Me and Mr. Bee » art & design tutorials

how to draw noses

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:00:54 +0000

If you have been practicing my portrait tutorials for drawing perfectly proportioned human heads, you are now ready to delve into the details with drawing features. We started with the eyes, and now we will move down to the nose.

It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise, because everyone’s nose is so different and light can hit it in a billion different ways, making it difficult to give you a standard approach. Noses are handled very differently from drawing eyes, and we will mostly focus on how light is hitting them. Since there aren’t many hard lines on a nose, I’m going to show you how to develop a nose using values. Let’s start by drawing the entire basic shape of the nose. I’m going to do two different noses.

Pay attention to the nose you are observing, and draw out the different planes of the shape, you must think of this as a three dimensional object in space, not as flat lines on a piece of paper. The tip of the nose is usually a modified ball shape.

Notice how light is hitting the nose, simplify the values, and shade in the planes you drew.

Get a few more details in, by realizing the true shape of the nose from the basic planes earlier, and add a few more values.

Highlights are important! Observe the brightest area of the nose, and rough those in.

The last step is to keep adding variation in values, until you have developed the shape.

Noses require a lot of practice and patience. A lot of people assume that they know the shape of noses, and do not observe real noses enough. This can lead to flat, or piggish, unrealistic nose drawings. Avoid this by spending more time looking at your subject versus looking down at your paper drawing. For example, notice how delicately nostrils are formed, they are not holes punched into the nose, the nostrils usually curve inward toward the septum. All of these little details that you pick up during observation will in turn make your artwork come to life.

how to draw eyes

Tina Poe Illustration — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:59:38 +0000

If you have been practicing my portrait tutorials for drawing perfectly proportioned human heads, you are now ready to delve into the details with drawing features. I’ll start with the eyes, which can be very expressive! The eyes are one of the most important features to get right in a portrait, often times you can identify someone by only looking at their eyes. Just try a celebrity identification game, where they only show you eyes.

It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise, because everyone’s eyes are so different. I’ll show you how to draw a basic eye, these skills can be applied to any type of eye. We have to start by thinking of the eyeball, everyone has them! It is a large three dimensional object sitting inside the skull that the eyelids lay upon. If you keep the form of it in mind, it will help stop you from drawing flat, unrealistic eyes.

The inner most line for the eyelids is drawn surrounding the eyeball. Notice how the size of the eyeball dictates where the eyelids end. The tear duct falls to the side of the eyeball but inside of the eyelids.

Eyelids have a thickness to them that we cannot ignore, and usually when looking at someone you can see the thickness to their bottom eyelid. The upper eyelid also has a thickness, which when we cannot see, we know is there because of the shadow it casts onto the eyeball.

The eyelid also usually folds and creates creases and wrinkles, we need to add these as well because they give even more character to the eyes. Be careful no to draw these in too harshly, examine your subject closely and draw lines in the skin delicately. Remember that we are made up of shadows and light instead of harsh lines.

Eyelashes are very delicate hairs, so we also refrain from drawing harsh stiff lines for them. Use some soft lines, some shadows, and examine your subject to see where you can see the most eyelashes. Usually when you are looking at someone straight on, you will mostly be able to see the eyelashes at the outer edges of the eyelids. Also make sure to not draw eyelashes into the inner thickness of the bottom eyelid.

The colored part of the eye is called the iris, and the black part is the pupil. Look at your subject closely and notice where the lights and shadows fall on the iris and pupil, the texture of the iris is usually not very harsh. Correctly placed highlights and shadows will give you depth and form, keeping it from looking flat.

We can’t forget the tear duct, this is also not a flat object and will have shadows and highlights because it is behind the eyelids.

The “white” of the eyes is never perfectly white, because it is actually a round object. Remembering the initial eyeball, add shadows to the edges of where the eyelids envelope the eyeball. Look at your subject’s eyes and capture the light that is hitting the eyes, as well.

Observation is the most important part of drawing. Spend more time looking at your subject then looking down at your paper and pencil. Capture the details and you will capture the likeness of the person you are drawing. Keep practicing and enjoy!

3/4 view portrait tutorial

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:29:37 +0000

If you have been practicing my first portrait tutorial for drawing a perfectly proportioned human face viewed from the front, and the second tutorial for drawing the portrait in profile, you are now ready for an even bigger challenge; drawing a portrait from the 3/4 view. It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise.

