Create a Harmonic Model Illustration in Photoshop
Tutorial details
- Requirements
- Photoshop CS
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Time
- 3-5 Hours
Premium Content
- Project Files
- N/A
Heavy tutorial (46 steps) in which you will learn how to draw awesome looking hair in no time! We will create a beautiful model composition to exercise our mad Photoshop skills!
Step 1 – 21
Complete the tutorial Create Flowing Harmonic Fibers in order to create the background graphics for this tutorial. If you want to get started quickly and just follow along in this tutorial, go ahead and download the Photoshop document file for the project instead.Step 22
Click the top layer to activate it, click the bottom layer while holding down the Shift-key on your keyboard to select all layers. Right-click on Layer 0 and choose “Convert to Smart Object”. Rename the Smart Object to Background.
Step 23
Right now the background is a bit to “busy”, so we will have to do something about that…Create a new layer Purple gradient. Set the Foreground color to a dark purple, like #e45dbc. Use the Gradient Tool with a Foreground to Transparent setting, and drag a gradient from the bottom left corner somewhere to the top right corner.
Lower the Opacity of the layer to about 60% to choke the effect.
Step 24
Download the wonderful Bird – 1 photo by sparky-stock. Open it up in Photoshop.
Step 25
Clean up parts of the skin using Dodge & Burn Tools. The main purpose of this technique is to remove unnatural studio lighting. You will mainly have to use the Burn Tool on this photo.Tip: Holding the Alt-key will switch between Dodge & Burn while using either of the Dodge and Burn tools.
Before, After and Difference
Step 26
I really did not like the feather-like makeup for her lashes on this photo. If you agree with me, use the Clone Stamp Tool to remove it.Use the Smudge Tool to slightly extend the eye-liner effect.
Step 27
Use the Spot Healing Brush Tool to remove any unwanted spots or wrinkles.
Step 28
Duplicate the layer and apply some Gaussian Blur. Add a layer mask and start brushing with low opacity to partly blurring the skin of our model.
Step 29
Merge visible (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E). Go to Image > Calculations to create a high contrast Channel of the photo. Select the newly created Channel and grab the Brush Tool. Brush with white on the parts you want to keep, and brush with black on the parts you want to remove.
Step 30
Load the Channel as selection, navigate to Select > Modify > Contract — set it to about 2px. Copy the layer contents and paste it in our background document. Rename the layer to Model.
Step 31
Add a layer mask to the Model layer. Use a soft black brush to mask out most parts of her hair.
Step 32
Set the Blending mode of the Model layer to Luminosity.
Step 33
Select Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. Name it Brighten. Check “Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask” and click OK.
Step 34
Repeat the previous step to add a Black & White Adjustment Layer, still as Clipping Mask. Set the Opacity of the layer to about 45%.
Step 35
Now we will create the brush that we are going to use to draw the hair.Create a new document, like 500 x 300px. Use the Ellipse Tool to create a black oval shape.
Step 36
Load the shape as a selection, then use Image > Crop to crop the image. De-select and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset.
Step 37
Press F5 to open up the Brushes palette. Find your brush and tweak its settings as follows…
Step 38
Now it is probably a good idea to start grouping our layers. I made one group for the Model and one group for the Hair.For this step you will actually be required to have some artistic talent. Do not worry if it does not look very real in the beginning, just keep on brushing and I promise you it will turn out good in the end!
For the hair layers, set the Blending mode to Overlay. Then start working with our custom hair brush. Use short strokes from the top working down (in the direction of the hair). Use black as foreground and white as background, then use the X-key on your keyboard to switch between the two. You should use more black in the base bottom layers and more white in the top layers.
Step 39
When you are happy with the hair cut, add a new layer Highlights. Use Normal blending mode and draw some final highlight strokes (use only white).
Step 40
Add a Layer Mask to the Highlights layer. Use the Gradient Tool to create a reflected gradient (Black > White) so that the highlights falls off nicely.
Step 41
Select the Background layer and apply a Gaussian Blur filter. Set the radius to about 40 pixels. Then use the Gradient tool to fade the effect with a reflected gradient.
Step 42
I was not very happy with the Purple gradient at this moment, so I decided to change it to a more cold color. I also moved the model a bit to the left — thought it looked better this way.
Step 43
Create a new layer Lashes and use a very small sized brush to enhance the lashes. Use semi-gray colors (50-80%) and set the Blending mode of the layer to Luminosity.
Step 44
Stamp visible (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E). Then select Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the value to about 12.
Step 45
The background is still to busy IMO. To fix this I used 3 radial gradients (Color > Transparent).I also added 2 adjustment layers. One Black & White, set to 44% and one Curves adjustment layer to make the image a bit brighter.
Step 46
Merge visible and add Gaussian blur, then mask to partially blur the corners of the image.To create the lighting effects go ahead and add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, set its Blending mode to Color.
Result
For my final image I modified our brush a bit. To create the flowing white lines in the Background I changed opacity jitter to Fade and did same for Size.Click to View Details
