Tips on painting curly hair with big waves?

[oree94]

Hello, lovely people!
I’m drawing Astarion the vampire elf from Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m having trouble with his hair. I just don’t know how to paint it. The hair in the reference is so detailed, I can’t seem to simplify it enough so I don’t have to paint individual hair strands. And it being curly hair, there are so many dark spots and light spots everywhere, it confuses me.
If anyone has any tips on painting big curls, I’d really appreciate it!

[tachiko]

I like to use soak ink on a bristle engine brush for hair. The Bristle Engine can give you the strand-like effect.

Also there is a video here talking about tips for painting hair Brushes for a sharper more clean look (for "anime" style) - #7 by kaichi1342

I think there may be one hair brush in this pack that you might like https://www.deviantart.com/fizzyflower/art/Zedig-Brushes-for-Krita-2022-update-904811220

[oree94]

Thanks for the advice! I tried using the big bristle brush. I think it turned out better than when I was using “hair” brushes. This is the result.

I feel like it could use improvements, though.

[tachiko]

This is a different effect but could maybe be worth trying

Soak Ink bundle for making Hair (and technique)

[bristle engplae new place o paint] https://icedrive.net/s/6Zb8DCDkxG9wY5F1CykBjbV8hD7v the one named rake works with a rake brush tip as well. Use this pluging to play with soak ink and paint mode easier with bristle engine brushes: Compact Brush Toggler - Resources / Plugins - Krita Artists (krita-artists.org) technique requires duplicating the hairs you drew and use the soak ink brushes on top. then duplicating that and using height to normal filter (consider setting -x,-y,-z). then u…

[Kevin_Manion]

If your trying to make it look like the reference picture then you may want to start by blocking in the base color, in this case it would be the darker gray color at the base of the hair. You don’t need to be particularly precise for this.
Then pick a pencil or some type of detail brush that makes finer lines with some taper at the ends. (I use a pencil that has some texture). Pick the light hair color and then start drawing the hair on top of the gray. You can start with a middle tone for the light hair. Where it need to be highlighted just pick a brighter hair color and paint on top of the middle tone.
It does take some time to do this, but I’ve found that it’s very flexible. If I made an area too bright then I’d just add lines with a darker gray to tone it down.
It also lets you draw in the individual crazy hairs.
That’s how I did the hair in this. I ended up moving the highlights several times until I got what I wanted.

Side Glance in Grayscale

Got the reference image from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JenNaB0IoyQ which gives a nice demo of using Loomis. I generally have a problem with values so I did this in grayscale to hopefully get a better feel for lights and darks. Can use it as a basis for color versions later. Inspired to try it this way after looking at the amazing work of Den Jay that I found posted here. [Side Glance -Black and White]