Grab some pieces of paper (the larger the better, because it’s always easier to draw bigger rather than smaller), a light colored pencil (I like light blue), and one graphite pencil, get a board, easel, or other angled drawing surface. It’s never a good idea to sit at a table with your paper flat on the table in front of you. Your eyes will see a distorted perspective while drawing and when you pick up your paper to take a good look at it everything will be elongated.

Draw a light blue circle a little higher from the center of your paper.

At an angle, draw a U to make an overall acorn shape.

Similar rules apply to the 3/4 view as the profile view, like breaking up your rectangle in half horizontally.

But, it will be easier to think of this one as a 3D box instead of a rectangle, to plan our features out on.

We have to remember that the face is turned and draw a curved line in the center of our “rectangle”.

And now, instead of breaking the rectangle in half vertically, we have to draw a curved line to show the middle of the face.

Under the horizontal curved line, we need another curved line. This will hold the eyes.

An ear length down from our first horizontal curve, we draw another curved line to hold the bottom of the nose.

From that last line, we draw a smaller curved horizontal line a bit further down.

Now that the layout for our face is done, we draw in a U shape for the neck and the shoulders. Look at your photo to see where these fall exactly.

Starting with the nose, draw it so that the middle of the nose and septum fall on our vertical curved line, and the bottom of the nose hits the line that holds the bottom of the ear.

The eyes fall on the curved line above the nose line, and the corner of the eyes hit the nostrils, as you now know from the other tutorial.

The lips fall directly above and bellow the last horizontal curve line, and the corners of the mouth end in the middle of the pupils, like they did in the other tutorials.

The eyebrows fall on the line that holds the top of the ear, above the eyes.

Paying attention to your photo, draw the face, ear, and head shape outline.

We are done with our guidelines, and can now draw in the hair.

I added some quick shading to define the shape of the face, neck, and shoulders.

The 3/4 view portrait is one of the most interesting, but it does take a lot more practice and observation of you model. Stay tuned for the details of drawing each of the features, and remember to keep practicing!

profile drawing tutorial

Tina Poe Illustration — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:38:20 +0000

If you have practiced my first portrait tutorial for drawing a perfectly proportioned human face viewed from the front, you are now ready for a bigger challenge; drawing a portrait from the side view, the profile. It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise.

Grab some pieces of paper (the larger the better, because it’s always easier to draw bigger rather than smaller), a light colored pencil (I like light blue), a light red colored pencil, and one graphite pencil, get a board, easel, or other angled drawing surface. It’s never a good idea to sit at a table with your paper flat on the table in front of you. Your eyes will see a distorted perspective while drawing and when you pick up your paper to take a good look at it everything will be elongated.

Draw lightly a red rectangle closer to the top left of your paper. Draw a dashed line down the middle of your rectangle vertically.

Draw a light blue circle inside the top of your rectangle.

Draw a fat sunflower seed shape pointing closer towards the bottom left of your rectangle.

From the bottom of your circle up, break this area in half, and draw a line horizontally across.

From the line you just drew, down, break this area in half also, and draw another line across.

The ear falls to the right side of the dashed line, still inside the sun flower seed shape, in between the two horizontal lines you drew earlier. These mark the top and bottom of the ear. I’m drawing this with more detail, but you don’t have to as you practice drawing the profile.

The area to the left side of the vertical dashed line you will break up into five equal parts vertically, and draw another dashed line down, for the first fifth section on the left.

The eyebrow falls on the upper most horizontal line, with the eye slightly below it starting at the one fifth vertical line.

Break up the section below the ear into three equal horizontal sections.

The upper lip hits the left edge of your rectangle and the first 1/3 horizontal line. Remember to end the mouth at the dashed line that the eye hits. A person’s bottom lip usually starts a little to the right of the top lip. And the chin falls in the last 1/3 section you drew.

The bottom of the nose is in line with the bottom of the ear and protrudes slightly beyond your initial rectangle.

The rest of the scull follows most the big circle you drew ending close to the same horizontal where your circle ended, to start the neck.

I erased out my red and blue lines and added hair and a few lines to indicate a shirt.

