Tutorial #01

[goodbyebird]

Ok, we start with this cap from leavemethewhite.com. I want to focus on Wendy without any of the clutter around her, so I use a combination of the Smudge Tool and the Clone Stamp Tool to replace the surrounding items with just more plain, background wall.

Since you'll be continuing to extend the background you copy and paste it into a 300x300 square, which gives you more space to work on. Repeating the steps you took previously and you should end up with something like this:



Paste in the original cap two more times(without repositioning/resizing this time), and put both layers on soft light. There's a couple of dark splodges on the left side, just use the Smudge Tool to get rid of those. We now have



Re-size it so it's 100x100.

New Layer/Levels:
RGB 8, 1, 211
Blue 0, 96, 255

New Layer/Curves:
RGB input 105 output 125, input 158 output 182
BLUE input 94 output 87, input 153 output 142

We now have



Add this texture by lookslikerain, apply a Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur filter set at 0,8, plus smudge away the bigger blots at the top. Set it to Soft Light.

At last you add a Soft Light 54% opacity layer between layer 2 and 3, and paint in a couple of white blobs to add some extra light to frame Wendy. Merge and sharpen as you see fit, and that's it!

Comments

[stripped]

Thank you for sharing! Textures are something I haven't played with yet, not like I'm seeing them used... is it just another layer in the stack? Where do you find textures (and would you be willing to post links at icontutorial? They are something I need to learn to use... I have to build my arsenal! :)

[goodbyebird]

Yes, you just cop and then paste it in as another layer(and you can set it to screen/soft light/multiply/etc). There are a lot of icon comms that also post textures, but if you go to deviantart.com and search for 'textures', you'll get tons of results there easy peasy :)

[stripped]

Thanks! I will be checking out DeviantArt and playing with new toys soon, I hope...

[paian]

Enjoyed this tutorial, especially the effects you get with Soft Light layers. Thanks for posting it!

[goodbyebird]

yw :)

[wallflowering]

Here via icontutorial; It's really inspiring to see the process you worked on the background, and the final result is pretty fantastic. Thank you so much for this!

[goodbyebird]

Oh thank you. Glad you had some use for it :)