I just bought a Wacom Grapihre 3... and tested it with the wonderfull tutorial from Crasher... The pose isn't really beautifull (the right shoulder...), but what i wanted to do is the hairs... I see there are two errors (haireline on the left and the hairs on the top...)... but i would like to know if i'm on the right way or not... And naturally, how i could improve my hair painting... Thnaks a lot !!!

Not bad for a first shot! I'm still learning too so I can't really say what would improve it. You are obviously on the right track. Marque

If you are doing the painting in a program that supports layers, don't forget to create a duplicate layer of your finished hair painting, to make a 'cast shadows' layer. You may have to adjust the shadows to 'fit' the curves of the body, but it does add that extra bit of realism to the pic.

I like the overall technique you have used. The main body of the hair is first class.

My gosh, what a wonderful start. Looks like you're on the right track, definitely. All I can say is practice, practice, and more practice makes perfect. =)

look'n good!

Thank you !!!! Rosemaryr: for the "cast shadow", what do you do to your layer to create the "shadows".... Change the mode to "Black and white" ? Or something else ? Can you help ?

If you're using Photoshop there is a built in effect, "Drop Shadow". You can vary the angle, distance and density to help it blend naturally with the render. There are also various plugin effects which offer similar or sometimes better effects. I guess there's something similar in PSP.

oh... it seem very easy... I'll do this with my next drawing... Thanks a lot everbody !!!!

Layer effect "Cast Shadow" works quite well, as SamTherapy said. The shadows will then be a dependent part of the hair layer..which can be useful.
Personally, I like to create a whole new layer (Copy layer, select by layer transparency, fill with a grayish tone...) in order to do further manipulations that are separate from the hair layer... like 'moving' the shadow in places, to follow the 'surface' of the skin, rather than have it track the hair at all points.
But it's up to your preference/abilities. The main point I really wanted to make was to have shadows...that being one of the things that get forgotten when people first start doing hair in post-render painting.

Thanks again... then another question... Should i buy any brushes ? Are there really good or usefull ? Or can you do it whith the main brushes of Photoshop ?

There are hair brushes, which you can buy. However, if you have PhotoShop 7 or above, you can adjust the brushes which come with the program and get a lot of mileage from them. First, load all those extra brush sets. [ and ] will shrink or enlarge the brush size on the fly so you can change between strokes. You can take a bunch of little slashes or dots and change their dispersion and angle and all sorts of stuff. After you have played enough with what you have, and understand how the brushes work, then you can more readily decide among the Marketplace brush sets. (Those are good for adding pearls or magical stars or other things which don't come in PS itself.) First, a couple of general comments about the image: you appear to be missing a portion of tree trunk above her right shoulder (something is cut off abruptly there). Also, if you are using a richly-textured photo for the sky above the trees, you should use the cloning/healing tools to bring some of that texture below the tree branches, too. So some tips on your hair above. Remember that highlights are based upon your light sources. With trees in silhouette, it would seem that most light is behind her, except that some light is coming from the front. Can't tell from the eyes with the fake painted-on highlights (it is in the texture map, and I have complained about this practice often). Determine where your light sources are. Paint from dark to light, and put the light hairs where they would catch the light. The hairs you have going over her face all read much the same for length and thickness of clumps. Vary the strand size. If all the hair is 18" from crown to tip, then the ones falling over her forehead should be longer, too. Unless her hair is dyed, the eyebrows and head hairs are usually the same colors. (Beard color might be darker, but eyebrows match for the most part.) HTH, Carolly

Thanks for the informations... i see that it's very very hard to have a picture without some errors... And as Crasher said, i will have to practice, practice... and perhaps even practice a little bit more... Thank you again everybody...