Braid Tutorial

1. Get ready to do the hair. I use a three colour palette; in this case I'm making blond hair.

2. Using the middle colour draw the fill. (Make sure it's on a new layer called Fill)

3. Select the fill

4. Create a new layer; call this one outline.

5. On the new layer (still selecting the fill) choose the darkest colour and go to edit, stroke. Choose 1px, center (like I have.)

6. Deselect and add a part. Now you should have two layers: fill and outline.

7. Create a new layer called shading.

8. Select the brush tool (size 2) and using the darkest colour shade the strands. Leave the braid alone for now.

9. On the braid (using the same setting as the last step) shade upside-down V's

Here I have given a zoomed in version of the previous step.

10. Now connect the V's to the rest of the shading. Take one of the strands and connect it to the braid by shading a line down the middle. Add any other necessary strands.

11. Now create a new layer named highlights

12. Choose the lightest colour (still using the brush tool, size 2) and draw the highlights, leaving the braid alone for now.

13. On the braid draw the highlights by taking the brush tool and highlight from the outside of the braid in towards the the center line.

14. Now blur the shading and highlights using the blur tool. I put the blur tool to strength 30. (You may need to adjust this setting)

15. Now it's time to do any touch-ups. Don't forget to add a part.

16. When happy with the shading go to the layer called fill and select the outside of the hair.

17. With the outside area selected, go to the layer with the shading and delete the outside area. Do the same with the highlights and deselect. Now there should only be shading where there is fill.

18. At this point you may find that you need to adjust the opacity of the outline. Make sure the outline is the top layer and fiddle around with the opacity until you are happy. I have put my opacity at 40%

19. Once you are done fiddling with the outline select all of the hair layers, duplicate them and merge them. Call this new layer burn.

20. Now choose the burn tool. I like to fiddle with it at 100% until I find the setting that looks best.

Shadows looks too orange.

Midtones looks good.

Highlights looks the worst out of the three.

In this case midtones worked the best. I put it at 20% and added shadows.

21. Do the same with the dodge tool. (Don't forget to duplicate the burn layer in case you need to go back. Call the duplicated layer dodge.)

Shadows doesn't look too bad

Neither does midtones

Highlights on the other hand is way too bright

I used midtones and added some highlights to my doll's hair.