As with the first part of this tutorial series, I do not pretend to know the exact steps that were taken to create the image below. I can, however, walk you through similar concepts and application so that you can get a handle on how to go about creating something similar.  This tutorial will focus on composition, blending, and color techniques.  For those of you just joining our program, I was contacted in the past about preparing a tutorial on how to create a specific image.  As I did not know the exact resources that the original artist used, I took my best guess.

As with every tutorial, basic Photoshop knowledge is assumed.  I am also aware that there are numerous ways to accomplish certain effects.  This merely explains it one single way, and will possibly touch on some of the variations.  With that out of the way, here goes…

Credits
The artwork above was created by Poerti.  The original artist used stock photography, by Resurgere, as a base for the image.  

 

Getting Started
Before I get started working, I try to setup the file so that I can keep everything organized.  As I mentioned in the previous tutorial, I like the file structured and all of the layers and folders to be appropriately named.  This makes future changes easier and certain layers quickly located.

Since the original artist started with a stock photo, I will do the same.  Using the crop tool  , I cropped the figure out from the header and footer graphics.  If you press the “Caps Lock” key, the cursor changes from the crop tool icon to a cross-hair type icon.  I have found that this makes it easier to make a selection on certain images.  Just a personal preference.

I then copied the background layer into a new layer and renamed it to “Figure”.  The background layer was filled with white (Press D to change the foreground color to black and background color to white, press X to swap the foreground and background colors so that white is now the foreground color, then press ALT + Backspace to fill the layer with the foreground color).

Now we are ready to go.

Composition
This is a matter of personal preference, but I do not typically start an image off by just using a large stock photo.  I like to manipulate it to some degree first and then use the manipulated image as my base.  During this process, the image composition is critical.

A good composition will keep the viewer’s eye on your work.  A bad composition will lead it away.  You will hear many artist’s say that they do not like their artwork centered.  I agree with this in part due to the “Rule of the Thirds”.  This rule, which is more of a guideline to follow, was something that was ingrained in me back in high school art.  This concept involves dicing up your canvas into sections and then allowing the interesting points of your work, or the focal point, to rest on certain sections.  If your work is placed in the center, then that does not make for an interesting composition. Don’t misunderstand me, not all images need to be shuffled off to one side or the other.  Some work is better in the center.  Let me show you an example of what I mean.

The Rule of the Thirds simply states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph. Proponents of this technique claim that aligning a photograph with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the photo than simply centering the feature would.

The above image is a photograph that I took in Athens, Georgia entitled “Summer School”.  I have placed the “Thirds” grid on top of it and placed a circle on the focal point (obviously, right?).  Imagine if the chair had been centered in the photograph.  It would not have the same visual impact.  Typically the important parts of your image will rest on or directly near one of the intersecting lines.

Using our artwork example, I have placed the same grid on the artist’s final image below.  It is important for me to mention that I am not saying that the artist made a poor decision in placing the image in the center.  You can utilize whichever composition guidelines you wish to implement in your own work. 

However, the Rule of the Thirds is a great tool for composing your work, even if it just makes you consider your layout a little more.  Taking our example below, notice how none of the interesting portions of the image hit on the intersections.  If it were up to me I would have moved the figure more to the right side of the image and tried to place the skull in the top left intersecting area.

There are other ways to achieve the composition without moving the image.  One is to adjust the lighting so that the focal point is on one of the intersections.  An example of that would be as follows (shown with Lighting Effects settings):

The above image places all of the focus on the top left intersection, drawing your eye immediately to that area.

Regardless of how you choose to layout your work, it is always a great idea to consider the composition as to keep your work as visually appealing as possible.

Color
Obviously the final work came about with significant color changes from the original stock photograph.  Before we get into the color choices, notice how the palette is muted and very Earth-tonish.  I am not even sure if Earth-tonish is a phrase, but I am going to take a risk and use it.

Since there are not a lot of colors used, other than variations on a sepia tone, let’s adjust the base layer to give us a little better platform to work with.  Right now it is very dark.  To begin, convert the image to black & white.  You can use “desaturate” (CTRL + SHIFT + U) or your filter/plugin of choice.  I have recently found that Alien Skin Exposure offers several wonderful variations on changing your work to black & white based on certain film settings.

