Artist’s Series: Sculpting Hair - Short, Brushed Forward

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This is the second installment of the Sculpting Hair Series. In this post we continue to keep it simple, or sorta simple, and focus on the basics of using the Clay Brush and Slash2 Brush to build up and then refine our forms.

This time to mix things up, I use an alpha from Aaron Sim’s Alpha Library that is shipped with ZBrush in the GnomonAlphaLibrary folder, LeatherySkin76. This alpha helps provide a template for me to add curls. It is not a necessary step, however, helps. Kind of like how a painter will lay down a quick underpainting to break up the white canvas.

In this video, I have already established the volume of the hair using the Move brush and Smoothing it into place.

Here we focus on using the Clay Brush to establish the individual groups of curls. Then we use the Slash2 brush to establish hard edges and break up the smoothness of the surface. Remember, the Slash2 brush depends on the direction of your stroke to pull forms up or push them back.

Reference:

One important issue when sculpting hair is hair directionality. While hair can be pulled in many directions it will tend to change direction in very specific places. The image below shows how the hair changes direction in the same place that the form of the skull changes direction.

For Hair Reference check out the Sculpting Hair - Bob Cut post.