How to Airbrush or Paint Hair to Look Real

With a little time, your airbrushing can result in slightly more realistic-looking hair.

Airbrushing is a hard skill to master. However, with some luck and practice, you can achieve realistic or surreal paintings you can be proud of. One of the hardest materials to paint, however, is hair or fur and make it look realistic. Holding the airbrush too close to the canvas will result in thick, bland hair, and holding the airbrush too far away will end up with blurry, soft hair with no detail. Luckily, you can create a tool that will help you overcome this obstacle and create realistic-looking hair.

Things You'll Need

• Multiple examples and samples of hair
• 2 circular pieces of cardboard, 6 inches to 1 foot in diameter
• Glue, such as Elmer's Glue or Super Glue
• Airbrush and airbrush paint

Instructions

1. Obtain plenty of samples clumps of hair or fur. Try to get wavy, curly, straight, thick, etc. types of hair for any future hair painting you may need. Each of the hairs should be at least 5 inches in length, and you should have an average of 100 to 200 individual hairs (enough to make a decent clump).

2. Place one of your circles of cardboard on a table and apply glue all over one of its faces. Cover the entire face with glue to ensure anything placed on it will be secured.

3. Take your individual clumps of hair and set them in piles, pointing outward from the center of your circle, along the edge of your cardboard cutout. Half of the hairs should be glued to the circle, and half should be sticking outside of the cardboard edge. You want the clumps to each be approximately 2 to 5 inches wide. Place a number of clumps around the outside circumference of the circle (as many clumps as you obtained in step 1). If you only have three types of hair, you will only have three clumps of hair around the outside of the circle. Place them equal distance from one another.

4. Place the other circle on the table and apply glue to the outside of one of the faces. Make the strip of glue about 3 inches deep into the circle. Once the glue is in place, flip the circle over and place it on top of the previous circle with the hair examples already glued on. You should be creating a "sandwich" with these two cardboard cutouts, with the hair on the inside. Let the glue dry--it will probably take a couple of hours.

5. Ready your airbrush while you wait for your fur/hair stencil to dry. Place paint in the reservoir, and test out your air and paint pressure. If you need to mask off areas of your canvas (placing tape over areas that you don't want accidental paint to seep onto), do so now. Once the glue is dry, hold your stencil up to the area on your canvas that you want to create realistic looking hair on. Place the stencil directly onto the canvas.

6. Spray your paint through the hair clumps on your airbrush stencil. Use soft, quick sprays to let the paint flow through the hair. If you need to add more painted hair, simply move the stencil and spray your airbrush again. This will result in a realistic-looking hair design that you can use to cover as much or as little canvas as you need. If you want different-looking hair, simply move your stencil around until you find the desired hair consistency that you like and spray your airbrush through that.

References

• How to Airbrush: Airbrushing Hair or Fur