The Making a Paper Doll Part 2 - Boy Doll Hair Options

We've had a couple of marathon nap days over here so I have been able to do a lot of work on the boy dolls which has been great!  These are the hairstyles I have decided on.  What do you think?  Do you see your suggestion here?  I think I did every suggestion (a little more conservative version of a faux hawk)

Would you like to see how I did it?

First, let me introduce you to my favorite tool:

The Intuos 4 by Wacom

Jeff tried to convince me years ago that I should get something like this, after doing a ton of research, finally in January I purchased one with some of my pattern money.  I have never looked back! This is the most amazing tool I've ever owned.  For any of you who love to draw and would like to try going digital, this is the tool for you (great for photo touch ups too).  This enables me to color/shade with perfect precision.   I love that I can create on the computer with any color combination imaginable. If I don't like something I just click the undo button and try something else.  I also love that there is no mess to clean up.  No paint, markers, pens to hide from the girls or hurry and put away when they wake up.  It is all right there on the computer screen ready when I am.  OK, let's continue

I use GIMP for all of my digital stuff.  It took a while to get used to but with the help of Jeff, I feel like I know it pretty well.  It is freeware so you can download it today and just play around.  I am told it is modeled after Photoshop, I do see a lot of similarities between this and my Photoshop Elements (that came free with the Intuos).

So here is our little bald man scanned into GIMP:

This is when I get to clean up the lines, etc.

Next I want to add some hair.  I already scanned in all of the drawn hairstyles so I choose one:

I uploaded it and cleaned it up, then made it into a transparent layer.  Now I open up bald man and this is what we get:

Bald no more!  If you look over in the right hand corner you can see two layers.  This is when I go in with my trusty Intuos pen and fix the hair to look a little more natural.  I don't like how it looked over his ear and the side looks a little skrewy.

This is what I ended up with for this hairstyle (sans eye and hair color...sorry just a bit scary looking):

Next I'll show you how I colored and shaded the dolls.  So close to having the boys done!