Join us
Our features
Art websites
As you can see, this cat's itchy head rash led to a nasty bald spot. And since no kitty should be subjected to the harsh verbal blows of other animal species, we've got to cover it up.
Step 1: First, create a new document set on a transparent background. Create a new layer, and fill the background layer with a solid color - white if you're creating dark hair, a darker color for the background if you're creating light hair. This is simply to create a contrast so that you can better see what you're working on.
Step 2: Next, select the "Dune Grass" paintbrush, or something similar. Set the opacity to a low setting, somewhere between 70% and 30%. Start painting on the top, transparent layer of your canvas, paying attention to the form and layers of hair that you're creating. Your hair will start looking something like this:
Build up layers of color slowly with the paintbrush.
Step 3: To add a more realistic shading effect, double-click the hair layer, and select "Gradient Overlay". Set the Blend Mode to "Linear Light" and the opacity to 10%. This will make a darker color on the lower part of the hair that blends lighter as it works its way up.
Step 4: Using a smaller "Dune Grass" brush, paint in some more hair texture until your heart's content.
Step 5: Once you're finished with the hair itself, open up your target image, and drag the hair layer to it. Alternatively, you can select the hair layer, SELECT > ALL, then COPY and PASTE to the target image.
Once the hair is on the same canvas as your target image, hit CTRL-T, or EDIT > FREE TRANSFORM, and change the shape to something that looks good to you.
Step 6: I used the eraser tool with the Dune Grass brush (you could also use the regular paintbrush with Mode set to "Clear") to mold the hair a little better to the cat's head. In this tutorial my intent wasn't realism, hence the Donald Trump look. But you can make the hair look photo realistic if you take the time.
You can stop here, or go farther and have a little fun.
Step 7: By double-clicking the hair layer and selecting "Color Overlay" with blend mode "Color" at 90% opacity, you can get some neat effects. I duplicated the hair layer and set one to blue and one to red. Play around with the other settings for some surprises.
The more time you spend on building up the hair the more realistic it will become. If you use this tutorial, be sure to upload your results to the board!