Stay tuned for my other portrait drawing tutorials for the facial proportions from the 3/4 view. After you have the proportions down, I will go into the details of drawing each of the features. Remember to keep practicing!

portrait drawing tutorial

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:37:32 +0000

I want to share a comprehensive guide to drawing the human face with you, my dear readers. Before you even think about picking a subject to draw, you need to know the basic proportions of the human head and facial features. I’ll show you a method of drawing the human face from the front, the profile, and the three quarters view. These rules will become second nature to you, with practice, and drawing a portrait will be 47 times easier afterward.

Get started by drawing an upside down egg shape, very lightly with your blue pencil, centered to fill nearly your entire paper.

You need to break your egg shape apart to know where to place your facial features. Draw a light dashed line down the middle of your egg, and draw a solid line half way down across your egg. Think of the area from your line across down the egg, and break this area up in half again going across. One more line is needed 1/3 of the way down from your last line to the bottom of your egg.

Ignoring the dashed line down the middle, break your egg up into 5 equal parts vertically. It’s good to think of the width of the human face as 5 eye shapes going across.

In between the top two lines going across, you will draw basic ear shapes outside of your egg.

Now you are done laying the ground work for your facial features, so put away your blue pencil and grab your graphite pencil. You can be a little bit stronger now with your line work. The top line going across is going to go right through your eyes in the middle. Here is where the vertical lines breaking up your egg into 5 parts will be helpful. Using the horizontal line and the vertical sections 2 and 4, draw your eyes in.

The nose falls in between the eyes in vertical section 3 and stops at the line that holds the bottom of the ears. Use the dashed line to center your nose. Draw the nose using lighter lines for the bridge shape and only use darker lines at the bottom of the nose.

Next is the mouth. The last horizontal line you drew closest to the bottom of your egg shape is going to go between the lips of the mouth. Draw your mouth delicately and stop the edges of the mouth in the middle of the eye pupils.

Draw in the ears and add details like eyebrows and color in the pupils.

To draw the bottom of the jaw and chin you don’t have to follow the bottom of the egg shape exactly because everyone’s face shape is different. Also draw in some hair going above the top of the egg shape because hair sits above the skull. Be careful about where you draw the hairline, too high and it will look like it’s receding, and too low will look like hair is growing down the forehead.

You have now completed drawing a proportional human face viewed from the front.

Stay tuned for my other portrait drawing tutorials for the facial proportions from the profile and 3/4 views. After you have the proportions down, I will go into the details of drawing each of the features. Remember to keep practicing!

teaching art

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:59:54 +0000

I will be offering many more art and design tutorials on this blog, if you have any specific questions and requests feel free to ask and maybe I will custom make a tutorial for you! Related posts: pimp my photoshop filters and plugins illustration, design, and marketing commitment free photoshop brushes 3/4 view portrait tutorial Related posts:

glowing magic in photoshop

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:30:47 +0000

A big trend recently is to have glowing elements in many bright colors in illustration and design. A magical rainbow if you will. It’s pretty easy to do and there are some Photoshop tricks to create your glowing magic quickly.

In Photoshop (I’ll be using version CS3 for this tutorial), create a new document in a manageable size, for example 350 wide by 450 high at 72dpi.
Pick a dark background color, and a slightly lighter foreground color. Select your Gradient Tool (G) in your tool bar, and select the Radial Gradient option at the top. Make sure your foreground and background colors are selected for the gradient. Now make a soft gradient circle by clicking and dragging your cursor on your image. I also like to keep my layers organized by always labeling them as I go.

Add an object from another illustration you did, or a free icon from a source like Artura Design Studio. Remember to always be aware of copyrights.

Next, we will add a glowing ball to start the lighting effect. Add a white circle with the ellipse shape tool. Hold down shift to make a perfect circle. Go to the Filter drop down at the top and hover to select Blur and click to select Guassian Blur… Click OK on the pop up warning to rasterize the shape and select a radius of about 10 pixels. Click OK and name your layer. Create a folder in your layer pallet and name it “magic” and set the folder layer property to Color Dodge and place your glowing ball layer into the “magic” folder.

Stay with me through this next step. We will need some magic sparkles by using a basic round brush and adjusting some of the brush pallet options. Add a new layer in the “magic” folder called sparkles. Add a layer style to the sparkles layer by clicking the FX icon on your layers pallet and selecting Outer Glow.
Let’s select the Brush Tool (B) with white as your foreground color, and open the Brushes Pallet. Follow the images to set up your brush options and brush on some sparkles.

