MIXED-MEDIA ARTWORK

BRING IN PHOTOS, TEXTURES AND DRAWINGS AND BLEND INTO ONE DESIGN

SELECT THE BIRD

01 Open your starting pic. In our case, we use the Quick Selection Tool (press A) to select the hummingbird. Switch to the Selection Brush (press A again) and use a soft round brush to select the fiddly areas, eg around the feet.

REFINE EDGE

02 Click Refine Edge, and adjust Smooth and Shift Edge for a neater selection. With Output set to selection, click OK and copy (Cmd/Ctrl-C). Open ‘pix_1074131 _ paper.jpg’ and paste (Cmd/Ctrl-V) in the bird.

TRANSFORM AND MASK

03 Press Cmd/Ctrl-T, Ctrl/right-click, choose Flip Layer Horizontal and position it in the centre of the canvas, hit Enter to apply. Add a layer mask, and use a black soft round brush at 30% Opacity to fade the wing slightly.

ADD WATERCOLOUR TEXTURE

04 Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer directly above the paper layer and enter Saturation: -60. Copy and paste a watercolour texture below the hummingbird, set it to Overlay and 40% layer Opacity. Press Cmd/Ctrl-T, Ctrl/right-click and choose Rotate 90 degrees right, and enlarge to fill the canvas.

ADJUST THE HUE

05 Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer directly above the watercolour texture, and click the Clip to Layer icon in the bottom-left corner of the adjustment window. Set the Hue to -29.

ADD PAINT SPATTER

06 Copy and paste in ‘pix_2174687_paint_spatter. png’ below the bird layer. Set its blending mode to Multiply. Resize, rotate and position it over the bird’s tail. Add a Solid Color Fill layer of R:59 G:145 B:22, Ctrl/ right-click its layer name in the Layers palette and click Create Clipping Mask.

APPLY MORE PAINT

07 Open another image, in this case of paint spatters. Use the Lasso Tool (press L) to select an area you wish to use, and copy and paste it into your artwork directly above the bird layer, set its blending mode to Multiply. Position it beneath the wing, rotating, flipping and resizing as desired.

MASK AND ADJUST

08 Add a layer mask and blend the texture in at the edges. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, clip it to the paint layer and change the Hue so the paint colour complements the bird. Repeat to add another section of paint down the left side of the tail.

SET A BLUE TONE

09 Add a Solid Color Fill layer of R:64 G:33 B:178. Set the blend mode to Color. Use a black soft round brush at 100% Opacity and around 1600px on its layer mask to remove the blue from the bird’s body and the bottom-right half of the canvas.

DRAW SOME DOODLES

10 Grab some plain white paper and a black marker pen and start creating your doodles and illustrations. Scan in your drawings at a resolution of at least 200ppi, and open the files in Elements.

DELETE THE BACKGROUND

11 Use the Magic Wand Tool (press A) at 60 Tolerance to select the background. Click Refine Edge and adjust Smooth and increase Shift Edge so the selection sits just within the black pen lines. Click OK, and hit Backspace to delete the selected background.

ADJUST THE LEVELS

12 Deselect (Cmd/Ctrl-D), press Cmd/ Ctrl-L and move the black Input slider so it is directly beneath the highest peak of the first black curve. Use the Lasso Tool to select one drawing at a time, and copy and paste them into your artwork.

ARRANGE AND GROUP

13 Press Cmd/Ctrl-T and resize and position them on the canvas. When you are done, Shift-click each drawing layer in the Layers palette and press Cmd/Ctrl-G to group them. Set the group’s blend mode to Multiply.

ADD COLOUR

14 Copy and paste in another image, in this case the rainbow effect, set its blend mode to Multiply, resize and position to fill the canvas. Ctrl/ right-click its layer name and click Create Clipping Mask. Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack (unclipped), choose the Blue filter.