搞一个小教程

1.开始做黑白稿，软件是PS，画布大小和分辨率我自己是无所谓的，够用就行,开始速度快了点，有些乱，我用的是扁平型的笔刷，这种笔刷有很多好处，可以很快速的塑造出一些结构，而且画上去有种很跳跃的感觉刚开始用需要习惯一下~

2.深入了黑白稿，把重点定在了头部和手部，其实很多小结构都是无意中画出来的，这种笔刷的随意性很高，能经常给你惊喜~把背景压下去，突出身体，要始终控制画面的整体气氛~

3.开始上色，新建图层，将属性设定为叠加，选你喜欢的颜色可以涂了~这回用的是比较柔软的笔刷，主要是给一个整体的色彩方向，不过颜色不会盖住白色的地方，会显得亮部很“爆”所以我在两个图层之间加了一个正片叠低的图层，用些颜色把亮部压下去，把黑白搞的对比度调低些也可以~这部完成了以后这张画基本就完成了70%…………（说明一下，个人不是很建议正在学习中的朋友用这种上色方法，虽然上色速度变快了，可是这毕竟是个偷懒的方法…）

4.合掉所有图层，新建图层添加细节，用回扁平笔刷，这个没什么要说的了，还是要控制整体感觉和气氛~

5.最后深入~有些觉得不舒服的形体做了改动，背景简单的画出火和烟的效果，不要抢了角色，最后调下色阶~就基本完成了~回头看一下第一张觉得好恶…（朋友说我这是“放射”型画法，我完全同意…）

第一次做教程，主要是交流，希望大家能多提些意见，小的一定会虚心接受地~~~画面颜色不多，内容也不够丰富，而且最要命的是和国外的一副作品撞上了……就算说我抄的我都没的解释，因为太…像…了……（画外怪的后果…）

Smooth Blending
This is a Photoshop specific tiny tutorial and I'm afraid I don't know quite how to achieve the same results in Painter... yet.

Thoughts on Skintones
This isn't so much a tutorial as a gathering of a few thoughts on skintones that I shared at CGtalk... first and foremost regarding one of my pictures, but for the most part, this is how I think when it comes to the various colours of skin. After a few requests, I decided to share this slightly (very slightly) edited version of what I showed them.

I've finally put together the tutorial that I did some time ago. I thought I'd share :)
Painting an Eye

The eye is probably the most catching thing about the human face. It's where we're looking when we're talking to people. It's where tears emerge from, it's where we indicate what we're looking at and often what we're thinking about what we see. If you're doing a painting and you do everything beautifully but you make the eyes look dead... then that's it, you've not painted a human, you've painted a mannequin. A dead thing.

Instructions: Let us start with a blank piece of paper, only make it flesh coloured instead. Picking a good first colour for skin usually has some impact on all the other colours one will pick thereafter - for this reason, it's always pretty vital to start off in a good way. Not too pink, not too orange, and not too saturated.
Common mistakes: Using a colour that is too saturated or too grey. A colour that is too orange or too pink. Try to find the middle ground, it will affect the rest of the painting.

Instructions: Secondly, sketching a really, really simple eye. There are some things here that people tend to forget. The first one is that there is a lid below the eye as well as above it. Without this lid, the eye will sit very unnaturally in the face. Secondly, we have the corner of the eye - you know, that small bit where the eye starts, where all the tears come from? Leaving these things out are among the most common mistakes when it comes to painting eyes.
Let's keep these 'sketch lines' on an entirely separate layer, on top of everything else.
Common mistakes: Forgetting the lower lid. Forgetting the corner of the eye.

Instructions: Next, we try to get the feel for the shape of the eye. If we shade the bottom eyelid, and highlight the upper one, we suddenly see something emerge. A flat eyeball will mess the entire eye up, so it is very important that we get the roundness through. But the truth of the matter is that the area surrounding the eye should be showing the shape of the eyeball itself. The eyeball is white and you won't be able to show much of its roundness because most of it is hidden, but by shading the lids you'll give the same message without making the eye look like it is bulging. I'm using a warm pink here to highlight, and a desaturated brown for the shadow. This will all change though.

Try to imagine that there are lines running across your face, showing the shape of it - it's sometimes hard to tell how the structure lies by just looking at something. Better yet, if you are ever inclined, paint straight lines running down your face and take a photo of it. You'll see that the lines look everything but straight when you look in a mirror - in fact, you might discover an entirely new way of looking at your own features (I once did this, believe it or not: it took a while to wash all the makeup off afterwards).
When you shade, keep these lines in mind. Don't paint them in unless you feel you absolutely have to (and if so, on a separate layer), but try to imagine them while you shade.
Common mistakes: Imagining the eyeball not as round, but as elliptic. Shading the surrounding area as well as the eyeball as if it is the shape and size of what shows, not what is hidden behind lid and flesh.

