Lately one of my favorite things to incorporate in my artwork is typography.  I can’t say as decent as most designers out there, but I do like adding words and manipulating them in a way to give the piece more meaning and definition.  In this tutorial, I’ll be taking you through a walk through of how I created this poster I made for someone special as long as showing a few techniques that I used to create this piece and other pieces that I have made in my graphics career.

The Concept

I first saw a graphic piece on Flickr one day and it basically had a heart with a bunch of words filling it.  From there I got inspired to do my own version by using the name of that special person and then making a heart from the words that describe her or my feelings about her.  Along with just the typography, I’d also put images that describes her personality and finally capture it as what I see in my heart.

Step 1 – Making the Background

The background simply consists a gradient using a yellow-light blue-dark blue color scheme.  As you can see, I made the center to be light to give hint that the center will be the main focus of the piece.  I found a stock of a sky that filled the vertical area well and set that to soft light while masking a few parts that I didn’t like (mainly the edges of the piece since I wanted to have some parts faded out and other parts more prominent).

Step 2 – Main Content

Here I began creating the main focus of the piece which is the typography part.  In terms of design difficulty, all I had to do was make a heart shape and adding a gradient and stroke to it, and then I began filling in adjectives and adverbs.

The hardest part of this was actually coming up with the words that I felt, as well as wording and placing them in a way that the words would fit inside the heart shape.  In addition to just having text, I experimented with different opacities to make some words more prominent and kind of give the eye a tease of jumping back and forth between what words pop out.

Step 3 – Decorating your main focus

In this step, I simply added embellishments by finding stocks of flowers, and leaves to surround the heart to give it background of some sort.  By simply masking parts I don’t need and rearranging layers, I can make the heart look like it’s been enraptured in the foliage.

Step 4 – More Decoration

I brought in more stocks in particularly a lion, parrot, and a lime to give the piece more color, and different depths of photomanipulation.  Again, I masked out parts that shouldn’t be shown, and in addition, I found that using the old “Duplicating the layer and giving it a blur and setting it to soft light/hard light” to be quite useful in making the pictures more vivid.

Other than that adjustment, all the pictures so far are on normal blending mode since I didn’t want the stocks to blend with the blue background.

Step 5 – Starting to Add Details

I begin to add details by adding some splatters, and some inkblots stocks that I’ve had.  I wanted to add more depth into the piece and so one way to do that is to simply give objects in the scene a shadow to show that there is a distinction between that object the background.

You can use either the “Drop Shadow” option within the Blending Options of the layer OR what I do is add my own shadows by making a new layer behind the object that I want to add a shadow to and brush behind the objects with a “Soft Round Brush” with black and played around with the opacity of the layer and erased any unnecessary bits that didn’t flow with the piece.

Step 6 – Adding more depth and decorations

Now I began to add more to the piece by adding a polaroid background behind the heart and more splatters.  I introduced some more text on the bottom of the polaroid by choosing a font and setting the opacity down.  The splatters were simple to integrate as they were on white background and so I set the blending mode of them to multiply to show the splatter, and the white background is simply gone.

Step 7 – Faded lines

A technique (if you want to call it that) that I started to use was making lines and bars of different colors and masking them with textured brushes to give a faded out look.  It works well in abstract and grungy pieces and doesn’t make the piece harsh by having the masked parts.

As you can see below, all you need to do to make these type of lines is to have shape/layer of anything, and give it a layer mask and use a textured brush to mask some parts of it away.

Step 8 – Adjustment Layers and Scanlines

As we get closer to the end, I decided that the piece needed some adjustment layers to bring up the colors and make the color brighter.  I added a Curves layer, and some Gradient Maps and set them to soft light.

In addition, I added scanlines to give the background some texture.  Scanlines are simply just patterns and I filled the background with it.  Below is a step by step process of how to create scanlines fast.

Step 9 – Colorful Light Flares

To top the piece off, I added some “Light Flares” to the piece to give lighting and more color.  You’ll find these among a lot of graphic pieces since they are quite popular and they do add more to the piece in terms of effects.

By simply making a new layer and using soft brushes of different colors, set the layer to screen or linear dodge, and notice how they add more color and lighting to a piece.

Conclusion – Final Result

Of course your piece may or may not look like this, but that’s not the point.  The main point is to show the simple process of making a graphic like this and showing some techniques that are used in them.  I hope you enjoy the tutorial, and subscribe and keep updated with Creative-Le Studios for more.

