How can I add waves to hair?

[chrissydetroit]

Ok so I need help getting the wavy hair effect. In the first pic., my brother has waves. In the second pic., is what I did in Illustrator. Is there a way that I make the waves look more natural? I'm having a hard time with this. Thanks in advance.

[Bill Silbert]

Assuming that the waves you have are closed paths it might look more natural if instead of filling them with a solid grey as you have that you use a gradient of say 50% black to 100% black. You would have to do each shape separately and use the gradient tool to control the direction of the gradient.

[tromboniator · Accepted solution]

This is very rough, but I more or less followed the waves with the pencil tool. I applied a gradient across the pencil path with the same color on all three stops, sampled from the hair in the photo, but the outer two have a transparency of zero. I applied a Roughen effect to the strokes. You can play with the stroke width and the Roughen size and detail to get the effect you want. The gradient is the same color in both of the instances below, but the top of the head on the left is full black, while the right is somewhere between the face and darkest hair colors to approximate where the scalp shows through the hair.

Peter

[chrissydetroit]

Oh my, I really like how you did it. I'm going to try it.

[tromboniator]

I'd love to see your results, whatever method you decide to use.

Peter

[baadtaste]

Have you tried the Blend tool?

[chrissydetroit]

Let me try.