a great time to use what we call blender pencils to connect the black areas with a blank areas. Blend your pencils are not actually anything special. You won't find them in a separate section in your art store. A blender pencil is what I call any pencil that I used to blend two colors together. For instance, here, I'm using a light gray to blend the areas where the black effects kind of fade out. And it immediately looks amazing. This effect right here is the main reason I like prisma colors for hair coloring. They just have the coolest blender pencils. Not all brands will allow colors to work this way. Lighter on top of darker. So play with the pencils you have and see what works. 28. High contrast (black silk): I like this silky smooth looks so much. I'm going to take it a step further with pure white. Now, that's really cool. Let's take it even further. The transition areas from black to white look amazing, but they can be even more dynamic. I'm going with my dark, warm gray now to build up even more body here. Remember, professional coloring is pretty much painting, just painting with pencils. Several overlayed colors need to come together to create a believable color. That's the real secret. 29. Pen work (black silk): In all right. Hi. 30. Decorations (black silk): To wrap things up, I just need to complete the little decorations in her hair. And of course the backdrop. I'm just going to let my coloring on the ornaments and stuff play out because this lesson is on here and not on here ornaments. So just watch and enjoy. And I'll see you for the background. All right. Hi. 31. Background (black silk): For the background, I went with something like white silver to really bring out the black. My first stop was red, but I put so many red details in the hair ornaments. More red would just be overkill. I did want to stay true to the proper classic Japanese color scheme. So something along the lines of white, black, and red fit nicely. Go ahead and play with this page. This is one of my favorites. I can't wait to see what you do with it. When you're ready. We'll do something on the extreme opposite of this. Hello, cool. 32. Lesson 4 HOMEWORK: Four out of five, you are still here. I guess I'm doing something right. For this chapter, please submit your coloring of the geisha hairstyle in shiny black with the background and the hair declarations and everything. Pick your own colors for the hair declarations and the background. 33. Not all hair shines (honey brown): So far we've covered blond, red and black hair and messy straight and curly styles and all very silky and shiny. Well we haven't done yet is brown and none shiny. Dreadlocks are the perfect example of hair that's not silky smooth and won't have that same shine effects that we've already been practicing. I am most definitely not going to go with white primer for this one, since I want this hair to be as dull as possible. Here, I'm not bringing out any vibrant colors, the exact opposite. In fact, here, the gray of the paper will work greatly in my favor. Starting with a dark brown, I'm also approaching the application of color very differently. Remember how I always had you worked with the direction of the hair will here we don't really have a direction. It's literally all tangled and Matt it and it's like a sponge texture. So that's literally how we move without pencil on the paper as well. I'm changing the direction of my strokes all the time. And I'm trying to add as much randomness and do dullness as possible. Did you catch that? Yeah. Do dullness and making that a term. It applies here. But it's not just a free for all. Just because we're not dealing with orderly and slick hair doesn't mean that we get to be messy in our work. We are after organized chaos here. I'm taking great care to color everything thoroughly and also to establish my shadow so that the whole head of hair looks three-dimensional. Take your time with this. This firstly of color took me about 20 min and I work fast, really fast. If it takes an hour, so be it. Hello. 34. Brown (honey brown): Now this lesson is not only on dreadlocks, It's also in brown hair in general. So let's talk about my brown color selection. We've already done a layer of basic brown. And now I'm introducing light amber. Brown hair is a ton of fun to color it because there's just so many shades and variations of Brown's to play with. You can control how warm or reddish or golden or dark or light or consistent. You want your brand to be simply with how much of which color you add. It would take me years to demonstrate every single possible shade of brown on every single possible here to here. So again, please practice along with me on these five models. Follow my steps and my colors, but take notes along the way and apply what you've learned here to other possibilities. After completing this course, you should be able to take this model and give her shiny blue hair. Even though we didn't specifically cover that. Here, I'm adding light umber over the first layer of brown using the same rough sketchy shading technique. I'm not adding it evenly. I want this mess of hair to be a bit patchy. Some of the locks will be slightly different in color than the others. So let's continue building up different shades of brown. I'm intentionally covering a whole range of brown's here for variation. Starting with a kind of dull brown and now introducing warmer and brighter variance. This burnt ocher is very much on the red side. My original version of this was actually more towards greenish and mustard type browns. Now I'm thinking I'll add more reddish tones to the hair and compensate for my green craving with the background. 35. Reason to the madness (honey brown): Brown is looking good and already at the logs is starting to take shape. But we can make them look even more three-dimensional. Time to add the highlights and kinda tidy everything up while keeping it looking messy if that makes any sense. These highlights will be quite different from what we've been doing so far. This here isn't shiny like the others. So it's important to make the lighter areas look muddy and messy, sponge-like. I pick this ginger root color from my highlights. Another cool trick here, which is kind of a hack, but it often works really well, is to use an eraser to add the little highlights. You will get the same kind of muted Maria effects for the lighter areas. Get to try. This is great. You can leave it at this if you want. But if you want an even more messy and wavy texture to this hair, 20% fringe grade. With this 20 per cent French gray, I'm free handing these totally tangled lines all over. Now, ISS. And I decide that I want just a bit more color variation here. This part is, it's all about personal decisions. You may wish to add green here, or even gray or more brown or nothing at all. Mia, I just felt like a touch of sunshine will look nice. Finally, I want to show off the structure of this hair a bit more. There's a lot going on here. Lots of locks piled on top of other logs. It's like a tower or a nest or spool of cable. So preceding whatever this is that she has on top of her head as a single object. I'm adding dark shadows using solid black to show off the areas that are deeper in there. Hello, hello. Hello. 36. Green craving and HOMEWORK (honey brown): Now it's time to get that green craving out of my system. I was dead set on something being green around here. And since I didn't end up using green in the hair, I'm taking it out on the background now. What other backgrounds would look nice here and lie. Led me know in a private message are posted in the Q&A section. I'd love to hear your ideas. As always, a little bit of color gradient variation in the background, and we're done. I'm really happy with how this turned out. All by pages down. Great job. Please submit your coloring of the muted brown here for this assignment. But don't run off yet. Make sure to watch the last video. Trust me. 37. CONGRATULATIONS! and a gift: Congratulations, you've completed the hair coloring course. I am so glad to see you all the way here in the final chapter. Did you know that statistically most students taking any course on any topic at all only ever get about 20 per cent in the material before they give up. The fact that he made it all the way through is a huge achievement and I'm really proud of you. And to thank you for sticking with it. I want to give you a gift. This drawing of policies yours to play with. I hope you are Game of Thrones fan. But even if you are not, this head of hair is a perfect playground for any color or color combination. The idea behind all of my courses isn't just to share color along with you, is to arm you with enough tools so that you can go out into the coloring world and apply my technique to other pages. Time to take those training wheels off. Let this be your first unassisted coloring of hair. Take what I taught you and apply it to this page with your own flair. You can follow a reference images to color her hair as it was in the film. Kind of a silvery blonde. You can go way off script and make it shiny black or cherry red or even rainbow colored. Remember that the background is a powerful tool as well. Use it to enhance the hair color by contrast. And of course, I would love to see what you come up with. So please do send me photos of your policy or post them in the Q&A section. I hope you enjoyed this course and learned a lot. Please keep practicing. Coloring. Just five pages will not make you an expert. I can only take you so far. Now it's up to you to keep practicing and applying these tricks to other pages by other artists. Thank you again for your time, your dedication, your progress. Have fun and color, color, color. I hope to see you in another course. Bye.