Wig tutorial - Painting! (Patreon)

Alright guys, so typically wigs come in just one color with no low lights and highlights and while this works for anime characters, for video game ones and real life characters it looks a bit fake sometimes. So, with this method you can make your wigs look realistic for whatever the occasion!

I recently got a commission to style a wig for the Bloodborne doll, her clothing and the game itself is rather grunge looking so a pure color wig would not look right with this cosplay, so in order for it to look better I decided to paint the wig, here is what I used/did!

As you can see the base of this wig is rather flat, not what I am looking for at all. To make the lowlights I want all I did was take some acrylic grey paint and heavily dilute it. I also took a bit of black iDyePoly, heated up a bowl of water, placed the dye inside and painted the wig with that as well in sections with the diluted acrylic paint. When painting a wig you want to make sure you're not painting clumps of paint on, you want thin layers of paint/dye on the wig so it doesn't dry all hard and crusty!

Once you have begun painting, if you ever add to much on the wig, dip your fingers in water and massage the color around, it will help even out the color distribution.

Here is how the wig started to look after a few coats. Once you have finished painting the wig make sure to brush out with a comb as well, this will help the color blend more with the wig fibers. Now you repeat this method for the entire wig, make sure you are getting the under layers of the wig as well!!

Here is a sample of what the wig looks like before and after painting it, this method works great for video game characters like this one, just be sure to keep on blending the colors throughout the wig.

And here you have it!! The wig has more natural lowlights now, this method I do a lot for white wigs because in photos white wigs tend to become just SOLID white and you can never see all the details of the wig. You can do this method with any wig to give it lowlights but painting a wig lighter is not an easy task and for the most part never looks right in my opinion. Hope this trick has helped you out! <3