How I color hair wowza [Paint Tool SAI]

so for this i will be doing lineless art. you can use this tutorial for pictures with lineart too though! so first, you're gonna put down your base color.

these are the colors i'll be using. the color farthest to the left will be my second highlight, whereas the one farthest to the right will be my 2nd color im going to shadE with. the color in the middle is the base color. now that you have put your base color down, its time to start coloring woop woop. okay so, first and foremost, DO NOT PILLOW SHADE OR USE THE AIRBRUSH TOOL ALSO BE SURE THE LAYERS YOU ARE COLORING ON ARE CLIPPING GROUPS. OTHERWISE IT WILL END UP LOOKING LIKE THIS

you do not want this at ALL
okay now that we have that out of the way, the first thing you should do is go ahead and make all of you layers. if you want, you can name these, but i just put them all in a single layer set so that everything is together

this is how i normally set up everything. however, don't be afraid to experiment with layer types!
so first, im going to use my first color i want to shade with. oh, i almost forgot. normally, i fill my "shading" layers with white because its easier to shade with it like this. you don't have to do this though. i think it just looks better.

follow the direction that your hair is going!

done! also, if you need to erase, just get your pen, brush, w/e and change the color to white and "erase" so that you also don't erase the white you put down earlier (if you put any down.)
now, im going to smooth this out

I used the acrylic brush. these are my settings.


done! now, you want to get your darker color and do the same thing. however, you're just going to basically do lines and then smooth it out this time

so, basically like this. now do the same thing you did last time.

yay now onto our last steps!
okay so now we're going to do the highlights if you don't want to, then you're done! i can understand why you would say you're done at this point since she already has highlights basically. normally i just add highlights to make the hair look cooler sORRY IM LAME OKay anyways
get your airbrush, although i would suggest changing your settings.

these are mine, but you should definitely play around and see what you like most!

now, get your watercolor brush and basically just kind of blend it in. don't worry, you can adjust the opacity to your liking.

again, play around with settings!

now, lower the opacity to your liking. if you don't want to, okay. but i would recommend doing that. I lowered mine to 46, but you can choose whatever you want!
now, if you choose to, it's time to do the second layer of highlights
grab your pen, or brush, or whatever you would like to use and basically just kind of do
well anything really
well that's really it! i hope you enjoyed and i hope i helped at all uwu
end result:

this is where i placed my texture. you can place it anywhere.
also, play around with layer types and stuff. see what you like most.
these are what they all look like if you want to see
multiply

overlay

screen

luminosity(which i don't recommend because...)

shade

and lumi and shade

obviously, whatever texture that you use will vary with a certain layer type. so small things like this make a world of difference!