Instructions:So, first I'll build the area around the eye up. I do this by picking a highlight (in this case, the same one that I used for the eyelid) and I figure out where the light would fall.
People have different shapes of eyes, but a rule of thumb is that you'll have a soft, pillowed area just below the eyebrow (along the entire length, actually, though I've only highlighted part of it here - the other part 'pops' out because I've shaded below and above), one upon the cheekbone and then it'll always help to make the area just around the corner of the eye look a little less flat. Close your eye and gently trace the shape with your fingertips. You'll have the swell of the eyelid, the area below the eyebrow and then the cheekbone, right? Remember that an area like this is likely to leave a shadow below.
The problem here, of course, is that we're not painting the entire face - it's easier to fit an eye in when there is something to fit it into.
Common mistakes: Too stark shading. Using pure black or even lines to show edges.

Instructions: After this (watch the animation for, perhaps, a few more visuals on exactly what happens between these two stages), we need to define the areas that I only very quickly blurred in on the previous stage. I'm working with soft edged brushes here, all along. In some places, I'll shift to a custom brush that is round but has slightly torn edges.
Pick warmer, more saturated colours. You can highlight and shade by using colours alone. Work shadows into the eyebrow, but more importantly accentuate the eye itself by shading the lower lid more and also adding some shape to the upper lid. Again, touch your own eyelid (now carefully, keep your eye open), it sticks out a little but not too much. A common mistake is to make the upper eyelid look huge, and to forget the crease that shows that while you've got your eye open, the lid is slightly folded back.
Now, we're going to be tricksy. Instead of just shadowing with dark colours underneath the eye and accomplish a look like an alcoholic that hasn't slept for five days, we're going to find the shapes with a combination of highlights and shadows. Never forget that across the planes and curves of a face, the values will be flowing. You'll have light reflecting differently on the different types of skin (often oilier below the eyes, around the nose, moist on the lips). You'll have a few sharper creases (like upper eyelid) and then creases that soften out (like the one on the lower eyelid, which smoothens as it reaches the corner of the eye). A face does not consist only of highlighted cheekbones, nose, lips and chin - it has all kinds of hills and valleys, and however good you become at painting, it will always look flat, false, and fake until you understand these shapes.

Common mistakes: Accentuating all the creases and folds only with shadows instead of highlights.

Instructions: Trying to find shapes with a combination of highlights and shadows isn't always easy, but it's far more effective (to me, anyway) than trying to find it by using lines. For the most part, I won't even have the sketch lines here, they're merely here to demonstrate the shape of the eye as I build the face up around it.
Once more, accentuating the curves, planes and folds with a combination of lighter and darker areas. We're using no black, we're using no white. All variations of the same skin tone. Now - if you're clever, the highlighted area underneath the eye will have a slightly more bluish tone (as the skin here is extremely thin and the vessels underneath have a tendency of showing colour though), and use warmer highlights for the other parts of the face. If you pick the colours directly off this demonstration, you'll see that when I say 'bluish', I don't mean actually blue.
Taking a look, you'll see that in spite of the eyeball itself not having been drawn in, the eye already has shape!

Instructions: Having just said that the face has shape even without the eyeball, that doesn't mean we can skip it altogether, does it now?
Let's sketch it in. Don't use white, use a mix of pale grey-beige and then brush over with the skin tone - I've found that this combination very closely resembles the actual colour of an eyeball (the skin tone is generally reflected on the highly glossy surface). Do not add highlights to this eyeball yet. It's a waste to work in the glossiness at this point - it'll be painted over by the iris and pupil anyway.
What's more important, though, is that the eyeball's shape is consistent with the shading you've done on the eyelids. If you've been thinking right, it should fit right in. If you've messed up, the eyeball will look like a golf ball pushed into an ill fitting hole. Keep imagining the round shape of it, and if it helps, sketch the outlines of the round shape on a separate layer and then shadow the eye below it accordingly.
Common Mistakes: Pure white for the eyeball.

Instructions: The iris is completely round. For the most part, some of it will be hidden by the eyelid - if you hide only a little, the eye will look widened, shocked and staring (such as in the example I'm painting here), while hiding half or more will give the eye another expression altogether: perhaps indolent, seductive, sly.
Like the eyeball, never cease to imagine the iris as a round thing. To make absolutely sure, always paint the full round thing on a separate layer and then simply erase the bit that would be hidden by the eyelid. Like previously mentioned, we see the eyes, and we definitely see if something's messed up. A non-round iris will make it look alien and crooked - a neat thing if that's what you intended, but not so neat if you are aiming for a natural look.
So, pick a dark, random colour (nothing too extreme) and paint in the iris. Then on top of that, paint a lighter colour that will leave a slightly darker edge. Not all eyes have this darker edge at the outskirts of the iris, but we're settling for it this time around.

Similarly, the pupil is COMPLETELY round, no doubt about it. Paint in a round, dark circle in the middle of the iris. Just for the feeling's sake, dab a blotch of white on top of the iris and pupil, just to see how it would feel. There's the eye, suddenly a little glossy.
Common Mistakes: As previously mentioned, there is a tendency to make the iris less than round.