It’s already looking good, but we’ll add more details. Create a new layer under the “magic” folder and call it dust. Set this layer Blending Mode to Color Dodge. Set your foreground color to white and your background color to black. Select the Lasso Tool (L) and set the Feather to 20 pixels. Select a fat pear shape on your image. Open the Filter tab and hover onto Render and click on Clouds. Chose the Clouds option again and again until you are happy with the selection.

We need rainbow colors! Create a new folder and call it “rainbow”. Set this layer blending property to Pass Through. Create a new layer in this folder and set the blending property to Hue with a 50% opacity. Select the Gradient Tool (G) and the Radial Gradient option, drop down the color selector for the Gradient Tool and chose the rainbow option. Click and drag the gradient in the image. I erased out the area that Mr. Bee was on the rainbow gradient layer to preserve his original colors.

For a final dreamy touch, I added text in two different fonts with symbols in different colors and outer glows to tie everything in.

who needs designers anyway

Tina Poe Illustration — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:48:36 +0000

Designers have to deal with ridiculous requests from clients on a daily basis. I wish we could inject instant design knowledge into each client at the start of every project.

The great people at Agency Fusion created this video that makes all designers cry into their pillows each night.

Video by http://www.whoneedsdesigners.com/.

Not enough for ya? You want more torture? Ok, fine, listen to this song about bigger logos. Or maybe you’d rather read some comics by BearSkinRug (type the number 34 and then 68 into the Currently Viewing brackets), or N.C. Winters.

No related posts.

illustration, design, and marketing

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:12:40 +0000

I recently interviewed with marketing professional extraordinaire (and good friend) Andrea Stout over at MarketingVirgin.com. We talked about illustration, design, and marketing of course! A little removed from my usual casual writing, but informative!

Graphic design is typographical functionalism. A visually pleasing layout of information that guides the viewer through your message in a specific order. This is a crucial tool to have in marketing. Unlike the uniqueness and individuality of illustration, graphic design is often times more anonymous, catering to the clients branding needs. But, illustration usually does not exists without graphic design, the latter being the vessel which enables illustration to tell its story. In the recent years, photography has replaced the use of illustration in many functions, because of the rise of image stock houses and cheap prices, this has opened up new opportunities for companies to start using custom illustration again to gain an edge over their competition. Even though is it usually a less expensive option, photography is bound by the tangible rules of the world we live in, this is a very limiting fact, and illustration will always be able to take you to places you have only dreamed of. It is truly limitless.

Read the whole post on What is Illustration?.

My love for advertising translates right into my passion for learning more about marketing. I am very excited about the launch of MarketingVirgin.com and using the lessons covered to boost my projects. Posts such as the Search Engine Marketing run through can be used by anyone with a website, not just marketing professionals! I think that all of you who work in marketing, and even those of you who are interested in marketing your own business, or just learning more about it, will find MarketingVirgin.com to be a super useful blog.

pimp my photoshop filters and plugins

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:30:48 +0000

You should know by now how much I love free stuff, especially free stuff that I can use to expand my favorite tool of the trade, the glorious and mighty Photoshop of power.

Sometimes a good plugin or filter can save you a lot of time during tight deadlines, or just free you up to create more awesome work. BUT, I do like to give this warning out everyone, the same warning I gave when I was teaching Photoshop to art school freshmen, do not just slap on a generic Photoshop filter and call it quits.

People will always be able to tell when you use a filter.
It is considered a cop-out.
You are better than that amature crap.

I have not tested these, I do not know which versions of Photoshop they will work with, but I’ll let you figure that out. As always, make sure you read and obey copyright laws and usage rights for everything.

Free plugins, filters, and presets:

I’m keeping this list short because a lot of those link include links to several other similar sites with the same plugins.

free textures

Tina Poe Illustration — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:28:34 +0000

You guys know how much I love using textures in my illustrations. Good high resolution texture images can be hard to find. But I’m providing a list of free texture download sites where you will be able to find them in one spot. Some images will be larger and better quality than others. As always, please watch out for and obey copyright laws on usage.

Free texture images:

free photoshop brushes

Tina Poe Illustration — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:00:57 +0000

Whether you build texture maps for 3D objects, paint digitally, or create designs, custom brushes come in handy to speed up your job and save you extra effort. I’m providing a list of free Photoshop brushes download sites that I enjoy using so that you can find them in one spot. The brushes will include custom textures to create realistic effects, stamps, objects, symbols, and so on. Please watch out for and obey copyright laws on usage.

