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This tutorial lays out the basic methods I use to draw mostly straight or slightly wavy hair in Photoshop.
In this example, we are creating medium-brown hair, so draw in the basic shape of the hair with a hard edged brush with medium brown. Follow the contours of the head and
shoulders, making the hair flip at the ends as desired. Don't worry about being perfect, but make sure that the head itself is covered fully with no gaps.
Using a small-ish brush with a soft edge (approximately 10-20 px) at about 85 to 95% strength, smudge the edges of the hair to flow and fall naturally against the face, shoulders,
neck and back.
This part is the most tedious, but it actually does go by rather quickly and painlessly.
Select the dodge tool set to midtones, around 15 to 20% strength and a 2 to 4 pixel brush. Start drawing in highlights in the direction that the hair naturally grows. You may want
to look at a source image for this. Switch the setting to highlights and repeat. This varies the colors and luminosity of the hilites, making the hair appear more natural.
Now hold down the alt button and the dodge tool becomes the burn tool. Repeat as above, switching between highlights and midtones to vary the color and luminosity of the
lowlites.
If it's not looking the way you want it to, vary something: increase/decrease brush size, switch brush shape, increase/decrease strength, switch modes
(shadows/midtones/highlights).
Now that we have the individual strands drawn in, it looks flat. To put the head of hair in a realistic environment, consider the source of light. Here, it is coming from the front/left, so
we want to highlight the front and darken the back. We also want to highlight natural contours of the head and thin-ness of the ends of the hair.
Here are the areas I've highlighted and darkened with a large (approx. 50 to 100 px) soft edge brush with dodge and burn.
The final step is to smudge out any harsh edges, mostly at the tips of the hair where it meets the face and shoulders.
I like to use a large spatter brush for this, set to about 60% strength, for a wispy look.