Hello sunshine!
Today I want to share something about a program I spend most of my time with – Photoshop. I recently invested in the photography subscription which means that I have the „new“ Adobe Photoshop CC 2019. Because of the fact that I am spending money for this program each month I try to use it as often as I cant to get better and better with it.
Today I want to share 3 tutorials for creating line art Instagram pictures with Adobe Photoshop.
Romantic lace-leaves
When I posted this picture on Instagram the reactions were crazy. Today it has reached more than 45 000 people which is insane and I am so happy about the feedback. Now, I want to give you a step by step instructions on how you can create a picture like this.
Before we start just a little note: for every picture you need a photo as a base. I would recommend to have the one specific item in focus which you want to frame with the line art.
- Before you add your photo to Photoshop you need to optimize the colours. (I use Lightroom but you can use whatever you want.)
- Open the picture in Photoshop. It wil automatically be the backgroudn-layer.
- Create a new layer and choose the Pencil-Icon to paint. I would recommend to use at least a size of 15 px.
- Use the pencil to draw a border around your item with a small distance in between.
- For the next step you need a smaller sized pencil, approx. 8 px and a new layer. You have to draw a wave line, but just with the waves in one direction like you can see in the final picture. It’s like painting hundrets of hills next to each other. You follow the whole border around your item with this hill-line.
- Create a new layer.
- The next step depends on your item: if you have small recesses like the leaf, you can draw a drop-shaped area. The easiest way is to draw the drop-shape with the pencil and fill it with the filling tool. (If the drop-shape doesn’t fit your item, I would choose any othe curvy shape but no square or anything edged)
- Now you create a new layer and draw a „petal“ around the colored area. Use the furthest curve of your (drop-)shape to create the curve of the petal. Start with the most central (drop-)shape and add more and more petals each side using the existing petal as a start and the hill-line as the end.
- Last step: create a new layer and add a dotted-line inside each petal and around your (drop-)shape. (If you don’t know how to create a dotted-line continue reading the second tutorial)
Gypsy borders
Now you basically know the steps to create a beautiful line art around an item. But if you want to make it not as romantic as the first one you might prefer this variation. I can it the gypsy-style because it reminds me of gypsy jewelry.
- Before you add your photo to Photoshop you need to optimize the colors. (You can use Lightroom, Phtoscape, or any other program.)
- Open the optimized picture in Photoshop. It will automatically be the background-layer.
- Create a new layer and choose the Pencil-Icon to paint. I would recommend using at least a size of 10 px.
- Use the pencil to draw a border around your item exactly at the border of the item.
- Create a new layer and choose a bigger pencil, approx. 20 px.
- Surround every „curve“ of the item with a second border. This time you need a small space between the borders.
- Create a new layer and reduce the size of your pencil to 15 px.
Open the pencil settings. If you can’t see them (it’s a little symbol of a brush with three lines), you have to activate the symbol: window > brush - Now you need to change the spacing to 250%
- Draw another border following your first two lines. It will be a dotted line.
- Create a new layer and change the spacing back to 0% and the size of your pencil to 10 px. You now have to draw the next border with a little distance to the dotted line. Don’t follow the whole dotted line. Make the new border a bit shorter at each side.
- Create a new layer, change the size of your pencil to 35 px, and the spacing to 250%.
- Final step: you draw the last border with a small distance to the last solid border.
Magical clouds
Well, now it’s time to put it all together:
You now have the basic instruction for line art and dotted lines. You can change the spacing however you like to create different borders or you change the distance between each line.
To create those magical clouds you need galaxy pictures to fill in the clouds.
- Optimize the colors of your photo and add it to Photoshop.
- Add the galaxy picture to the second layer and turn of the visibility (use the little eye-icon).
- Add a new layer and use the pencil (approx. 10 px) and draw some clouds. You can use a template to make it easier.
- Turn on the visibility of your galaxy and put it in the right place, so that it is behind every cloud.
- Now you have to use the eraser and erase everything off the cloud-picture that isn’t behind the clouds.
- To give it an even more special effect, you can now add as many borders as you want. I would recommend to alternate between solid and dotted lines. Don’t forget to use a new layer for each border!
I hope you like this little instruction. Feel free to leave a comment below and I hope to see you again! See you next time! ❤