Free Photoshop brushes:

Some of Dave Nagel’s amazing brushes, I’m not sure where to find his previous series, anyone know?
Photoshop Brushes
PS Brushes (not free for commercial use)
User created brushes on DeviantArt
Brusheezy Each download comes with it’s own Terms of Use.
Tutorial Blog
DarkWaif
In Obscuro
Obsidian Dawn
Miss M Paper Lilies
Blinding Light
500ml
Hawksmont
by Vered

What do I do after downloading the brushes?

Close Photoshop. After downloading a file, it will either be a compressed file (like a .zip), or a .abr file (which is the photoshop format). Decompress the file if needed. Once you have the .abr file, place the file into your Photoshop brushes directory, which will be at /Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes/ or /Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes/Adobe Photoshop Only/ or C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop CS2PresetsBrushesAdobe Photoshop Only.

Zoom

Open Photoshop. Click B on your keyboard to select your Brush Tool, or chose it from your Tools pallet.
1. Click the Brush Preset Picker at the top of your screen.
2. Then click the small arrow button pointing to the right to open your options.

You should see your newly downloaded brushes in this list, if not click on Load Brushes… find the file and hit Load.

Find the brushes in your list, click on one of them and click OK to replacing your current brushes with the new one. Now you can select the different brushes from your Presets and you’ll be good to go.

free fonts

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:30:09 +0000

Before I became an in-house designer, my projects varied greatly in subject and style. I needed to have a huge font library that consisted of everything that I might needed on short notice, so I spent a lot of time looking for fonts. I also have never liked spending a lot of money, so free fonts were the way to go! I’m providing a list of free font sites that I enjoy using so that you can find them in one spot. Some of the sites will also have Mac fonts. Please note that some of the sites require you to purchase a license if you are going to be using the fonts commercially.

If you don’t already, I suggest you obtain a font manager software, this will make using your new fonts much easier because you can organize and view all of them very quickly to find your perfect match without having to go through Illustrator or Photoshop’s font list one by one. If you are on a Mac you are lucky because you will already have the program Font Book, that will do just that.

Free font sites, in no particular order:

photo editing in photoshop

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:01:31 +0000

Editing photos is one of my favorite things to do. Photo manipulation can, if done well, correct a myriad of sins that you could not control during the photo shoot. My tool of choice is Photoshop, upgraded to the latest release, but previous versions (too be safe, I’ll say 7.0 and up) will work as well.

As an example I will use an unedited photograph of myself.

Not a horrendous photo, but my face has very unflattering shadows in this light among other things. Our main to do list: remove all blemishes and unsightly lines, lighten the under eye shadows, enlarge the eyes a little because mine were a bit squinty, brighten teeth, add rosy skin tones, and nudge the nose to have more symmetry. All this can be done fairly easily, using only a few layers, and only a handful of tools.

I have labeled them in order of most often used, and simplest to hardest.

The healing brush (number 1) is the most amazing (and easiest) tool for cleaning up skin, minor blemishes, and slight lines. Select this tool, in the brush properties I suggest going with 50% hardness or experimenting. Setting the hardness too low will create an unnaturally smooth look if overused.

On that note, do not go overboard with any of these tools and methods. Keep it natural, do not lose the original texture of the skin, and remember that less is more.

Okay, back to the healing brush. ALT+Click on a clear area of skin that is a similar color and tone to the area you want to clean up. Patiently brush away one blemish at a time, don’t be afraid to undo and redo until you have it perfect.

The healing brush has some limitations, it does not work well when you are trying to clear up an area that is butted up right next to a very dark or very light area. For this kind of problem you will use the clone stamp (number 2) in conjunction with the healing brush. Select the clone stamp, set the hardness to about 50% and set the opacity to around 50% as well. Feel free to zoom in if you need to. ALT+Click on a clean area very close to the problem area and gently brush over the problem area. Go back to the healing brush and blend in what the clone stamp left behind.

The smudge tool (number 3) is a very powerful tool that can be very hard to control. I suggest you practice with this tool often before getting too frustrated and expecting it to work for you right away. I use the smudge tool to move muscles and to reshape whole areas. Use this sparingly because it will destroy all natural underlying textures. Use it for small areas only. Select the tool, with 30% hardness, and 75% strength. Resize the brush to fit over the area you need to move or reshape, softly nudge the area to the shape you desire. Usually many CTRL+Zs are necessary.

