*ahem* sorry... This is the hair tutorial I submitted for publication in a book entitled Digital Fantasy Painting. It will be published in the US and Canada under Watson-Guptill and out of the UK via Ilex Press.

Make a new layer. To make more sense of the shapes, take the pen tool and create a path for the sections of hair. Use the drawing as a general guide. Select the path and click the arrow at the right corner of the paths pallet. Fill the path with a light brown to begin with.

You don't have to keep every section on a separate layer, as that will get quite large in file sizes later, but about three layers is good for this.

Just make sure the hair sections on their own layer does not overlap. It will be easier to color if they are separate. Lock the layer and take a large fuzzy brush with a dark, rich brown set to about 45% opacity in 'multiply' and streak some shadows of color onto the sections, leaving the lighter areas where highlights would be. Here are the three layers of hair I will be using from now on: Low, Mid, Top.

To create more realistic hair details, take a small hard brush (about five pixels will do) set to 85% pressure with the smudge tool and drag full strokes following the movement of the hair sections. Then I would start in the middle of a highlight or a shadow to get finer details, because if you always drag from the ends, it'll zigzag the hair rather than add strands.

I took a thicker hard brush and made some more dramatic sections. Be careful how you do this, it can get out of control quickly. Hair can look a little ratty because it's pulled from the inside out to little spurs of strands. Get long flowing lines. The individual hair usually will be the length of the rest of the hair, though this effect can be created by pulling from both the middle of a highlight or shadow or from full strokes the length of the section.

As you can see, I have all of the finished smudged hair layers shown on the elf. Now to add some contrast and life to the hair. Take a large fuzzy brush (200 pixels or so) set to 'multiply' and an opacity of about 45% with a rich medium brown, shade the layers to add more depth to the shadows. For the highlights, choose a light warm brown with the same brush, set to 'color dodge' at an opacity of about 19% and lightly build up some brightness in the highlight areas of the sections.

For this, make sure you frequently have all of the layers for the hair showing, as guestimates for proper highlight and shadow placement can be off. If necessary, go back into the layers with your smudge tool as you did originally and pull out more details from the new colors.

This part takes a couple steps. Firstly, on the hair section ends, turn off the layer lock and take a hard eraser (the 'Spatter 12 pixels' brush in particular, and made it fade in size to 0 in about 53 steps. Then I roughed up the edges a bit to make the end of the hair softer. You should do this even maybe a little more than I did here, as hair naturally will not end harshly unless it is wet. It will look fuzzy except for maybe a strand or so (see figure 'a.').

Make a new layer. Next: the stray strands which finalize some of the randomness and detail of realistic hair. Taking colors similar to the area of the hair next to the strand, set a small hard brush (5 pixels and less... vary the sizes) to fade size about 250 steps (for this piece, at this resolution) and fade color from the foreground color to the back (see figure 'b.'). Remember, follow the general direction of the hair sections!

For strand color touches, lock the layer and gently tone the strands as needed with 'multiply' and 'color dodge' brushes. I would most sincerely suggest you do these strands on a separate layer.

For my final piece, I flattened all of the hair layers and locked the layer. Taking environmental colors from my fog (in this case, steel blues) I simply toned the outside of the hair with a large fuzzy brush set to 'hue'(29% opacity) or 'color'(12% opacity). Make sure the outline of the hair blends in slightly with the background. It will make the hair look more natural.

Then, on a 'multiply' layer below the hair, I brushed in a buildup of shadow using a deeper brown. For extra spice, I again took a 'color dodge' small brush and dragged in some highlights. All done!