Instructions: There are no dark sketch-lines in a face, so it's time to get rid of them. There are two easy ways to do this - either you simply delete the layer, or you do as I did here: paint over them. I've found that painting over something rather than simply deleting it occasionally helps the liveliness of a picture. So for the sake of this exercise, paint over, don't delete.
What we have after we've done that is an eye that likely looks slightly messed up. We've used the lines as crutches, forgetting to shade the folds instead of letting simple lines do the talking. So the next mission is to do the highlighting and shading in the areas that are now looking stupid. For this, I use a brush that is either just a hard edged round one, or something similar to this:

(I've found that this brush is excellent to blend colours with, either as just painting, or as smudging)
Do not forget the fact that the bottom eyelid sticks out a little. It doesn't fit flat agains the eyeball - we need a little 'rim' to show that there's a shape to it and it's not just pasted in place. Paint this 'rim' (just above the lashes) with a vague pink colour slightly lighter than the skintone below.
Also, it might be a good thing to scribble the eyebrow in at this point, because once the lines are removed, chances are it looked like a dark blur. We'll fix it up more later.
Common mistakes: Leaving the lines in or mimicking them once they're removed.

Instructions: At this point, pick up a mirror. Look at the eye in the mirror, and notice that the white of the eye becomes pinker as it reaches the corner of the eye, and that the pink isn't entirely flat in shape right before the corner. We need a little glossiness here, a little colour to make it believable. A tint of blue added to the eyeball colour, and then some very soft, smooth touches of a round soft brush to pick out little highlights here and there. Most important here - be careful, chances are you'll overdo this area and end up with an eyeball that looks textured. This isn't the point. Point is, adding little touches of realism.
Also, redefining the shape of the eye at this point, and adding more detail to the eyebrow and the corner of the eye is almost a must. I've found that the realism is sometimes helped by further enhancing the shape of the corner of the eye by highlighting around it (take a look to the immediate left of it, you'll find a little highlight there). Try to work in more colours. Try to find little oranges, blues, reds and purples to discreetly add here and there for a more skinlike 'feel' to the area surrounding the eye.
This is where we start thinking about the iris, as well. The iris is a textured, wonderfully intricate thing and usually what makes an eye 'fly'. The first step to defining it would be just adding a very sloppy dark shadow at the top of it (from the eyelid, remember that it sticks out a little.
Common Mistakes: Forgetting to define the corner of the eye, or even leaving out that area altogether.

Instructions: Do a new layer. Set new layer to 'soft light', and paint with a dark, ruddy colour to emphasise the skin tone. This will make more difference than you know. Paying special attention to the eyelids (the lower one in particular) and the area underneath the eyebrow. There is a vast difference now that the skintones are picked up. This sort of alteration goes for any kind of detail in a face, especially the bottom of a nose, around the nostrils and the eyes, but also the corners of the mouth and the side of the nostrils.
In this step and the one before, I've smudged the eyebrows a little with the brush I previously showed.
Common Mistakes: Forgetting about skin tone variation. A face and all its details looks dead and flat without such small devices.

Instructions: Continuing on the skin tone variations around the eye, make yet another layer above the first one, and now add textures. Use a small brush with pressure set to opacity and shape and just scribble away. The eye in the example is slightly exaggerated, but the practice is the same. Skin is NOT just a smooth, polished-stone texture. It's not porcelain. Do not forget to at least hint at the texture and the pores, sometimes only with little skin tone variations. I'll happily say that I learned this from the 3D art forums - watching all these marvellous artists work on the skin textures, and then in the end asking myself: why didn't I think of that?
The good thing about keeping the texture layer separate is that you can use a soft eraser to make some patches more transparent and others more opaque, giving a lively, 'real' look to it. Add a few birth marks while you're at it.
Common Mistakes: Leaving the texture out altogether. Big no-no.

Instructions: Paint the lashes in by using a hard edged little brush with pressure set to size. Keep them just a little bit scraggly, and don't paint them too long. Keep them on a separate layer. (A good thing to keep in mind is that the lashes rarely sweep out towards the outer corner of the eye, as they are often depicted to. Most of them will be curving downwards quite naturally).
After this has been done, use a combination of a tiny smudge brush and the eraser to soften the sharpness of the lashes. Rinse and repeat for the upper eyelid, but in this case remember not to point the lashes straight up, as this has a tendency to look unnatural.
Common Mistakes: Painting eyelashes as unnaturally long, and forgetting to taper them off at the end. Even worse, forgetting about the eyelashes altogether for a creepy-eyed look.

Instructions: We're getting there! The iris is a plethora of textures. If you pick a mirror up and stare at your own eye really closely, you'll see that it's not even just the diamond shaped textures radiating from the pupil, but that they're layered. Layer upon layer of delicate little coloured shapes. Not an easy thing to mimic. We'll try, though, by painting little soft strokes of colour upon one another, not erasing if we make a mistake but just keeping to paint over, paint over, paint over for that right textured, deep look.
In the end, I decided to break the highlight up as well, just to make it look a little more realistic. It's a good thing to think about the light conditions of a picture before deciding where to place the highlight and what shape it should be, but in this case, I just smudged it a little and added the faintest possible touch of blue to it (I doubt you can even see there's blue there, but there is).
Common Mistakes: Making the iris look flat by painting only one layer of texture and using only one colour with different brightness.

