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Photoshop Tips
Creating a Figural Illustration in Photoshop
Dateline: May 29, 2006
Version: Photoshop CS
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Using an anatomy book as reference material,
Pascal Yelle created organic shapes by drawing rough shapes
with the Lasso tool on their own respective layers.
Selecting the Gradient tool, Yelle chose a White to
Black gradient, Command/Ctrl-clicked each layer to
load as a selection, and clicked the Lock transparent
pixels icon in the Layer palette. To add shadows,
he applied various Linear gradients to each shape.
Yelle sometimes brushed the edges of the shapes
with black to help define them, then went in with
the Eraser tool to fade other parts on layer masks.
To make the shapes more organic, he choose Filter
> Distort > Shear, clicked the Wrap Around option,
and set points to pull curves in the Shear pictogram
while watching the Preview window.
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Using Poser to create a 3D model of the leg and
foot, Yelle selected the Elliptical Marquee tool, and
made circular selections for the tips of the toes.
Choosing Edit > Fill, he filled them with white. Then
created rectangular selections to fill with White to
Black gradients for the toenails, toes, and foot. Yelle
finished the basis for the foot by adding shadow
detail between the toes around the foot with a small,
soft, gray and black brush.
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“At this point, the feeling of the foot
was there, but I wanted to make it feel
alive by adding depth and movement,”
Yelle says. He experimented with the
placement of the organic shapes over the
foot by cutting and pasting them, then
using Free Transform or choosing Edit >
Transform > Scale/Rotate/Skew/Distort/
Perspective to fit the shapes into the
spaces he needed. “When the texture
piece is placed over the foot, you need
to place them in a way that makes sense
and reflects your vision of how the foot
should look,” Yelle notes.
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When the foot was completed, Yelle
added more shadows and highlights by
selecting parts of the organic shapes, to
cut and paste onto areas of the foot such
as the black tendons from the toes going
up the foot. To finalize the foot and add
more movement and interest, Yelle used
the Pen tool to draw lines connecting
parts of the foot and leg, then chose Edit
> Stroke to color them white at 1 pixel.
The final image is shown at left (click to enlarge).
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