For this tutorial, you will need:

Paint Shop Pro

A bald Poser lady - If you want to use the same image as the one I have used in this tutorial, you can download it here - just unzip to wherever you'll know where it is to work with it. If you create your own, save the render as a .tiff, open it in PSP, promote the background to a layer, load the alpha channel, invert the selection and delete the background, then save as a .psp file. (Whew!)

Bloodsong's "Hairy" brushes - get them here. Unzip the file to your PSP Brushes folder (in your program files), then go into Windows Explorer and change the file extension to "jbr". (Many thanks, Bloodsong!)

Update: Bloodsong has been having some problems with her site, so until she is back up and running, you can get the brushes here. These brushes are already converted to .jbr format, just unzip them to your Program Files/PSP/Brushes folder and they are ready to go.

Now, let's get started - and be aware that written out like this, it looks a whole lot more complicated than it really is once you start to just do it! Note: screen shots are a lot smaller than actual size.

First, add 2 layers to your bald lady, one above and one below (I will call these "top hair" and "bottom hair", respectively). Choose a base color for your hair (I used 492F17 here) and make your top layer active. Note: if you want to do blond hair, start out with a medium brown color as opposed to a gold or yellow, or it will end up looking too bright and metallic.

Click on the paint brush tool and open the Tool Options window. In the top right hand side is a lil paint brush, click on this and then on Custom. Another window will open up, use the drop down menu to choose the last of the hairy brushes and click OK. Back in the Tool Options window, set your preferences as shown. (Note: these settings will depend on the size of your bald head, you may need to adjust the size of the brush and the step accordingly, but keep the step low.)

Okay, now we're ready to paint some hair! At this point, you need to think about what sort of hair style you want to give her - big hair, flat hair, flyaway hair, long hair, short hair, bangs, etc. - as this layer will pretty much determine said style, although you can add more volume and "flyaway" if you want later. If you are working with your own Poser head, make sure you have enough canvas above and around her head to allow for the hair, increase the canvas size if necessary.

Starting at the hairline, start painting in the style you want, moving back across the head and down. Don't worry if all your strokes are not the ultimate length you want, this will add volume and will blend in later. Remember, PSP is very forgiving, and you can always use "undo" to get rid of strokes you don't want or that "get away from you" (or just delete the layer and start again). You can also use the eraser to clean up any stray strokes. I zoom in and out a lot to work on detail, and see what it looks like on the whole, work in whatever size is comfortable for you. Once you have the basic style painted in, keep painting over it until it is pretty much solid, especially in the "body" of the hair.

Now activate your "bottom hair" layer and add hair on her "off side" - it will appear to be falling behind her shoulder, if you want it to be in front of her shoulder, go back to "top hair" and add some more there. Again, keep painting until it is pretty solid.

Alright, let's take a breather - go brush your own hair (if you have any left at this point, LOL), get another drink, smoke a cigarette, let the dog out/in, whatever - and then we'll move on to lowlights and highlights!