Fuck it I need to pick up my new bed now. Here's a creature. Failed the task but its... palatable. Yes outside of my usual bs I spend my time in a very specifc corner of the Internet is it noticeable yet?
Alright, as desired, here's how how I render silver hair.*
Putting it under a cut cuz it got longer.
First up, this is my palette. Rough/big shadows with the the saturated blue/purple in multiply blendmode with anything between 10-20% opacity.
As for brushes I use a soft round marker at about 40-75% opacity for getting values onto the page.
The blend brush is used for rough blending and the Soft hair is used to render highlights and dark shadows. For this texture it is important to always go with the direction the hair would flow. Its primary purpose is just to give it texture rather than actual blending.
As for the rendering I use that massive amalgamation of green/blue/purple tones. Rather than blending or smth I just stack values. Aka; I start with a medium dark tone and then just carve out the details from there. It's what works for me.
Generally speaking I use this pallete for everything; if I do skin I simply render it first using the cool tones and once the shadows and all are done I slap an overlay, soft light or colour layer on top of it with one of the actual skin colours. After that I tweak it with colour balance/hues and opacity changes to get something that fits the painting and then tweak it further.
And as a bonus nd cuz I love eyes, I often slap a round "highlight" with that red colour in the middle of the pupil to create some depth and the sclera is usually a yellow or blue (depending on the temperature of the skin and vibe), with anywhere between 35-45% B value. The fact that it looks brighter than the skin is a simple optical illusion.
Anyway, enough text, here's a video (including the finishing touches, aka merging all layers, going into colour balance and applying texture/noise, cuz editing on iPad is painful):
If I'm like 3/4th done I'll use a gradient map to tie it together even more (again, too lazy to blend), change the brightness and all with curves, and then I just do some minor highlights and shadows to enhance the flow of the hair.
Oh also lighter hair colours reflect their surroundings in a way hence why you saw me doing that thing, for lack of better term. Though I had a momentary lapse of judgement (since the part of the hair that lays over skin would have the green and browns of that layer of paint shine thru and reflect rather than the bg), but realised that too eventually 🫡
Anyway, for darker hair I go about it similarly but I keep the values much closer together. Usually below 60 - 50% B value. Using too high values in this case results in greying hair which works for some characters but not all.
*please keep in mind I use a lot of greyscale. I render with values and then just slap colour onto that later, and colour in this case also means I orientate myself on temperature rather than anything else. In my specific case I tend to gravitate towards cool tones. A lot. That's why my pallette is pretty much only cool tones. Also I just use my gut feeling for most shit tbh. Sometimes it works, sometimes I just create more work for myself.
@lamortwrites reminded me that snowdrops exist. So I drew some. You had absolutely no way to know but these flowers are impossibly important to me lmao
Finally finished my take on a moody Briar for @beecreeper—I love how her journey is portrayed a lot in her design (including but not limited to the delightful chaos) and I hope it managed to capture the Murder Queen with this one 🫶
Y'all remember that brief period where I randomly got super obsessed with modded Elliott again? Well I sure as hell suddenly did.
I originally planned to rb my OC but then I remembered I still had a drawing of Elliott from a while back laying around in prime condition to be refurbished and reedited. So I fucked around a bit.
