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Designer stubble has
always been a matter
of some consternation for
me. How do rugged actors
like Bruce Willis and George
Clooney always manage to
be interviewed sporting just
a couple of days’ worth of
growth? Do they only use
blunt razors? Or do they shave
with hair clippers?
Fortunately, we don’t
need to concern ourselves
too much with the vanities
of Hollywood’s finest. We
can draw exactly the level
of stubble we want, from a
simple five o’clock shadow to a
neatly trimmed goatee, using a
few simple steps. In this tutorial we’ll add some facial
fuzz to our own tough guy,
and look at how to achieve
a more carefully coiffured
appearance as well.
Our original figure is gazing
moodily into the camera, with
just the hint of a bow tie suggesting
his status as a club bouncer. But he
doesn’t look tough enough yet; a bit of
designer stubble will help.
On a new layer in Photoshop, or a similar image editing program, paint the beard
area using a midtone gray and a
soft-edged brush. Accuracy isn’t that
important at this stage, as we can
always mask out any stray areas later,
but try to avoid the nose and mouth.
Add some Gaussian Noise to the
gray you’ve just painted. I’ve used
about 30% Noise here, but the precise
amount you use will depend on the size
of the image you’re working on.
Now to add some more texture.
The original texture layer is
duplicated, and brought to the front.
You’ll find that when you duplicate
the layer, the photograph will now be
grouped with the new layer; when you
drag it to the top of the layer stack,
the original photograph will lose its
grouping so you’ll need to group it with
the original texture layer once again.
Set the mode of this new texture layer
to Hard Light as well, so we can see
through it to the photograph beneath.
Next, we’re going to use Radial
Blur to make the stubble; but first,
we need to set the midpoint for the
blur to act on. Hold Option/Alt as you
draw an elliptical marquee from the
center out, starting from the bridge
of the nose and enclosing the whole
beard area.
Now use the Zoom setting in the
Radial Blur filter at a low setting:
around 5% will be appropriate for this
length of stubble. (Higher settings will
result in facial fur that looks like it
belongs on a dog.) Radiating from the
bridge of the nose makes the stubble
lie in the right direction.
We now need to make that
stubble more transparent – and
we do this by changing the layer mode
to Hard Light, which causes all the
midtone gray to disappear.
Turning the layer to Hard Light
mode allows us to see through to
the skin beneath. This level of stubble
is OK for a day’s growth, but let’s see if
we can beef it up. Make a new Curves
Adjustment Layer, grouping it with the
beard layer, and lower the brightness of
the beard to bring some more strength
back into it.
The result so far is a beard that
looks far too neat. So create a
Layer Mask for the beard layer, and
paint out some of the harder edges.
Painting inside the beard with a low
opacity brush also helps the stubble to
look more varied in depth, which adds
to its realism.
If all you want is to draw a
mustache, there’s a simple
solution: use an eyebrow. QuickMask
was used here to make a soft-edged
selection of one of the eyebrows, which
was then duplicated and distorted to
sit on the upper lip.
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Steve Caplin is a freelance graphic artist specialising in satirical photo montage. He is the author of four books: How to Cheat in Photoshop; Icon Design; The Complete Guide to Digital Illustration and Max Pixel's
Adventures in Adobe Photoshop Elements 3. This article is an extract from How to Cheat in Photoshop, and is reproduced with permission. Copyright 2004, Focal Press.
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