How do you paint grey hair?

[gwensp]

Im working on a figure of a French Line grenadier officer and Id like to give him grey/silver hair. In the past I tried using a very light grey base with highlights in titanium white and a slightly darker light grey for the shadows. However I was never really pleased with the result.

Anyone got any tips on how to paint grey/silver hair? It doesnt matter if its oil or acrylics as I dont mind trying either.

 

[MattS]

I've done a few busts and figures with silver/grey hair and I like to add a little dark yellow(ochre) or light brown to the mix so that's it's not just black and white. I mix that third color in with all values except the highest highlights which are usually pure white. If you do oil over acrylic, you can basecoat with vallejo silvergrey, yellow ochre or tan yellow and black and go from there with a similar oil mix. Grey hair never looked right to me before I started adding that third color to break up just the black and white. I've even tried mixing in blue tones with the black and white for a little different/colder look. I'm not quite there myself yet age wise, but I understand that grey hair usually gets that way over time (children help this along) and began life as another shade. I guess I just try to indicate that underlying color when I paint silver/grey hair.

I hope this helps.

Matt

 

[Einion]

Hi Gwen, you know the way that simple black + white mixes often don't look quite right? Grey hair can be an exception though as it's often a perfect colour match. Obviously you can build this up over a brown base and if you paint thinly enough you'll get a small amount of colour variation, which simulates how mixed grey/white and brown hairs appear. You can also directly mix in some of the previous hair colour to the greys.

For true silvery hair you could try using a modest addition of silver paint! I tried this a long while back and wasn't happy with it but with a little more finesse it can look quite good.

Einion

 

[gwensp]

Many thanks Matt and Einion, Ill give those a bash and see what I can do.

 

[Roc]

Assuming that the figure has dark brown hair and is going gray.

Base= Burnt Unber.
Shadow= Lamp Black.
highlight= flesh.
for gray areas I use a mixture of flesh + white which I highlight with pure white.

Cheers
Roc.

 

[gwensp]

Thanks ROc, I would never have thought of using flesh as the highlight. I think what Ill do is sculpt some hair and try various techniques to see what looks best.

 

[Roc]

You are very welcome.

My advice to you would be to experiment untill you achieve your own technique.

Cheers
Roc.