Number 4 on our tool bar is the Burn tool which can also be switched over to the Dodge tool. Another very strong tool that you must use very lightly. The burn tool darkens and the dodge tool lightens. To use either of them, set the hardness to 50% and the exposure to 5%. Brush in areas you need to darken or lighten but do not linger too long as it gets darker or lighter the longer you hold the brush down. This tool also messes with the underlying colors in your shadows or highlights. So you usually have to go back and add adjustment layers with masks to correct them. If you are only going to use two adjustment layers I suggest you use Levels and Hue/Saturation. Adjustment layers are very easy to use, and so useful and necessary.

Removing blemishes in Photoshop

And the final transformation:

image displacement mask

Tina Poe Illustration — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:19:36 +0000

Place images or text on clothing or skin without the mess of screen printing or the pain of permanent tattoos. I gave this girl’s pretty dress extra awesomeness by placing one of my illustrations on it by using a displacement mask in Photoshop. This process contours one image to the surface of another, making the depth (lights and darks) of the background image control the distortion of the placed image.

Photoshop CS or higher
A high resolution photo with some skin or clothing
An image or text to place

Open your high res. photo in Photoshop. Select All and Copy, then create a new document and Paste.

Go to Image > Mode > Grayscale.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to 2.5 pixels. This will create a softer more natural look for our displacement mask.

Save this file as Displacement.psd and close it.

Back to our original high resolution image. Place the text or image you want onto the skin or clothing, resize and rotate for a proper fit.

Optional: For my image I needed to mask off a small part of my placed image because the girl’s hand was in the way. Make sure you are on your text or image layer that you placed onto your photo. Click the Add layer mask button at the bottom of your layers pallet, this button looks like a rectangle with a circle inside of it.

With your Brush tool set to Black, and at a Hardness of 13% and an Opacity of 42%, brush away at the area that you need to mask off (make sure you are on your Mask layer, and not brushing on your actual image). Hit X on your keyboard to switch your color to White. Brush away around the area until you have it perfect. Don’t be afraid to go back and forth till you have it.

Right click on the Mask layer and click Apply Layer Mask.

Go to Filter > Distort > Displace and place the settings at Horizontal Scale: 6, Vertical Scale: 6, Stretch To Fit, and Repeat Edge Pixels. You may have to experiment with these numbers to get yours to work for your image.

Select your saved Displacement.psd file and hit OK.

In your layers pallet, set the Layer Mode of this displaced image to Multiply and the Opacity at around 85% (or experiment).

Optional: Duplicate this layer by dragging it onto the Create a new layer button on your layers pallet. Set the Layer Mode of this to Overlay at about 90%. I also created a Layer Mask for this Overlay layer and brushed on some of the deep wrinkles to create more shadows and depth. You’re done!

brushed metal effect

Tina Poe Illustration — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:46:51 +0000

This brushed metal tutorial is one everyone wants to know how to do well, but most people stop short before a realistic effect is achieved. We are going to use a variety of methods, such as: Gradients, Noise, Blurs, Brushes, and Clouds.

I made a bee button using the same engraving techniques I covered in my wood engraving how-to article, but you can find many other uses for creating a brushed metal effect. I am also offering up a created image of the brushed metal texture I made for you to download.

Photoshop CS or higher
Some expertise in Photoshop
Download this brush that I created for you, and place the file into your Adobe Photoshop > Presets > Brushes > Adobe Photoshop Only folder.

Open Photoshop and create a new document to a larger size, dpi, color mode, etc. that you require (larger because we will have to crop off some excess in the process). Have your layers pallet and your tools pallet visible. Set your foreground color White and your background color Black.

Select your Gradient Tool from your tool bar, at the top I selected the Linear Gradient, normal, at 50%. Create a diagonal gradient on your document by dragging your mouse from one top corner to the opposite bottom corner and release.

Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and select 40%, Gaussian, and check Monochromatic, hit OK.

Now, Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, and set it at Angle: 0 and Distance: 85, hit OK. You are going to have some ugly ends on the right and left side that you’ll need to crop off.

More textures are needed, so go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and select 4%, Uniform, and check Monochromatic, hit OK.

