Illustration Friday: Hoarding Cats and Frizz

I started this painting last week and I thought I would show it for this week’s illustration Friday along with a new tutorial. It is for a new book I am working on (more on that later)

On to the tutorial…

This Heat is Killing My Hair
This week’s tutorial is all about frizz control. When I originally painted this medieval witch she was much more androgynous looking because she lacked any hair. The very talented Karen Lee and Deborah Freedman suggested that I give her a wiry do peaking out from under her cap. Here is what she looked like bald. (right) I think the hair makes her look MUCH prettier.

It just so happens that frizzy hair is painter’s specialty. Here is a close up of the witch’s hair.

How to create your own frizzy mane.

Select the realBristle Brushes – Real Round as a base brush.
Select Window/Show Brush Creator. (The brush creator allows you to adjust all the controls of your brush in one place and gives you a pad to try out your brush as you tinker.)




Frizzy brush settings:

Size: 19.8
Min Size: 28%

Feature: 7.0 – this setting is important because it will change the thickness of your hair. A higher setting will spread the hairs out more and a lower setting will clump the hairs together and give you smoother hair.

Random: Something higher then 1.5. – This will control the amount of frizz. The higher the setting – the more frizz.

Once you have the brush giving you just the right amount of kinky wildness then save it for a later use. You can do this by selecting “Save Variant” where your brush is located. Name it something useful like “horse tail” so you will remember what it looks like.

You can use frizzy brushes for not just hair, but also to give your paintings an erratic, full of energy, texture. For example, I increased both the Feature and the Random setting and painted the night sky with this brush to give some crazy looking fog to the sky. (right) I think this brush has some tension to it. It’s not the kind of brush you would want to use when painting a sweet meadow scene of hopping bunnies, but it works for a graveyard.

You can pretty much make any kind of hair brush you want with a little experimentation. A frizzy brush is great for animals with wiry fur too. I used a frizzy brush to make the stray pieces of hair and thicker parts of the bearded lady's beard (in header image above).

Hope everyone is keeping their frizz in control this summer. Comment or email me if you have questions.