Snap-hiss Dolls

Hair

I'm a toolshader, and I use a complex graphics program. You won't be able to follow this tutorial if you're using MSPaint or something similar. Sorry, it's just how I doll. I'm going to assume you know your way around whatever program you're using, because I use the GIMP and I don't know Photoshop/PSP shortcuts and menus etc. I'm also going to hope you can find what I'm talking about if it's under a different name in your program. And finally I'm going to assume you already know how to use your program pretty well; this tutorial won't teach you how to do things like select or use the airbrush or change tool settings.
I usually do hair last, so this nearly-finished doll will be my starting point. Base by the Pyro Parlour. I use a palette of just 2 colours, but make sure that one's quite a bit lighter than the other. I draw the outline with the darker colour, and I usually fill in as I go. It's useful to look at pictures to see what sort of shape the hair should have: this girl has wavy hair, and she's got some between her fingers. Remember to add the little bits, like under her arm on the left. Note that there's no actual outline anymore - if there was, it would take up a lot of space that could be used for shading, especially in the little locks of hair on her shoulder. So without the outline, the hair will look a lot better and more detailed.
Lock the transparency of the layer. This is really useful, because now you can shade on the brown that's already there, but it stops you accidentally shading outside the hair. Using the lighter colour, draw in strands of hair with a 1-pixel soft/non-aliased airbrush. Think of where the hair would be going - again, look at a picture if it helps. It can take a while to get it just right. Here's a tip - keep your left hand glued to the ctrl and Z keys. Ctrl+Z is undo in most programs, and I use it an awful lot.
Now I'll use the burn tool to darken some areas of the hair. Try out each of the settings (shadows, midtones or highlights) and decide which you want to use. I chose midtones here, because shadows was too dark and highlights made it too grey. I'll use a 3-pixel brush. If you're confident with where you want the shading to go, set the opacity quite high, but if you're not so sure, you can use a low opacity brush and go over the area a few times. Unless you've got some fancy lighting on your doll, you'll probably need to darken the parting, the edges of the hair and the areas next to the neck where the hair would be in shadow.
Switch to a 1-pixel burn brush for some more specific darkening. Again, darken the hair, but only shade in the dark areas - try not to go over the light strands too much. Shade the parting, a little near the neck and then a few little random areas to give the hair a bit of...well, randomness.
Switch to a 1-pixel dodge brush to add the highlights. Again, choose whether you want to use shadows, midtones or highlights. When you shade, only shade on the light strands this time. You'll probably want to lighten the hair on the top of her head, on the curls that stick 'out' and random individual strands.
You might decide that it looks fine now, but sometimes it's good to do a little bit more to it. I'm going to use a 3-pixel dodge brush to add a little more shine in some places (you don't need to only shade the light strands now. It's pretty hard to avoid the dark bits with a 3-pixel brush anyway...).
I've just changed the colour of the hair slightly by playing around with the Levels (the shading black/white tutorial explains this a bit) and the hue. So that's the hair done, now I just need to finish off the doll by changing the eyebrows, adding a shadow to the hair (see the finishing touches tutorial) and adding makeup. Done!