Hey guys, loonnnng time no post. I’m pretty sure every post for the past couple months has began with that. Luckily I have some pretty cool posts in the works to make up for it. This tutorial is for an illustration piece that I did for Origivation Magazine. It’s an indie/alternative magazine showcasing some of the top underground bands.

This illustration is for the band, Breathe Carolina, an extremely unique electronica/pop/hardcore/mind-melt that is making waves with their upcoming third release. So, grab your hat, or socks or whatever and hold on because this one’s a long one.

First things first, I don’t know who the photographer was that took this photo of the band, I tried to find it elsewhere online so I could give a photo-credit but I had no luck. Hopefully the magazine has the information in the editorial. If you or anyone you know took this photo, please shoot me an e-mail so I can give credit where credit is due.

The Project:

A unique 8.5”x11” editorial illustration using an image of the band. I had free creative reign over the project, as long as it was unique. Did I mention it had to be unique? Oh yeah… also, the magazine had to go to press in four days and I of course did a day of brainstorming (playing Warhawk).

So with that being said, let’s begin.

Step 1: Prepping for Sketching

Open a new document at 8.5”x11”, drop the photo in and free transform it into position.

Next, lower the opacity down to the mid-20’s so you can still view the image but your sketch will be prominent.

Step 2: Sketch That Sucka

Everyone has their own style for sketching in Photoshop. Normally my sketches would require a Wacom, but this one could be done using a mouse. I don’t want the sketch to be very prominent in the final result, I want it to just be one of the many things to look at, so a mouse will do just fine.
I use the same brush for almost all of my illustration projects, it’s called “Oil Heavy Flow Small Tip” located in the Wet Media Brushes library. And, it looks like this:

Create a group for your illustration layers so you’ll be able to duplicate them as a set later. Then create your first illustration layer. This will be the outline layer, you’ll want to use a thicker brush and longer strokes. It’s ok to be a little messy with it, it will add personality later on.

Here’s my finished first layer:

The more shading the better, but you don’t want it to be overpowering in the end.

Next, create a second illustration layer, and lower your brush size down. This is for fine details, such as the lighter shading and the texture of the hair.

Once you’re happy with that layer, duplicate it to bring out the detail.

Step 3: Create Your Background

For the background I used the old book texture pack from BittBox, as well as the old film textures from Lost And Taken.

Shut off your illustration layers and drop your chosen texture into your document. Use Free Transform to position it where needed.

Once you have it the way you want it, duplicate it. Now, for an awesome trick my buddy Justin showed me. This doesn’t work on all of the book textures, but it’s a really nice addition to your design when it works. Go to Image->Adjustments->Levels, and once the dialogue box pops up click the “Auto” button. You want to go through the Image menu because you don’t want a Levels layer, you just want to apply the effect to the current layer. Also, if you’re using CS3 or older, you can just go to Image->Adjustments->Auto Levels and it will do the same thing.

As I said, this trick doesn’t work for all textures but it has an awesome effect on some. I constantly just drop textures in to see what Auto Levels will make of it.

Now, change the blending mode to Multiply and drop the opacity down to 90%.

Now you’ve got a unique mixture of the two.

Step 4: Illustration Background

When I was coming up with the idea for this piece I wanted to make it look like the illustration was coming out of the background, literally bursting out. I came up with the idea of doing a separate background style in the middle of the current one, and giving it personality with some BittBox brushes.

I chose the Spraypaint Brush Pack from BittBox to form the body of the illustration background. It doesn’t matter what color you use to paint this in, the shape is all you’re looking for. Start painting in the areas around the subject matter, the messier the better.

Once I have the base of it painted in, I start dropping in the old film textures from Lost And Taken.

Once I drop in the texture I select the shape of the spraypaint layer and apply it as a layer mask on the texture.

Keep adding texture after texture and keep applying the same layer mask. Once you have them in the document, play around with the blending modes and opacity until you’re happy with the final result. My favorite blending modes for this texture pack are Multiply and Overlay, the overlay creates an eerie subtle blue tone, you can make it even more subtle with your opacity. Here’s what I came up with:

Step 5: Integrate the Illustration

Once we have our background complete, now we’ve got to focus on the foreground.

Turn your illustration layer back on. As you see, your illustration is breaking out of the bounding box we created for it, a little will add personality, a lot will make it look amateur.

To fix this I added a layer mask to my illustration group and used a gradient to fade in the bottom of the illustration. You can see the result below.

Once I have the illustration faded the way I want, I duplicate the layer set and make it pop out a bit more.

Step 6: Time To Paint

Turn your original image back on, it will be our paint. The image was a web image, so it wasn’t good enough quality to be sent for print, especially in a magazine. But, I’ve got a little trick that won’t make it even matter.

First, duplicate your image layer. Go to Filter->Other->High Pass, it should already be set to 10 in the dialogue box, then switch the blending mode to Overlay. Next, go to the image below it and go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and blur the photo enough to hide the pixilation, but not enough to get rid of all the detail and color.

Your end result will be a kind of HDR look.

Once you’re happy with your photo effects, drop the photo layers into a group folder and apply the spray paint layer mask.

Now create another group folder inside that group and drop your images into it. Add a new layer mask to this group and fill it with black so the images aren’t visible. Now choose a couple brushes and start painting in the photo.

I was using the BittBox Splatter Pack and Dunlap Studios Splatter Pack 1, both of which are near 2500px for every brush, perfect for large print and perfect for this piece. Here is what I came up with.

I then duplicated that group and messed with some blending modes to pop the color out a bit more and more. Mess around with it until you find what you like, I found the Color Burn blending mode above the High Pass layer worked really well. I also painted brush strokes into different layer masks so their were faint differences. Here is my final result:

Step 7: Handle Your Scandal

Now that you’ve got all the steps done, just put it together. Turn on all the needed layers and see what it looks like.

Detail:

In The End

I had a blast working on this, it’s always fun to have a project that gives you free artistic reign. I’m really happy with the end result and I’m honored to have been asked to do this by Origivation. If Breathe Carolina makes it on to this site, I hope you liked it and I’d love to do more stuff for you, just hit me up.

On another note…. there’s another post to come, so hang in there!