Photoshop Tips
Create a Moody Atmosphere with Faux Finish Brushes in Photoshop
Dateline: November 10, 2005
Version: Photoshop CS
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“I wanted to get away from the ‘plain, Hard Round brush’ Photoshop look,” says Grégory Szucs, a traditional and digital painter. “I experimented with an added texture layer using one of the Faux Finish Brushes and colors until I got the right combination, and the final image is how I first envisioned it.”
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Click to enlarge
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Szucs painted the foundation for the image by first painting rough sketch outlines in Photoshop with a black, Hard Round brush at 100% Opacity. Then he roughly blocked out areas with the same brush—increasing the size and varying the Opacity setting while he changed the color. Using roughly 30 layers to build up the painting, Szucs also maintained extra hidden layers—using a layer like an inactive History state to store shapes of color for reference and color sampling.
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In the Brushes palette, Szucs loaded the Faux Finish Brushes from the palette menu and chose Append. Choosing the blocky Stencil Sponge – Wet brush, he set the size to 300 at 40% Opacity,
and painted vertical strokes of short and medium length in red and cyan on a new layer. On another
new layer, Szucs set the Foreground Color to black, selected the Plastic Wrap – Light brush set to
200 pixels, and applied it in short bursts to the right side. On the left side of the layer, Szucs returned
to using the Stencil Sponge – Wet brush and painted long, vertical strokes mixed with short,
horizontal strokes at a smaller size to layer the textures of both brushes.
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The final texture layer was a scanned watercolor set to Overlay at 31% Opacity. “Here, I tried
to take advantage of unsaturated warm zones that fit the mood of the image. It ranges from green
to purple, but it’s mostly orange with some yellow and red. Different saturations and lightness with
these hues put next to each other can produce such effects, but it is pretty specific to the warm
side of the spectrum,” Szucs explains.
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Click to enlarge
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The final image is shown at left.
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