Making of Clara by Simon Persson, Sweden

Now it was time to go back to the hair again to define it even more. I started to pick lighter colors and with a custom brush give the hair more texture. To get a realistic feeling I painted the hair not as single hair shafts but hair shafts putted together. I also varied the direction how the hairs are falling. Lastly I took the Airbrush Pen Opacity Flow brush with 100% opacity and flow and pixel size set to 2-4 to draw some single hairs.

At this stage the most fun part of the painting starts, to paint details and add shadows and highlights. For saving time I try to always keep the painting in the same level of details under the process. It will not only give you a better overview but also prevent you from painting too much on one place so the picture not ending up unbalanced. I try to consider the painting as a whole piece not as small pieces I have to put together. I wanted the face to be the focal point of the portrait therefore I painted the highest level of details in this area and I also made it the brightest. I used Airbrush Pen Opacity Flow brush with 100% opacity and flow set to 6-8 pixels to paint most of the details. To direct the viewers’ attention to the face I blurred the areas around it.

When the picture was done I played around with different color balances to see what I liked most. I added the color balance as an adjustment layer on top of everything which made it really easy to try different variations.

So, finally, this is the whole process. I hope you found something useful and if you have any questions feel free to ask, just send me a mail and I’ll try to reply.

Portfolio: paddflask.cgsociety.org

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