Instructions: There's not a lot to say. For the final step, look the picture over for some things you might want to change or do differently - in this case, adding some more shading and shadowing to the eyeball itself as well as adding a touch of gloss to the iris.
I hope the tutorial has been helpful. Best of luck with your eye-painting.

Textured brushes
Again, for the sweet people of CGtalk, I made a minor tutorial on how to create nice, textured brushes. I think I'll post it on my site for posterity.














the brush

Painting Hair
This tutorial is dedicated to the CGtalk community.

Painting hair isn't, obviously, like painting a face. Doing a tutorial on it is a wildly different experience than a face tutorial. Why? A hair doesn't have any static features. There is no way of telling you where to place a strand of hair the way I can tell you where the nose goes. There's no anatomy of it, except that it has a certain weight and is likely to fall a certain way, and even that you can mess with because there is hair spray and gel and whatever else you might stick in it (blood or whatever, haha).
So. I've done the best I can. I've worked on this for a fair while (longer than I'd like to admit) and now I've finally added the finishing touches.
Throughout the tutorial you'll see some little tips and tricks added to the actual instruction pictures. Some of them are the brushes I'm using, some are tips directly related to the painting of hair, and some are just thoughts I thought I'd add as I went along.

Instructions: The first thing you need to do is to decide on the colour of the hair. This hair will be brownish, but with a wee touch of gold in it. The darkest colour I'll pick for it is nearly black. This is usually true of ALL hair colours - even the lighter blondes where you'll end up painting over a lot of the dark tone, but it's still better to have it there underneath than to go too light. Once the colours are picked (make it one highlighter, two midtones and one shadow), just block in the shape of the hair.
Important: WORK ON A LARGE CANVAS. I can't possibly stress this enough - if you're going to do really nice hair, work big. If you're putting it into a full-body image and you don't think you can work big enough... eep, wrong: work big and then shrink it down to fit into the rest of the picture.
Common mistakes: Starting out with a bright colour and then spending the rest of the time trying to darken it down with shadows. I can't stress enough how much it helps to do it the other way around. With skintones, it's best to start with a midtone, but with hair -- it's always helpful to begin dark. And the biggest mistake of all: not realising that hair really needs a level of detailing that 500x500 pixels won't give you. If you want this level of detail (not necessary, really, but if you do) work much bigger than that.

Instructions: What's done next is the blocking in on the large locks of hair. Just smoothly sketch in where you figure the strands will fall. The trick is to think of the hair not as a lot of individual strands at this point, but of it as thick sections that you will later work to detail down into individual strands in places. Pick colours at your leisure - starting out with the two midtones that you chose. No highlighting at this point.
Common mistakes: A lot of people start painting hair by painting the strands. Some won't even block it in, initially, but start frantically sketching in strand after strand on top of each other. The end result of this will often look like a clump of straw pulled together. Hair naturally separates into locks. It's really, really hard getting this result if you're not painting it in sections - you'll have to somehow, miraculously, paint every individual strand and somehow get them to flow in the right directions.

Instructions: Pick a spackled brush now and try the clumps of hair out. What I mean by that is that you sketchily paint over the hard edges of the individual locks and just get a feel for how the locks will end, if they'll curl up a little and just the general 'feel' and 'flow' of the hair. Since there aren't, like I mentioned earlier, any static features of a hair it is so easily affected by the environment around. It's pretty good if you get the flow of it down right at this point.. From hereon, there will be detailing, and detailing, and detailing and if you realise later that you messed it up here, you will be more than a bit peeved. So just get a feel for it. See if it falls all right considering the wind, the general look and check if you're actually happy with the hairstyle.
Common mistakes: Not considering the wind - a skirt blowing in one direction, for instance, and the hair in the other. Not considering the weight of the hair (short hair often being fluffier, long hair heavier) or the effect that items might have on it (tiara weighing it down, ribbon pulling it up).

Instructions: This is where the fun starts. You can now begin thinking about the fall of the light, the effects of colours around the hair (I'm making this easy for myself, the background is pretty much the same tone as the hair, but if it hadn't been I would have had to consider it here) but most of all just smoothing out the hard blocks of hair and giving it some smooth nice flow. I've got a perfect brush for this. When I just want to quickly smooth the hair out, I'll use a regular round brush with soft edges, but if I want to give the locks of hair semi-sharp edges in places... I can be clever and use a brush that has one side that's sharp and one that's soft (as seen in picture). Try making one, it's awesome.
Try starting to break up the blocks - into smaller sections while still keeping the bigger ones. Not as easy as it sounds.
Common Mistakes: Just painting over the blocks of hair. Big no-no. We still need the blocks, it's just that we're adding some more.

