Hello everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics
bringing you a special video tutorial today based on my new Acrylic Pack that has just
been released over at the Design Cuts Marketplace.
The pack contains loads of design resources to help you create awesome artwork using a
variety of colourful paint textures, Photoshop Brushes, vectors and a fancy Smart PSD, so
in this tutorial I'll take you through the making of a cool design that's made from a
small selection of these items, which you can download for free from the area below
this video.
The artwork we'll be creating is a poster for a fictional summer music festival.
It uses two of the textures from the pack, along with samples from the brush strokes,
brushed circles and brushed underlines vectors.
We'll combine these resources with some typography and shapes within Photoshop to produce this
bright and colourful design.
Begin by opening up the red texture named Mercury Rising in Photoshop.
Double click the Background layer to make it editable, then press CMD+T to Transform.
Scale up the texture while holding the ALT and Shift keys until the painted area fills
the entire canvas.
Hit CMD+I to Invert this layer to switch the red colouring to a bright blue.
Alternatively a Colour Overlay layer style could be used to specify an exact color.
Open the paper texture in Photoshop, press CMD+A to Select All, followed by CMD+C to
Copy.
Switch back to the main working document and press CMD+V to Paste.
Change this layer's blending mode to Multiply, then go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate
to remove the colour.
Reduce the opacity to around 60% to reduce the impact of the texturing.
Open the texture named Summer Harvest.
These PNG versions from the pack are already clipped from their backgrounds, so they can
be used in all kinds of ways in your projects.
Copy and Paste the texture into the main document.
Press CMD+T to Transform, then rotate, scale and position the texture so it creeps onto
the canvas from the lower left corner and spans out diagonally.
A little bit of haloing might be visible when these PNG textures are placed on a darker
background.
Go to Layer > Matting > Defringe and enter 1px to eliminate this.
Double click the texture layer to add a Drop Shadow layer style.
Set it up using Black, Multiply, around 30% opacity, 90 degrees angle, 25px distance,
zero spread and around 50px in size.
Right click the Drop Shadow from within the Layer stack and select Create Layer.
Press CMD+T to Transform, then right click and select Warp.
Bend and adjust the shadow to give it a more natural appearance, as if the paint is lifting
away from the background.
Hit Enter to confirm the changes, then reduce the Fill amount to around 15% to further tone
down the visibility of the shadow.
Select the Rectangle tool, then create a new layer.
Drag out a shape from the centre by holding the ALT key, and hold Shift to keep the proportions
constrained to form a square.
Clear out any fill it might have, then set up a white stroke from the top toolbar.
Adjust the size of the stroke to around 25pt.
Move this shape to snap centrally onto the canvas.
Add a Layer Mask to the rectangle layer, then hold the CMD key while clicking on the thumbnail
of the Summer Harvest texture layer to loads its selection.
Select the Rectangle's layer mask in the layers panel, then use the shortcut ALT+Backspace
to fill this selection with black, and thus effectively erasing this portion of the shape.
Grab the Brush tool, then set up a tip with a hardness of around 75%.
Switch the foreground colour to white, then begin painting on the artboard to bring back
the rectangle shape from the layer mask.
Pick out a brush stroke from the texture, then paint up to this line with white.
Adjust the brush tip to achieve more accurate control, or press the X key to switch the
foreground and background colours to toggle between erasing and restoring the artwork
from the mask.
Follow the square around and restore specific areas between two prominent brush strokes
from the texture to give the impression that the square weaves in and out of the painting.
Double click this rectangle layer and add the same Drop Shadow.
Repeat the process of right clicking and selecting Create Layer, then transforming it with a
warp to produce a more realistic shadow effect.
Use the Type tool to add some text within the centre of the square.
I'm using a nice free geometric font named Montserrat in Bold.
Hold the Alt key while dragging the text element to make a duplicate, then edit the wording
to spell out the name of the fictional festival.
Use the shortcut CMD+T to transform and scale the text elements so they're all the same
width.
For the word 2016 I'm using a premium brush stroke font named Have Heart.
Skew this text slightly so it flows up and overlaps the other text slightly.
Hold Shift and select all the text elements, then position them centrally within the square,
so that there's the same amount of space at both sides.
To reinforce the 2016 brush script, copy the brushed underline vector shape from the sample
pack and paste it into the Photoshop document.
Scale and position it to sit underneath the 2016 wording, then press CMD+I to switch the
black fill to white.
Copy one of the sans-serif text elements and scale it down so it can be used to type out
the list of fictional artists playing at this fictional summer sounds festival.
Select all of these new text elements and use the align buttons in the toolbar to line
them up centrally, and distribute the spacing evenly between them.
Copy the rough vector brush stroke from the sample pack and paste it into the Photoshop
document.
Squash it down to form a thin line, then use it as a divider between the text elements.
Hold Shift and select each text element and divider shape, then hold the ALT key to drag
out a duplicate set for the other side.
Edit the wording to list more fictional artists.
When you're done, select all the elements and snap them centrally to the canvas.
Copy the brushed circle vector shape and paste it at the top of the design.
Use it to house a logo, which can be given a Color Overlay with an eyedropped colour
from the paint texture to help it fit into the design.
Use another text element to type out the word 'Presents' underneath.
Scale it down but increase the tracking to around 500 to give it more presence.
The final artwork makes clever use of the acrylic paint textures to create an abstract
poster design for our fictional summer sounds festival.
We've seen how the JPEG versions of the textures are great for backgrounds, while the PNG versions
are really handy for overlaying onto other elements without the white background getting
in the way.
The collection of vector shapes in the pack can be used alone, or combined with the textures
to complement the painted theme.
Be sure to check out the full Acrylic Pack in the Design Cuts Marketplace to see all
its contents, it includes 17 textures just like the ones we've used here, along with
Photoshop Brushes, seamless patterns and vector shapes, as well as a Smart PSD while allows
you to paste in your artwork and have it instantly converted into an acrylic painting.
So I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, remember to subscribe if you did to be the first to
see my upcoming tutorials.
Head over my website at spoon.graphics for more written tutorials and to grab some free
design resources, otherwise thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.