Next, using the curves adjustment (Image > Adjustments > Curves; or press CTRL + M) lets bring the lighting up just a tad.  The settings that I used are as follows:

Since the base image has a sepia tone applied to it, let’s go ahead and take care of that.  There are several ways that you can apply a sepia tone to an image.  Aside from using filters/plugins, you can also apply the setting using the color balance adjustment.

Bring up the color balance panel (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance; or press CTRL + B).  Change the color levels in the Midtones from 0, 0, 0 to 20, 0, -20.  Change the levels in the Shadows from 0, 0, 0 to 10, 0, -10.  See the screenshot below:

If you make the same changes to the Shadows & Highlights you will notice a darker and richer sepia tone.  I only made changes to the Shadows & Midtones.

The other method is to select a value of orange/brown (i.e. #86583C) and fill a new layer with that color.  Place this new layer above the “Figure” layer and then change the blending mode to soft light.  This will give a similar effect.

For this tutorial, I used the first method in changing the color balance.  The result of that should give you something similar to the following image:

Adding of the Elements
Like with the previous tutorial, without the specific resources available that the original artis used, it is difficult to explain exactly how the final image was achieved.  There appears to be only three components added to the original stock photograph:

1. Longer hair on the female character
2. More dramatic lighting effects at the top of the image
3. Subtle grunge accents on the image itself

Let’s take a deeper look at those three elements…

Longer Hair
First, without the stock photo used for the longer hair, it is nearly impossible to explain how the artist added the hair in.  So I will attempt to explain the process as best as possible without having the materials to work with.

One of the most important considerations when adding in elements to the work is to ensure that the new element is blended into the image as naturally and as seemless as possible.  The last thing you want people to notice is what you have added.  I personally would rather have viewers analyze the image to try and figure out what was added without actually guessing it correctly.

For this image, you would need to locate an image of a female with long black flowing hair.  You can do this by scouring through stock photography sites, or even searching Google Images, being sure to ask the owner if you can use the image.  I always look for an image that I can drop in, with little manipulation.  Here, you would want a female in a very close pose as the one in the original stock photo.  Ideally you could cut and paste the hair in with little work.

If you find such photo to drop in, you can use your extraction method of choice to trim away the excess and unwanted pixels from the new hair layer.  You can always plan on the new layer having different tonal ranges, contrast, brightness, etc from the image you have been working on, so you will need to adjust those.

I will first attempt to adjust the following settings:

• Brightness / Contrast (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast)
• Curves (Image > Adjustments > Curves; or press CTRL + M)
• Levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels; or press CTRL + L)

One of the above, or a combination of the above, will usually help place the new hair layer into a similar format as your base layer so that everything matches up.  If you are working with a color image, Color Balance (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance; or press CTRL + B) is another good adjustment.

I actually spend quite a bit of time working on the blending and ensuring that the colors and whatnot matches overall.  Since this image has hair in it, you can also use the smudge tool (a soft edged small brush) to drag out portions of the new hair layer over the bottom figure layer.  This helps make it appear a little more natural.

However, pay attention to the little details.  If you look at the final image, the new hair is not on the figures right side, only the left.  Entirely possible that the hair was pulled in that manner but with hair that long I would expect some overflow on the other side of the face.  Also, you can see that some blending changes were made because portions of the hair that cover the left arm appear as if they are going “through” the twisty tie on the figure’s arm.  Nothing major, mind you, but little things that people notice when they spend the time to actually look at an image.  Since people can and will notice the little things, it is good to look for them yourself.

More Dramatic Lighting
This is another aspect of the image that can be achieved by using various methods.  If you do not wish to use filters or plugins, you can use the Polygon Lasso Tool ( ) to draw out your own rays of light in a new layer.  You can then blur those and adjust the blending mode so that it fits with light being shone down onto the figure.

If you would like to use a simpler method, you can work with the filters provided in Photoshop.  Filters > Render > Lighting Effects is what I used for the lighting adjustment to our image.  I drug two additional light sources onto the image in the Lighting Effects control panel.  This was to somewhat simulate the effect that the original artist used in their work.

