[Chris Saper]

Blonde Hair

I approach painting blonde hair the same way as I would any color of hair (actually any form in general).

First, I make a decision about the average value and average hue of its local color. Blonde hair has a much wider range of both value and color than one might think at first blush. Blonde hair is usually some version of grayed-down yellow; it can be desaturated by either warms (as in this example), or cools.

Then, I consider the hair as a form with curves, that contain areas that are relatively lighter, relatively darker or in the middle.(Similar to the value-massing discussion in several other threads.) The local value of the hair, together with the strength of the light source will be the gauge for how large the value range will be.