Photoshop Creative No. 140

Painting in Photoshop can be daunting, especially if you’ve never painted in the real world. However, it’s not as tricky as you might think, as this issue’s main feature will demonstrate. Just as traditional artists use photos as references, that’s exactly what we’re going to do in Photoshop. The great thing about digital painting is that you can even use the photo in the artwork itself by painting over it. You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve with a few of Photoshop’s brushes, so turn to p.16 and see for yourself. If manipulating photos is more your style, you’ll also learn how to add realistic light and shadows to surreal compositions; turn any portrait photo into a mechanical robot; and even create text effects using photos of everyday objects.…

There’s nothing more inspiring than surfing the internet and seeing what other artists are creating, and we encourage you to do so. Here are some of our favourite pictures that caught our attention recently, from some of the world’s most exciting artists and designers. Alexander Zienko www.artstation.com/artist/alexanderzienko This is one of my first personal, non-commercial paintings, which was created using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and sketch brushes, which I collected from the internet. I used a Wacom Intuos 5 tablet and made the image on an old laptop. Annie Newton www.behance.net/ izabellagoba2d In this image, I was trying to visualise that through music we can be transported to any corner of the world. This is the header of a concept I made for a music website – Burns Music College. Meike…

Deka Marques photoshopcreative.co.uk/user/DekaMarques Image of the issue I worked on the lighting in detail and tried to give sensitivity to the scene with shadows and mists. Plug-ins were used to soften lines and give a sense of illustration. Blue and orange were used to harmonise the scene. Deividas Nadeika photoshopcreative.co.uk/user/dnjimage I was doing a personal photo shoot for a girl and decided to express her feelings in a creative way. There were three pictures used: the girl, the lake and the sky. I enhanced everything with colour corrections and added the reflection. Théo Dé www.photoshopcreative.co.uk/user/theo When I saw this character, I had this impression that it was flying. So, I decided to create a soothing and dream-like world around it. To create something light, I used light flares and the…

entries Challenge The best entries and overall challenge winner 1 Helena Burström Hula Hooping Through the End of the World I used all of the four images provided. I made three different brushes from the image of fireworks. I made the hula-hooping girl a dark silhouette and scaled her a little bigger. I used different Gradient Fill layers and blend modes. 2 Iona Alvarez Fun Day on Top of the World I created this image with all of the four images and an additional image of a bridge taken from stock. I used a combination of techniques including masks, blending modes, brushes and the Dodge and Burn tools. 3 Moreno Matkovic Whales and Balloons This was a difficult challenge with tricky stock images but I managed to create something in…

Like many of the best design studios, the idea for studioastic came up when its founders were still at university. In this case, it was 10 years ago at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg. As David Oerter and Daniel Übleis explain: “We started as a collective of six classmates working on small client projects and playing around with personal ideas. After graduation Daniel started to work as a freelancer and David was employed at a film production company in Salzburg. The others moved to different cities but David and Daniel kept working together as David had one day a week off for freelance projects.” In 2011, the workload of their freelance projects reached a point where they had to either turn work down or jump in with both…

Hug in a mug 08:30 “Getting my first cup of coffee, checking my emails and getting my daily dose of inspiration (Pinterest, Behance, ¼) are crucial. Furthermore I start my ‘Get stuff done today’ list.” Jour Fixe 09:30 “We update each other about the projects we’re working on, schedule the day and assign tasks to team members. Yesterday’s problems get solved together with fresh input from the others. Time for a second cup of coffee.” Knuckling down 09:30 “Then it’s time to get to work and get some stuff done. Today this is designing new assets in Photoshop and Illustrator for animating later in After Effects.” Lunch break 12:00 “Usually we have lunch together in our kitchen. But on Thursdays we meet with other creatives from our city for lunch.…