Next, Filter > Brush Strokes > Sprayed Strokes and select length: 20, radius: 0, stroke direction: horizontal, hit OK.

Create a new layer on top of your metal layer. Flip your colors so that White is your foreground color, and Black is your background color. Select the brush tool and go to your Brush Preset Picker at the top of your screen.

Click the triangle pointing to the right which will open your Brushes pallet, select Calligraphic Brushes, hit OK to replace current brushes. Now, select the Flat 45px brush.

Click on the Brushes tab at the top right corner of your Photoshop screen. Click on and check Scattering. Let’s put the settings at Scatter 1000%, check Both Axes, Control: off, Count: 1, Count Jitter: 85%, Control: off.

Paint a few strokes on your new layer.

While still on the second layer, apply a Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with a radius of 2. Set the opacity of this layer to 10%.

Create a new layer. Select the Brush tool and go to your Brush Preset Picker at the top of your screen, and Select the brush you downloaded, from me, called curved_buff.

Open the Brushes tab at the top right of your screen. Set the Brush Tip Shape options to Diameter: 212px, Angle: 31, Roundness: 61%, Check spacing at 100%.

Check and select Shape Dynamics, with settings at Size jitter: 0%, Angle jitter: 68%, Control off, Roundness Jitter: 0%, Control off.

Check and select Scattering. Check Both Axes at 299%, Control off, Count 7, Count Jitter 59%, Control off.

Paint on your second newly created layer with this brush for a few strokes.

Click Filter > Blur > Motion Blur at an Angle of 0 and a Distance of 30. Set this layer at an opacity of 15%.

Create a new layer. Filter > Render > Clouds

Filter > Render > Difference Clouds

Image > Adjustments > Invert

Image > Adjustments > Levels and set the Input Levels at 150, .10, 255.

Set the mode of this layer to Lighten and the Opacity to 10%.

Right click this third layer, and click Duplicate Layer, Click OK.

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip vertical

Click to select the bottom most layer. Click the half black half white circle at the bottom of your layers pallet to bring up the menu. Click Hue/Saturation. Set the Hue to 216. The Saturation to 9. And check Colorize.

Click OK and you are done.

image out of text

Tina Poe Illustration — Sun, 27 May 2007 19:43:14 +0000

Sometimes, you want to take a break from painting and use the magic of language and words to create a great storytelling piece. For this tutorial we’ll use three levels of contrast in black and white (highlight, mid light, and shadow) and place paragraphs into these three levels to create depth using only text.

A pretty good level of expertise in Adobe Photoshop (CS or higher)
A high res. image with a good range of contrast
A large piece of text
A high res. texture image

Let’s open our high contrast image in Photoshop.

Have your layers pallet open, always. Drag the high contrast image onto the Create a new layer button. Now, disable layer visibility (the eye icon) on the bottom layer. We do this as a safety measure, in case something screws up.

Back on to top layer, click Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer.

Check Monochrome, if needed adjust the numbers till you have strong highlights and shadows, click OK. Now, add a new layer on top of everything, use a color fill on this layer. Also, drag a texture image onto your current file to create another layer.

We’re going to disable the visibility of the last two layers we added and save these for later. Find the large amount of text you are going to use, delete any excess spaces or returns, and Copy it.

Back in Photoshop, use the Text tool and drag a box around your whole image, Paste, paste again and again until your whole image is covered in text. I used a simple sans serif typeface at a small font size, set the font color as Black.

Duplicate this text layer, set the newly created layer’s text to a middle tone gray.

Duplicate the text layer again and set this third text layer to a light gray color text.

Rasterize the three text layers (select the layer, go to Select > Rasterize > Type).

Disable visibility to the three text layers and select the black and white image layer.

Click on Select > Color Range, when on the Color Range pallet, click Select: Shadows and hit OK.

Immediately, click Select > Inverse (or CTRL+Shift+I).

On your layers pallet, click the black color text layer and turn on visibility on this layer, which should be the third layer from the top.

Hit Delete on your keyboard.

Click Select > Deselect (or CTRL+D).

Disable visibility on the text layer again.

Click back onto the black and white image. Click on Select > Color Range, then Select: Midtones, and hit OK.

Select > Inverse again.

Click on the middle tone gray text layer (second layer from the top), turn on visibility on this layer, hit Delete on your keyboard.