One of the best parts I like about making a piece in Photoshop is not necessarily the outcome but the process it takes to get to it. I learn a lot when I can visualize somebody’s progress in creating a graphic. I always enjoy seeing work in progress because it shows you that the skills to make that piece aren’t complicated at all and art is really all about visualizing and experimenting.

Walk in the Park was probably one of my first pieces that I experimented fully with the use of stock photos and using the mask tool in Photoshop. I never knew you can blend in photos in that way so that they look seemless and natural (to an extent). Here’s my WIP on Walk in the Park (and also some notes on what I did).

The Concept Behind Walk in the Park

The main concept to this piece was to show how a unity between 2 people can bring life to their world. Hence you see the couple walking out of this black and dull city and into a colorful peaceful “island” with flowers, water, and more. This piece was created for Vina.

Initial Study and Preproduction

In order to convey my message, I had to gather stocks. And so I got most of my stocks through stock.xchng and from other free stock photo sites. My general process in this stage is to collect as much as I can that I think are usable. I got stocks of skies, clouds, mountains, rocks, water, beaches, couples, flowers, etc… If I think I could use it, I downloaded it. As to most people, this might be called the preproduction stage. You gather all your needed materials to start off your production.

Work in Progress – Screenshots

Step 1

1. I started off with my city. I had a good black and white stock of buildings (Figure 1.1), and basically I duplicated and positioned them around so I could form an island-like landscape (Figure 1.2).

Step 2

2. I placed in my mountain stock and masked unneeded parts. As you can see with Figure 2.1 the original picture of the mountain had a lot of things to it. And so I masked around it along with the other stocks to make it like Figure 2.2. In addition, I added and masked more pictures of that black and white city.

Step 3

3. I began to work the background by adding a sky. It was simply a gradient and then I brushed around with a grayish blue brush and set it to multiply to sort of mimic clouds.

Step 4

4. Following the same process as step 2, I had pictures of green forests and grasses, and I scaled them down to fit on the rocks. I set the layers to hard light, and they seem to work best for me. I duplicated them as well to make it more vibrant and green. You can also see me putting flowers in there as well.

Step 5

5. I messed around with the sky more and added some stocks of clouds and set them on overlay and screen to get the sky to be more bright. I picked out the picture I wanted to use for the couple and embellished that area with a rainbow (using a circle shapes and put a rainbow gradient with blending options) and also some bubbles. I also made the water bluer by painting a layer with a blue brush and setting its blending mode to “Soft Light”.

I also started my typography work since I wanted to make it a part of the piece rather than something slapped on at the end. Simple text with a gradient on it, and I brushed around to make it more fitting into the water.

Step 6

6. From here, I decided to change it up a bit and mess around with colors. I added a Sepia Toned Gradient Map and set it to multiply and added a Curves layer to increase the brightness a bit.

Step 7

7. One of my favorite things to do and I guess you can say it’s my style is that I always like to introduce shapes into my pieces. They add that piece of abstractness to a graphic and can give some great color, flow, and composition. From figure 7.1 and figure 7.2, I simply added more shapes. Some of them I made with the pen tool, and the other shapes are part of my Custom Photoshop Shapes that I made a while ago.

Step 8

8. At this time, I like to experiment with brushes. I had some brushes that I downloaded from deviantART or some other places (If you happened to make the brush, let me know.) And also I’ve used some brush sets that were made by Vtension. Her wireframe brushes and various shapes packs were the ones I used in this piece. Check out her blog for more brush resources.

TIP: Remember that you can mask pretty much anything. Sometimes brushes and shapes may not be good unless you mask out the parts that doesn’t fit into the piece.

I also added more shapes to add more to the piece. I also find myself doing more than what’s needed, but at this part of the piece, I eyeball what looks good to me.

Step 9

9. And finally, more brushes, and I added some fireworks stocks set to screen blending mode to put some particles into my piece. I touched up a few things here and cleaned some mess with masks and added a gradient map and photo filter. I cropped it a bit and added black bars on top and bottom. After all of that, my piece is finally done.

What Happened and What I’ve Learned

Basically I learned that it takes a lot of patience. You have to take the time to mask things accurately so that the photos can work together. You have to take the time and experiment with brushes and shapes to decorate the piece, and you have to also test out a lot of settings when creating your color scheme in the piece. Everything has to be in consideration, lighting, composition, colors, typography, and overall your idea.

Conclusion

Thanks for viewing my first WIP. If you have any questions specifically on this piece, I’ll be happy to answer them. Leave a comment and I’ll reply to them. I’ll have more WIPs in the future so make sure you follow and subscribe to see my updates.