"Blending 102"

 

~Supplies~

~PSP - any version
~Animation Shop
~Tube of choice - I've used a haunting image by artist Jenga, which can be purchased
at AMI. Please don't use without a license.
~Stock image by moonchild-ljilja HERE
~Rose by tammysue HERE
~Sword by Fairiegoodmother HERE
~Font of choice - I've used Nicotine Stains.
My supply zip - Artmama Mask 01 (use as is, don't put it in your mask folder), brush
(put in brush folder), and background texture.

~♥~Let's Begin~♥~


1. Open Bleeding Love texture and your tube - c/p tube as a new layer onto texture
resizing if needed, then moving to the left side. Because her hands are the most
dramatic focal point of this tag, I wanted to bring more attention to them. Grab your
freeform selections tool and carefully trace around just her hands and when done -
Selections - promote selection to layer - select none. Now her hands are also on their
own layer. Move back to tube layer in your layer palette - change blend mode to hard
light and drop to 59 opacity - Effects - edge effects - enhance. Grab your eraser tool
- size 40; hardness 40; step 10; density 44; thickness 100; opacity 37. Carefully
erase the right edges of her hair just to soften the edge a bit so it blends more to the
background.

2. Move back to hand layer - change blend mode to luminance - drop opacity to 57 -
Effects - edge effects - enhance.

3. C/p the rose & place where desired. I changed my blend mode to overlay and
lowered the opacity to 79 - but play with what suits your tag best. Do the same with
the sword (soft light-100), mask layer (burn - 43) and stock background
(luminance-17). I erased parts of the stock image that bled under the Jenga tube.
The key to a good blend is layering and having each image make a seamless
transition into the next image. Nothing but your main image should pop out at you,
blends need to be "read" because they're interesting with manyy different features in them
to look at.

4. Grabbing your brush tool - find the Artmama Pain brush and using a muted color
from your blend, tap your tag where you would like the word in the color of your choice.

5. If you'd like to add a quote or song lyrics as I did, this is the time to do it. I used
the words to the song "Bleeding Love" because when I first saw this tube it came to
mind. For my blend, most of the lyrics didn't matter though I did want them on it for
their effect. The words I wanted to highlight were what you can easily see at the
bottom "you cut me open". I achieved that effect by using my selections tool on that
line of text just like I did with her hands, and promoted that line only to a new layer and
changing the blend mode to burn.

6. Highlight the background layer in your layer palette. Effects - illumination -
sunburst with the following settings (or move the light to wherever your window is):

7. Once you're satisfied with your tag (I can't say "happy", the tag is too dismal for
that) add your artist's copyright information and your name and save as a png file.

I hope you've enjoyed Lesson 2 in my Blending Series. You can find Blending 101 HERE.
 

 

This tutorial was written on January 17, 2009 by Artmama.  Any resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental and accidental.