Deselect again, and disable visibility on the text layer again.

Once more, click on the black and white image layer, Select > Color Range, Select: Highlights.

Select > Inverse, click on the top text layer with the lightest gray text, turn on visibility, hit Delete.

Select > Deselect. Now, turn on visibility on all three text layers, the texture layer, and the color layer and turn off visibility on the black and white image layer.

We are almost done, now for some slight adjustments to add more contrast.

On the top text layer set the Layer Blending Properties to Screen, this will lighten that text layer. If needed, make a copy of this top text layer by dragging it to the Create a new layer button, this would lighten the layer even more.

If the middle tone gray text layer or the black text layer need more contrast, also make copies of these layers to finish the job. You can now flatten your image and save.

wood engraving effect

Tina Poe Illustration — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:01:00 +0000

Engraving into surfaces can be easily achieved with a few simple steps, mainly, the Layer Styles properties in Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop (CS or higher)
An image with a surface that needs engraving
Text, a shape, or an object image you want to engrave

Open your surface image in Photoshop, make sure your layers pallet is visible.

Create a second layer on top of your original surface layer that contains your shape/text/object.

Set this second layer blending mode to Soft Light, at 85% opacity.

While still on the second layer, click the Add layer style button that looks like a circle with a “f” in it at the bottom of your layers pallet. This will pop up a new window with many options.

In the Styles, Blending Options:

Check Inner Shadow and click the words Inner Shadow to bring up the menu for it.
Set the Blend Mode to multiply, select a dark color that works with your image. Set the opacity at 75%. I chose an angle of 48 with a check by Use Global Lighting. My distance is at 1px, 0% choke, and size of 1px, the contour is linear, no check by Anti-aliased, and no noise.
I have set an Outer Glow as well. My setting are at Screen for blend mode, 12% opacity, no noise, a light color swatch, Softer, 8% spread, size of 10px, Contour of sawtooth1, no anti-aliased, range of 41%, no jitter.
Check Bevel and Emboss, set the style to emboss, technique to chisel hard, 1% depth, Down direction, 2px size 0px soften. For shading I used a 48 degree angle, use global light at 21 degrees. The gloss contour, I set to Guassian, no anti-aliased, highlight mode I set to 0% and shadow mode I set to 100% Multiply using a dark brown from my illustration.
I also used a Texture under the Bevel and Emboss option because a super clean finish would not work with my illustration. These settings are at a 1% scale and depth of -91%, inverted and linked with layer.

Some of these setting will not work for your illustration/design so feel free to adjust them to fit your work. Experiment with different contour options, different shadows and highlights, and colors to achieve your desired effect. Here is my quick fix finished product:

using textures effectively

Tina Poe Illustration — Sun, 20 May 2007 02:14:00 +0000

You want a matured and completed look to your illustration, but there’s something missing. I find this problem in a lot of illustrations created purely in Photoshop, everything still looks too smooth and sterile. Often, adding a simple paper texture layer will do the trick. Natural looking textures bring harmony to finish up your illustration. We’ll look at the texture application in my Tattoo illustration as an example.

Adobe Photoshop (CS or higher)
Downloaded or scanned old paper texture (high res.)
Nearly completed illustration

Open your nearly completed illustration in Photoshop. Open your preferred texture file and place it onto your illustration as a new layer.

Oh, you don’t have a texture you want to use? Okay, let’s backtrack for a minute. Here are your options:

Take high resolution photographs of textures you like
Scan in (at high res.) flat textures
Create your own texture in Photoshop (I don’t do this, but it can be done)
Or the ~~lazy~~ easy fix, search and download (ahhh, the power of Google)

I will make it even easier for you, with some links to start you off right: mayang.com/textures, and texturewarehouse.com. (remember to give credit when required)

Now, pull you’re texture onto your illustration. Set the blending property of this new layer to multiply and the opacity to 30%.

Duplicate your newly created texture layer (by dragging it onto the new layer icon in your layers pallet). This second texture layer should be above your original texture layer. Let’s set these properties to Linear Burn at 50%.

Here is the paper I used.

Old Paper Texture

You can mess with the blending properties, you can add more texture layers, feel free to experiment.

The first frame has no textures, the second frame has the one layer of texture at 30%, and the third has the second texture layer at 50%. I am always pleasantly surprised by the huge difference only a simple texture can make.

Texture Process