Instructions: Continue to both soften the hair AND break the blocks of hair up. Since we have those individual sections flowing in different directions, it will already start looking like 'hair' at this point. Continually use only soft-edged brushes and don't care if the result looks too-smooth or smudgey at this point. It won't later. Don't forget that the different locks of hair will have impact on each other. Where they meet, they might either shadow one another or merge together.
Common mistakes: Starting to draw in individual strands already. I know it's a bitch to wait for so long - the detailing is the fun part - but when it comes to hair, there's really no rushing ahead.

Instructions: Now. Here's the real trick. Even though we'll detail the entire hair, there's no need to super-detail all of it. Pick out one lock that will receive the most attention. Everything you do to the entire hair, you'll do twice as much to this strand. The texture and detail level of this one lock will have major impact on the rest of the picture even without everything else being quite so detailed. Just trust me on this one.
I'll pick the lock falling down along the side of her head. Once you've got a lock singled out, use a spackled brush and veeeery light pressure to softly follow the flow of the lock down to where it ends. Repeat over and over again in short strokes -- and keep your finger on the colour picker ( the alt key while you're using the brush) to use the right colour in the right place. This way, you will bring out the shape of the lock while keeping the separated, thinner sections The spackled brush will help to, even at this early stage, add some nice texture.
Common mistakes: Unnatural fall. Take some time to study how hair actually falls. How the curls or locks wrap themselves and how they affect one another. Unless the hair is heavily styled with lots of hairspray and fussing, there are some things it generally won't do.

Instructions: Stop a moment and take a look at what you've done so far. This is as good a point as any to really consider the curves of the hair because we're about to go into detailing, and it's hell and some more trying to change it much after that. A successful looking hair will have nice, clean, natural lines to it. Even wildly curly hair looks better if the locks flow and work well together, than if it looks like they're just lumped together randomly. Do a separate layer and follow the locks of hair with some brightly painted arrows. Are they all pointing in different directions? If they are, chances are you might want to adjust them unless you're painting hair in motion or some pretty unnatural looking hair.
If it's looking okay, repeat step 6 over the rest of the head.
Common mistakes: Getting carried away with how fun it is to paint flowing hair. Yes, big bouncy hair is nice, but the eighties are over and gone (hopefully buried) and it's better to keep this in perspective, unless something over-the-top is what you're aiming for. Subtle is often far prettier than overdone.

Instructions: We're finally getting to the details. There's not really any 'trick' right here. What you do is make a new layer. You pick a normal, sharp edged round brush and you paint strands following the general shape of the locks you have. You use a dark colour to begin with. You pause, you smudge it a little with a spackled brush - still in the hair's direction... and then you paint new strands on top of it in a slightly lighter colour... pause, smudge... repeat. Keep picking colours from the hair underneath and make sure not to remove the general shapes you've already created - and since you're keeping all of this on a separate layer... feel free to erase away in places to bring forth the nice texturing you've already done underneath.
Because you've prepared and textured the hair so nicely already, there is no need to overdo this and you don't have to be so careful all over the place. The hair was already looking pretty nice before you got to this point.
Common mistakes: Completely abandoning the shapes you've already set down. At this point, it's SO easy to fall back on the old 'every hair for itself' principle. These might be individual strands, but they SHOULD be moving in group. They should be together. Flowing in unison. One crossing over the other now and then and breaking each other up.

Instructions: Texture, texture, texture. Once the flow is done, it's all about the texture. A really, really nice way to accomplish that wild puzzle of strands that makes up a hair is to paint strand after strand after strand on top of each other, then on top of those on a new layer, strand after strand. Do up to five different layers with different colours, set them to different opacity, blur the strands individually either with smudge or with the blur tool and just keep at it.
Varying between a slightly bigger brush and a really small one, you'll trick the eye into seeing small strands even where there aren't any. Remember that one lock that will have super-details? Focus on that one.
Common mistakes: Thinking that every individual strand has to be painted all over the head. When I say a lot of details are nice, I don't really mean that level of detail.

Instructions: All right. Flatten. Just flatten all the layers if you haven't already. Chances are you'll have way, way, way too many layers at this point. Then, on top of your neat, nice one-layered image, add a new layer and set it to soft light.
Now you're going to do something that likely looks weird, but it really adds to the effect when viewed from a slight distance. Pick a brush, almost any brush, and make it decently small. Then, pick a colour from the canvas - set it as your background colour and then pick another colour as foreground. Go into brush settings and set the pen pressure to colour, and... scribble. Just scribble over the hair, shifting colours as you go, using a low opacity on the layer, and adding texture and depth to the hair. If you use dark colours, you'll also add a nice amount of contrast that will help the realism along a fair deal.
Common Mistakes: Just skipping the random texturing. It really helps to add life to hair even if it seems like pure madness, so don't leave it out.

Instructions: Zooming out, you'll see that the hair looks really nice already. If you don't care to do that much more, you can stop here.
What I generally do at this point, though, is to fix the hairstyle. I've usually painted using the first clumsy blocked in shape and now that I can see the flow of the hair better, I'll go in and just fix the edges up. I'll push it in in one place and out in another, perhaps, so that the shape of it follows the locks I've painted. Using the trick of painting individual strands of hair on a separate layer and very lightly blurring or smudging them, follow the outline of the hair and add some 'frizz' to it. It still looks smooth and sleek but there's more life to it, now.

