Hello everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics
back with another video tutorial.
Today's we're going to have loads of fun creating an abstract—and quite surreal—collage
style piece of artwork in Adobe Photoshop.
This kind of art style has been popular for years, although originally it would have been
made using traditional photomontage techniques with photographs, magazine images and newspaper
clippings, all cut apart and reassembled using scissors, glue and photocopiers.
These days we can use digital techniques to make things without even getting our hands
dirty!
Plus there's a wealth of source material readily available in the form of stock imagery that
we can pick and choose from.
If you browse Google or Pinterest for some examples of surreal collages, you'll see there's
literally no limits to what you can produce.
I personally love the ones with comical outcomes that are made with completely random combinations.
For this Photoshop tutorial, we'll use a selection of free stock images along with basic Photoshop
compositing techniques to create a fun abstract piece of artwork.
Traditional artists sometimes used paint or pastels to add colour to their work, so we'll
do the same with pixels.
Then to mimic the analogue reproduction methods originally used, we'll distress the result
with some effects that mimic bad photocopy prints with high noise and harsh contrast.
You'll find all the images I used linked in the description area below, so download them
to follow along and create this weird love scene between a skull faced man in a flowery
shirt, and a lady whose head is on fire.
The first source image is a photograph of Barbara Stanwyk and Ralph Meeker, a public
domain image originally from Wikimedia Commons.
We'll combine this with a skull.
Open them both in Adobe Photoshop.
Use the Pen tool to trace around the outline of the skull, staying a few pixels within
the edge to avoid capturing any of the black background in the selection.
Click and drag each point and extend the bezier handles to create smooth curves.
For angular corners, give the point a click to remove the bezier handle, which allows
you to set more acute curves.
Once you've reached the starting point and closed the path, right click and choose Make
Selection.
Hit CMD+C, or CTRL and C on Windows to Copy, then paste the clipping into the main document.
Scale and rotate the skull roughly into place, then hit Enter to apply the changes.
Reduce the opacity of the layer to 80% so you can see the original subject's head underneath,
then hit CMD+T to Transform, and scale and position the skull more accurately.
Next, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate the remove the subtle green colouring.
Add a layer mask to the skull layer, then use the Pen tool to draw a selection around
any excess overlap that needs removing.
Fill this area with black within the mask to effectively erase them.
Use a soft brush to erase the skull where it overlaps the subjects hair.
Painting with black will erase the artwork, while painting with white within the mask
will restore it.
Activate the actual artwork, rather than the mask by clicking the layer thumbnail on the
left within the Layers panel in order to paint over any unwanted details in the shadowy areas
in black.
The hard edge between the skull and the neck can be blended using a soft brush within the
layer mask.
The result doesn't have to be perfect, since the distortions we'll add later will help
disguise any bad Photoshopping.
In order to set the woman's hair on fire, we first need to quickly remove the existing
perm.
Draw a rough selection using the Polygonal Lasso tool, then go to Edit > Fill.
Choose Content Aware from the dropdown and let Photoshop do the best calculation it can.
The rest of the hair can be removed with some sloppy Clone stamping.
Choose a soft brush, then ALT and click a sample of the grey background.
Paint around the remaining areas to delete what's left.
Once again the result doesn't need to be perfect since the messiness will be disguised later.
Open the first fire image into Photoshop and copy and paste it into the working document.
Set the blending mode to Screen to render the black background transparent, then press
CMD+T to Transform.
Scale, rotate and position the flames into place to where the original hair style was,
aiming to cover as much of the obvious clone stamping as possible.
Paste in the second flame image, set the blending mode to Screen and position this image to
overlap the first set of flames.
This second image has a hard bottom edge, so add a Layer mask and blend it in using
a soft brush.
For the next step we need to make a selection of the guy's shirt.
Create a new layer, then trace around the outline using the Pen tool.
Aim to stay fairly accurate, but don't worry about making a precise selection.
Remember that originally collages were cut out with craft knives and scissors, so a rough
selection adds to the aesthetic of this style of art.
Right click and select Make Selection for each segment of the shirt outline and fill
the area with black on the new layer.
When you're done, open up the flowers photograph and paste it into the working document.
Hold the ALT key and click between this flowers layer and the shirt shapes layer below it
to make a Clipping Mask, then hit CMD+T and scale the image to size.
One more addition to the composition is to stick an eyeball over the watch face on the
man's arm.
Use the Elliptical marquee tool to make a selection, holding ALT to start the selection
from the centre, and Shift to make it a perfect circle.
Copy and paste it into the main document and scale it to size.
Add a new layer, then use the Pen tool to trace around each character's clothing.
Fill the selection with a colour of your choice, then change the blending mode to Multiply.
We can use this same process to add some comical makeup to the lady's face.
Draw rough selections around the eyes and mouth and fill them with blue and red.
Once you're happy with your collage, go to Select > All followed by Edit > Copy Merged.
Create a new document and paste in this duplicate of the artwork.
Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and configure to settings to 5%, Gaussian and Monochromatic.
Then head to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.
Change these settings to 100% Amount and 10px Radius.
Select All and Copy, then switch back to the main document and paste this distressed version
at the top of the layer stack.
Swap over to this duplicate again to add a further effect.
Go to Image > Mode > Grayscale and select yes to Flatten the image.
Then head to Image > Mode > Bitmap.
Choose Halftone Screen under the Method dropdown, then a Frequency of 10, an Angle of 45 degrees
and Shape of Round in the following options.
Copy and paste this halftone effect onto the main artwork and change the blending mode
to Soft Layer to add more distressed print effects.
The final result is a surreal piece of collage art that would make the basis of a fantastic
gig poster, unique album cover or just a fun art print in itself.
So if you had fun with this tutorial, please add a Like to the video to help spread the
word.
If you want to stick around for more, hit the subscribe button.
If you want to grab some free resources and browse inspiration showcases of various art
styles, be sure to stop by at my Spoon Graphics website, otherwise thank you very much for
watching, and I'll see you in the next one!