Painting hair can often be one of the most challenging features to accurately portray in a work of art. This is due to the variety of shades in the hair, ranging from dark shadows to highlights. Many people make the mistake of attempting to paint out every hair, one at a time. Typically, you can't see every single hair though. To paint hair with pastel oil you need to trust what your eyes see rather than what your brain knows is there.
Instructions
1. Mix up enough paint to complete the hair. When you run out of a color mixture, it can be hard to achieve the same color mix again. You should mix more paint than you think you'll need.
2. Draw out the outline of the hair with a pencil. Do not draw in areas for highlights because you are going to paint over the pencil.
3. Apply the darkest layer of the paint first. This means, find the deepest, darkest shadows and paint the entire outline of the hair with this color. This gives you a base color to work with.
4. Clean your brushes between paint layers. Oil paint is thick and sticky, so you always want to have a cup of clean water nearby.
5. Apply the next lighter paint over the dark paint. Look at your subject or photograph, if you are using one, and paint over all of the hair except the areas where the dark needs to appear. Use light brush strokes to avoid clumping of the oil paint. This can give an unwanted texture to the hair. You do not need to let the paint completely dry between layers. Painting another layer on damp paint can actually lead to a smoother transition between the color shades because the two shades can blend together in some areas.
6. Continue adding a lighter layer, one at a time, painting over all of the hair, except for the areas from the previous layers that need to be visible. When you reach the highlights, use the paint sparingly. Highlight only the areas of the hair that catch the light and turn almost white.
7. Leave the painting to dry and walk away from it. Often times you don't see areas you need to correct, or you don't realize how good the painting is, until you step away and come back later. Oil paint takes a long time to dry (you often need to wait until the next day for it to be close to dry), so you can take an extended break.
8. Add any extra corrective paint you see fit. For example, you may notice a hightlight you never noticed before. You can go into the painting and add this in. When adding features into the hair, you do not need to place the darkest paint back onto the hair color, just to reach the highlight. If the tone is already semi-light, you just need to use the paint tones that are brighter and lighter than what is currently in the area where you need to add the correction. However, if you need to add a darker tone to the hair you should place down the darkest tone first, and then again build it up until you have added the needed tone.