Instructions: For added effect, go to the edges of the hair and use a soft, nice brush to feather the ends of the locks. There's really no overdoing this unless you totally go mad with it, and if you use a nice, dark colour - some of it will look like nice shadows, and some of it will look like shadowed strands. If the hair is shoulder-long, as it is here, it really breaks up monotony of skin... and if the hair has bangs, please do something similar with the bangs but not quite as feathery - or the hair ends up having a slightly frazzled look.
Common mistakes: Just leaving the hair blocky. Generally, the edges have already been softened up by now, but even so, give it a once-over just for safety's sak

Instructions: I said something about super-detailing, didn't I? This effect is extremely difficult to get if you haven't followed the other steps, and if you haven't got a pretty good idea of how hair 'works'. If you're having a rough time of it, please find some photos to study - it will really help... or just set a mirror up next to the computer (hard if you've got short hair, like I do, but even short hair is helpful).
The trick is to use a really small brush and first follow the flow of the hair with light pressure, and then swerve out from it and across the other strands. This is what really makes a difference, and also what takes painstakingly much time. It's not necessary, I give you that, but the end result is really nice. These separate strands should always be made on layers of their own and carefully treated before they're flattened down. The big upside of doing the strands on individual layers is that you can lock the layer and they paint and shade the individual strands to fit into their surrounding environment. Treat them the way you did those large sections of hair, with shading according to how they fall and where the light is.
The other great bit about them being in separate layers is that you can erase, smudge, blur, and adjust your happy hearts out until they look just the way you want them to. This all sounds really serious, but it's not. It's just serious and difficult until you get the hang of how to do them, then they're pretty quick work.
Common mistakes: Making too many of these errant strands and ending up with static looking hair... making them too obvious or too starkly contrasting, which generally just looks dumb, or alternatively not adding a single wayward strand of hair into an entire hairstyle, and ending up with something akin to a brand new Barbie-doll style.

Instructions: Finally, and yes, we're at the last couple of steps now, add a few more 'obvious' strands that fall across entire sections of hair. If you skip the previous step because it's just too much into tiny details that you feel you don't need, at least don't skip this one. It really, really adds to the look of a hairstyle with a few of these playful locks.
The trick here is to make it seem as if they're actually escaping from a larger lock of hair and just sort of floating out across the rest of the hair, perhaps tugged away by the wind. To add to the effect, a very faint shadow from the strand might fall across the rest of the hair, just making it more visible and also enhancing the appearance of it flying free.
Common mistakes: Unless it's windy or you're painting a wild-haired person, these 'errant strands' won't be that many, that obvious or that big. This is one of those discreet kind of touches that really makes a picture - but like all those kind of touches, it can also break something.

And now you're done, and I hope it was a little helpful :]

Lip tutorial
I want to state, first, that every individual pair of lips is painted differently - because the light sources in paintings vary, the skin colours are different. The shapes of the lips are wildly different and the shape of the face surrounding the lips highly affect the appearance of the mouth. Having said that, this is much like my nose tutorial - just a little explanation on how I sometimes go about painting lips.
Step one - Light source and general shape

Since we're just doing the lips now and not giving a drat about the rest of the face, focus on where the light source is... and what the shape of the lips is. I'm picking a pair of pouty, full lips for this demonstration - because I can go wild with the highlights on a pair of lips like these.
Something some people seem to forget is that the line separating upper from lower lip is rarely 'straight'. The very shape of the lips is usually curvy and smoothly pillowed. I just love lips. Aside from the eyes, they're the most expressive part of any human as far as I'm concerned, and there is a whole lot of sensuality in the look of a mouth (be it thin-lipped or full-lipped or any shape and form - you can make any or none of these look very sensual and appealing). Picking the colour of the lips is easy for the most part. Without lipstick on the lips, you can just take the skin colour - make it a little darker and colder (more red, if you will, less yellow) and you'll be home free.
Step two - Thinking about surrounding shapes

Like I said previously, a lot of different factors play in when it comes to the looks of a pair of lips. Whatever else you're doing right now, do NOT paint in the red lines I've sketched on the picture. I just want to point out a few surrounding shapes that will highly affect the appearance of the mouth. The chin and the area right above it. The little dip just above the lips, and the lines (if any) leading from the nostrils down to the corner of the mouth. If you paint a pair of lips and you neglect shading the surrounding area, you'll get a pair of REALLY flat looking lips. They'll look stupidly pasted onto the face.
Step three - Finding the surrounding shapes

