Lesson Five-Hair and Brows

Lesson five is done and OH MY GOSH this one I found hard!!!.I hit a bit of the "fear" here again as I wanted to aim for realistic looking hair and for my lady to have dark hair with red/brown highlights.I painted the first colour with a mix of burnt umber,raw sienna and a drop of cardinal red.When it dried it looked flat black!!!.The next few days I kept looking at it not wanting to add any more colour in case it looked worse.Then yesterday I sat down and went "what the heck" and off I went paint brush in hand.I gradually added more raw sienna and cardinal red plus a tiny touch of black and built up about eight layers of hair strands slowly lightening the paint each layer as I went.Lastly I did four layers of highlight colour in even lighter tones where I thought the light source would be reflecting off her glossy dark hair.

a little closer

and right up close

The other thing I have changed since lesson four is her nose and lips.I moved the nose tip lower and made the bottom lip fuller.As I'm working from a magazine image I wanted it to be like the person I was looking at and that is how her lips and nose are.