 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby-cheating video today. We're gonna talk all about painting black hair Let's get into it Let's strict techno man, sir. That is Vincy V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vincy V's Oftentimes when I paint hair I like bright really outrageous colors It's no secret on this channel that I'm a big fan of things like magenta and teal But blonde hairs and red hairs and other bright colors are generally much more fun and compelling to paint to me Black hair is a real challenge. It's a challenge because hair is very satin Sometimes even glossy and it reflects really really really sharp lights and what that means is that in our painting We have to go all the way from dark black all the way up to white in a very small amount of space So this can be a tricky hair color to resolve in this video. I'm gonna take you through how exactly to paint black hair I'm gonna simplify and demystify the process We're gonna make it really easy and we're gonna use this awesome ranger figure From Minniac and his Kickstarter to do so. This is a really fun figure to paint and this is one of the last steps So let's head over to the desk and take a look All right, let's talk about the keys to black hair The first thing we're gonna talk about is that we're not just gonna use black and white and gray We want to integrate some kind of color into the mixture in this case I'm gonna use some purples and some greens just for hue and vibrancy the second thing we want to talk about is that as you build the color you need to build a sort of halo and Always be pushing the lights toward basically a specular highlight the viewer toward the top and toward a circular halo look up Effectively hair dye bottles. Those are excellent guides They will show you because they're sort of Photoshop perfect where it belongs The next most important thing to understand and you'll see me here as I build this sort of halo of light now This guy has very unusual hair. It's all going sort of backwards. And so it's there's no Part or space in the middle where this would normally happen, but he would still have this halo effect But it does make this a little more challenging because he has these his hair flowing back and it's tied He's got these two little things coming out. He's a very fancy elf But the halo is effectively this circle of light and as I build it through the colors that you see on the screen In the areas where there are highlights the lowest shadow color is my mid-tone This is really important to understand When you look back at that bottle that I showed on the screen in those highlight areas There's not black in between the strands of bright reflective white They're sort of mid-tone gray in the same way here In between the very bright strands. We're going to just have mid-gray now in the darker areas The highlight color in the dark areas will be the mid-tone effectively that sort of purpley black mix at most So in whatever band of light is your highlight area the deepest shadow you take is gray in the Bright or sorry in the dark shadow areas. The brightest you go is your mid-tone. I Often see people just kind of run these thin lines all up and down the hair And there's not enough distinction of value in the way that the hair actually reflects the satin light The next thing I'll say is that obviously you see I'm working in lots of these thin hashes I'm effectively trying to bring out the sculpt and trace the little individual hairs and even add more where I can and I work back and forth you can see here how I'm going back to my mid-tone color and drawing some of it down into the shadow Smoothing out some of the transitions In addition to doing lots of thin lines, it's almost impossible to do black hair in One clean smooth pass You're not going to get this simply through one application of layering that looks good at all And that's because you're trying to go when you do black hair effectively all the way from black Or something close to it in this case to never as gray. I never go to actual black Even those will read as black hair by the time we're done All the way up to white. Although again, I'm never going to white. My highest color is this a k green gray and so You're making such a huge value scale jump and it needs to transition very smoothly but in very small volumes and Controlling the exact size of that volume is really the whole shooting match and That's what you see me doing here You'll notice that I way over highlighted this like looking at this hair. It's insane. His hair looks gray white You were probably thinking vince. You've lost your mind. You've finally gone off the deep end But don't worry. This will all come together by the end and we over saturate over build these Value steps so that we can come in and glaze them back down Now I hear your question why vince don't you just Not why not just do that why not just do The careful layers up to where every you'll end And the answer there is because brighter colors With glazes over the top of them will read differently and more smoothly and have more nuance hue and value In their subtle transitions Than just the layers alone By stacking lots and lots of layers of these Transparent paints on top of each other through the individual thin lines Which are done with a layer consistency and the glazes that then go on top of them to to bring them all together and smooth them out And then repeating this process multiple times Building back up through the mid tones and into the highlights We establish this natural slow gradient of a transition Up into what is a natural reflection? Because ultimately the really high highlight is going to be very small But we have to keep sort of shrinking it down Rebuilding it adjusting the volume getting it right and these brighter colors when glazed over Provide us with a lot more realism a lot more credibility to not only our blends and the smoothness of their in But also To the overall impression to the overall Way that the the paint reflects up through all those different Transparent layers so a lot of back and forth and building up and glazing down Remember the key here is push the values first you want to go beyond where you think is reasonable For your value changes for the actual lights you'll want and then bring it back So you push up and then bring it back and repeat that over and over again through the application of the layers And then the glazes and all of those little tiny changes those little transparent changes laying over top of each other End up creating the effect we need All right, so once again We're going to glaze and you'll see that in a lot of this video What i'm doing is making subtle small changes to the glazes and the reapplication of the layers Constantly trying to readjust the size of the halo How deep is the shadow on the top of his head? I had to play with that a lot because ostensibly the top of his head is facing directly up and this is black hair Now when we're dealing with specular highlights That should be pretty dark, but it's also facing directly at the light So a lot of this to make it credible is these really subtle little Applications of color and you're going to see that here over the next few steps And what i'm doing here in this case is this piece has a slight Light on the his left side or camera right That's sort of ostensibly a little bit more where the light is coming from if you look at his cloak and his uh Jerkin and other things like that. There's a little more light on the right side than on the left So it's basically at like One o'clock or 130 is where the the sun is supposed to be So when we're creating the highest highlights of the specular highlights We do not run it all the way around the head Instead we focus here on sort of the right side of his head right up there on the halo And then right under those horns You'll notice at some point in the video the horns got actually painted Because they were really annoying me in trying to film this By sort of being very much in the way and being this dark black thing that was disrupting how I was perceiving the overall value Which is another important lesson It's very hard when you're trying to do extremely subtle value Transition work like this if you have some element that's unpainted next to it That's why I left the black hair for last and went back in the middle and sort of did the horns And then came back to adjust this But you see as I'm adjusting these little flyaways or whatever he has on the side of his head That I'm once again following the same pattern as I did with the halo on the top of his head Wherein I'm glazing down very gently with extremely progressively thinner layers of the glaze And that's the other important and maybe final thing to say As you continue to build this up, you're going to work thinner and thinner Both the layers that I'm doing here to do these sharp thin lines And then bring them back together as well as the glazes that I put over top Are progressively getting thinner with each application But I repeat this whole process three or four times as I work to try to get toward the right level of highlight The right level of shadow And the right size of the volume of all of those things And it's really a careful balancing act about 50% of the surface needs to stay dark and the rest can stay gray So there we go, that's his hair all done We've got some nice black hair with a good reflection on it But not super shiny because we didn't want it to take away from the rest of the elements Remember the key is in the highlight areas of the hair Even though we paint lots and lots of tiny tiny little strands in those highlight areas We don't have the darkest color So in the highlight areas our Shadow is the mid tone in the mid tone area or in the shadow areas our highlight is the mid tone And that's what brings it all together So there you go. That's painting black hair I hope this demystifies the process and gives you some good ideas for stuff you can try at home If you liked this give it a like subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future As always, if you want to take your next step on your hobby journey There's a patreon link down below that also helps support this channel. That's focused on review and feedback Thank you so much for watching this. I really appreciate it and we'll see you next time