So, step three is a matter of shading. To make the lips pout, and for you to find the highlights and the shadows on the lips easier - it's a good thing to get the surrounding shading down here. This step makes such a huge difference that suddenly - without altering much about the lips themselves - what was just a couple of flattened-looking pink worms suddenly look like an appealing set of lips. What I did was to add massive shading to the left of the lips, to pick out a fine looking chin and deepen the dip above the lips. I only added a couple of bland highlights to the lips themselves (on the two 'pillows' on the bottom lip), and there's already a major difference. I'm using a slightly warmer (and of course lighter) colour for the highlighting on the lips at this point.
Step four - Softening the shapes and finding the lips
Here we're basically softening the sharp sketch-highlights and lines. There's a pair of fine lips hiding in the clumsy shading and I'm trying to find them. Where I've worked with big brushes with rather soft edges before, I now switch down to a smaller spackled brush or a hard edged medium sized brush and I use veeeery light pressure as I move from curve to curve with the colour picker ready to pick up every available colour for me.
It's a matter of blending and finding the right forms - the thing with a pair of full lips like theses is that there isn't really any sharpness to them. You'll not have sharp edges and crisp lines. Better get rid of those stark whatevers and find the soft and lush forms instead. I've also added some light additional shading where the upper lip will be tilting towards the teeth, and very discreetly, I've begun to pick out the shape and form.
Step five - Contrast! Fullness! Highlights!

So I've been all gentle and careful so far. Now I blast it with some more daring highlights and shadows - I'm really digging in to find the shape of the lips. Exaggerating, even, especially on the upper lip - I want that top lip to be pouting, I want it to feel fleshy and 'real'. I can see, looking at it, that the highlight there is way too bright for the lighting - but I'm going to leave it like that to refrain from forgetting about the shape I need to remember is there.
I've now found the perfect curve of the upper lip and it's in harmony with the bottom lip. I darkened the left side of the lip rather drastically - remembering my light source, again, and deciding that the tilt of the upper lip towards the teeth will make sure most of it is shadowed. The bottom lip doesn't catch as much shadow - it's a 'fluffier' pillow, more fleshed out.
Step six - Removal of unrealistic sketch-lines and details

Anything I sketched in to keep track of the shape is removed at this point. I simply paint over the unrealistic highlights I painted in on top of the upper lip in the very first step. I also remove the sketch lines that were defining the shape of the lips - if I've been doing my work so far, I don't really need them at this point. The lips should have a shape all of their own now. I should be able to see the fullness and the form of both upper and lower lip without any aiding lines. Instead of lines, I draw in a few shadows and more natural highlights. On these lips, I use a rather brown colour for the shadows rather than a more reddish tone if I'd been going for makeup.
Step seven - Further definition

At this point, I generally have a really good feel for what kind of lips I'm going for. If you study your lips in the mirror, you might notice that there are highlights not only on the lips themselves, but often around the surrounding area (and we should try to find those - especially if the look aimed for is of the sensual and voluptuous kind). Defining a pair of lips is both about adding shadows and adding highlights.
In this case, I further added to the shadowed part of the face, but I also went ahead and added more highlights above the upper lip as well as below the bottom, close to the corner of the mouth. I've found that this often adds to the 'glossy' feel of a pair of lips.... and there usually is a narrow edge of skin there that is part of the lips as far as the shape goes (slightly pouted, if you will) but doesn't have the same darker, more pink colour as the rest of the lips. This isn't necessary, but I'm doing it here - it's often a sign of a pair of very full lips. Furthermore, I'm doing something about the utterly ugly highlight at the peak of the upper lip - I remember that I should emphasise the shape there, but I use a mix of a more bland highlight and surrounding shadows to pick it out. I'm also defining the dent above the upper lip further - this also adds to a pair of convincing lips.
Step eight - Sharpening and redefining highlights

So, what did I do now? Well, I decided that the highlights looked boring and blurred. I decided I wanted the 'high point' of the bottom lip to be a bit further up. What I actually did was to take a sharp edged brush and very gently paint over the old highlights, and then I repainted sharper highlights with quick, sweeping motions. I used a mix of pink and (believe it or not) green and yellow to achieve the colour on the bottom lip's highlights. I used a colder shade of pink and a touch of blue for the top lips highlights? Why? I can't quite say - I felt like it. The upper lip is more coldly coloured if you take a closer look at it - I felt it demanded a colder coloured highlight.
Step nine - Definition, definition, definition

Did I already sharpen the highlights? Not nearly well enough! Thing is, lips are all soft curves and plump shapes, but I've always found that brighter highlights with occasional sharp (when compared to the much softer shadows and midtones) edges really make a pair of lips 'pop' (and I mean that in the good way, not the 'exploding silicone lips!!' way). In this step, I went over every single highlight and defined it further. I imagined the lines leading vertically over the lips and I picked out glossy lights reflecting on these.
Step ten - Texturing

So, among all these glossy highlights and smooth shadows, I've neglected any kind of texture to the lips. What needs to be done is to pick a small brush and then go over the lips like a madwoman - using the colour picker to snag colours from left and right - and 'prickle' the skin with a myriad of little dots and colour variations. Break the highlights up, bring some interesting variation to the shadows if you will. If you're having problems with the texturing the first time around, do a few textured, spackled brushes and apply them on a couple of different layers with the layers set to soft light and multiply.
Step eleven - Finishing off

There's little to say about the final step. When you finish the lips, you might end up deciding against some part of the shape you were previously very fond of. I decided, here, to shade the upper lip further - taking away a little from its plumpness but, I think, instead adding to mystery of this particular mouth. I add more texture, in particular to the more shaded parts - picking out a few highlights on the darker side of the bottom lip, for instance.
Mostly, the final step is just about looking at what you've done and deciding whether it's what you wanted or not. If not - I suppose you should have made any major changes in the earlier steps but it's never, ever too late to repaint, redo and remodel. Anyway, good luck with your lip-painting :) I hope I've been a little helpful.