The end result? It gives softer pool of light, instead of the rays that appear in the original image.  I chose this as I felt that the softer light might compliment the feminine figure more so than sharper beams of light.  Additionally, it would be a nice contrast to the grunge elements that will be added later on. 
The settings that I used are as follows:

Not too shabby, but it could be improved upon.  So let’s add a little more accent lighting in the areas that would be lighter.  Using a soft edged brush, select a light colored foreground color.  I would not recommend using white; I picked #FEF9D8.  Paint the areas where the light would catch, such as on the side of the skull, the figures left shoulder, etc.  Apply a minimal Gaussian blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) and then set the blending mode to Screen.  I lowered the opacity of the layer down to about 60 – 65%.  This adds a subtle amount of light in the….well….in the light spots.

Since we have added some light accents, we might as well touch up some of the dark spots as well.  Following the same process as above, use a darker color (avoid using black) such as #250202 and paint over some of the dark spots.  Use the Gaussian Blur again and then set the blending mode of the layer to Multiply.

Grunge Elements
Next comes everyone’s favorite part of the tutorial.  The part where I tell you that I don’t have a specific set of steps to follow and that this is trial and error.  I will attempt to document as best as I can how you can grunge up your work to give it a little texture.

First, create a new layer and title it “White”.  Fill this layer with, yea, you guessed it….white.  Now, with the layer filled with white, pick a grunge style eraser brush (I used about 5 different brushes) and trim away at the white.  If you need to, lower the opacity of the brush so that portions of the white will show through.

You can either do it this way, or use the paintbrush to build grunge borders around the edges.  Sometimes I like the effect I get by trimming away as opposed to building.  When I want to build up the edges instead of taking away, I look for grunge style brushes that are longer rather than circular.  I will place them on the image and move them to the edges if needed so that I can slowly build a border.  Takes a little more time doing it this way but the result is a more custom border that nobody else has made.  Plus, you can also customize it to fit the style of your image a little better.

Try using a wide variety of brushes, opacities, blending modes, and even rotating your brushes.  By rotating brushes I mean, add a single stroke to the image and free transform it (CTRL + T).  Move it off to the side and do the same thing with a different brush.  A good goal is to use several brushes to the point where people cannot say “Oh, he just used _______ brushes.”  Keep ‘em guessing.

Now we can add some texture into the image.  I started off using these two textures:

[You can download both textures, in addition to the one mentioned below, from Dubtastic.com; the file is approx. 8MB]

I pasted Texture 1 in as a new layer, I converted it to black & white and then set the blending mode to Overlay.  I then copied the same layer into a new layer and changed the blending mode again to Overlay. 

Texture 2 was pasted in as a new layer and the blending mode was changed to Overlay.  In the Texture 2 layer, I used a large, soft-edged eraser, to trim the texture away from the figure so that the texture would appear more in the background than just over everything.  I left Texture 2 as it was otherwise, and did not change any of the colors.

The result should look something like the following:

Since this image almost calls for a warm color scheme, let’s warm it up but at the same time add a bit more texture with another texture layer.  Using this reddish/rusted texture layer, paste it into a new layer, above the other texture layers.  Change the blending mode to Overlay.

Next, using a large, soft-edged eraser brush, trim the figure out of this layer so that it blends more into the background.  The result should look something similar to the following:

What I did was place all of the texture layers into their own folder named “Textures” and then created a new folder entitled “Grunge”.  Sometimes I feel like I have a little bit of OCD and my need to organize kicks in.  However, this naming and structuring of files, no matter how insignificant they may seem, has truly helped me in the past.

If you look to the left carefully you will see another folder named “Grunge” with a “White” layer inside.  This is the last step for the image.

After setting up the folder and the layer, I tried a variety of grunge brushes on the image to see what effects they would give.  The blending mode was set to soft light to allow some of the white brushes to show through, but not so much that they over-power the image itself.  Grunge should be a compliment to the image, another component if you will, not always playing the dominant role.

The brushes that I used for the site came from my friend and avid Rod Stewart fan, Angryblue, and are splatter style brushes.  I had initially tested out a few hard line brushes but felt that the splatter would compliment the textures that had been applied a little better.

Wrapping Up
Hopefully this has given you a little more insight as to my process, and the possible process of the original artist in the very first image.  It is important to remember that there are always many ways to achieve a certain effect and that my way might not always be the quickest, best, or easiest.

Here are some guidelines when creating these images:

• Think about composition
• Think about lighting
• Think about the overall image
• Think about how the elements you are adding effect the final image

If you have any questions, just ask someone else.   I mean…. ask me.