Nose tutorial
First off - this isn't exactly how I do the noses. These steps come quite natural to me and I don't really stop to think about them. Usually, I end up painting over, repainting, changing, and ditching several noses before I find one I like. Furthermore, I don't actually paint in the 'lines' when I paint a nose, I just think them. I'm just trying to explain, here, how it could be done, yes?
Step one - placement and angle
Anyway - start off with getting the basic features of the face down - mainly to decide such things as light source, and what kind of nose we're looking for [1]. No need to go overboard, let's keep this sloppy. Usually, while I refine the nose, I refine the rest of the features at the same time - but I'll leave them like this now.

Step two - finding the shape

Paint - on a separate layer - an elliptic dot right between the eyes [2]. Then follow a lightly curved line downwards, and paint a triangle - similar to the one in this picture. Adapt the triangle to the angle of the face. If it's not seen in profile, or straight on, it'll be a little smaller on the side of the face turned away from us. Like in the example here.

Paint two slightly curved lines leading down from the dot [3]. Let one of them impact with the triangle right above its peak, while the other touches the edge of the triangle. When you've done this, you've isolated the upper part of the nose. A mistake I've seen many make is to keep this part very flat as if the nose consisted of bits of plastic glued together. It's soft edged, and when we're done, there won't be any sharp black lines like this. Unless you're doing a linework drawing, don't ever, ever, ever keep black lines in.
Step three - refining the shapes
Next thing you do, is realise that the end of the nose tip is not sharp and flat like in the 'sketch'. It's rounded. Likewise, the shadow underneath the nose will not really be shaped like a triangle for the most part. So, do a softer curve - like a little wave [4]. When you've done this, you can do a quick horizontal switch of your canvas to see if you've got it down properly.

After you've done this, simply paint over the dot. It's likely that this area will be brighter than the rest of the nose, so we'll go with that here. Also, soften the dark lines with a light colour - and follow the end of what used to be the triangle, and curve it upwards (like half a circle) towards the line - like viewed in [5].
You now have the bridge of the nose, and the upper curve of the nostril (this curve is usually not this visible, but we'll take care of that as we progress).

The side of the nose needs to be defined, too. Imagine it an area (though not a flat area, but one nevertheless) that angles down a little, and then almost straight to the triangle as viewed in the example [6]. Do -not- paint the red lines in, just the dark one.
Step four - finding the nose under the lines
The area that you sketched out in example [6] is now to be painted in. Don't be afraid to paint over the shape of the nostril, nor the lines - but fill that area with a lightly shaded hue. In this picture, the shadow isn't too stark - and I suggest you make it a soft shadow, too. As you can see in the example [7], I haven't entirely painted over the shape of the nostril, but it is only hinted at now.


Next thing we do now is to zoom in, and to paint over the dark lines. Also, the triangle needs to be worked on - we've left it untouched so far. Let the visible nostril follow the line of the triangle and soften the transition from dark to light a little [8]. Don't touch anything on the nose 'cept for the triangle area, and the one that you've recently filled in.

Continue doing this, until you have completely hidden the lines [9] and you see the nose instead of the sketch of it. Instead of defining the nose by lines, we're now defining it by some rather subtle changes of colours and shadows. Also - chances are that you'd see the second nostril as a shadow on the far side of the nose - note that I've added a small hint at it now.
Step five - highlights and shadows

Now, the nose in the previous example looks rather flat. To work against this, carefully bring forward highlights and shadows all over the nose with subtle, delicate hues. Find the highlight on the tip of the nose - but do not exaggerate it, and continue to find the curve of the nostril, and the angle of the nose tip not through lines but through colours [10]. I picked the colour on the highlight from the brighter area at the bridge of the nose - since it's surrounded by a darker shade, it will appear to be brighter.
The tip of the nose is defined here - depending on where you put the highlights on the tip, the nose will change shapes - it's interesting to view. Try to move it around a little 'til you find a place that accentuates the shape that you want.
A zoomed out picture of the progress now [11] shows a nose that has both shape and softness through the way we've worked so far. The difference of hue and brightness between cheek and nose easily shows where the nose begins to 'rise' from the shape of the face.

All that is needed now is refinement of the highlights and colours. This is a process I can't really explain, as such, but I'll give you two examples [12], [13] to show how it might look. You've got the shape of the nose down now - don't be afraid to play around with highlights and shadows. In case you want a more contrasted nose, with starker shading, you can still use these basic shapes to figure out how to work with darker shadows.
Think of the areas we defined earlier and work from that point until you've learned the shapes in a way that will let you do all of this automatically :)
The picture - really just a quick sketch, ended up like this: