Art History Brush Tutorial
From Tutiki
Art History Brush Tutorial
By MGlennn (Mike)
OK...first of all, two weeks ago I didn't know what the art history brush was. So..........why should I do a tutorial..???? Good question....
I am thinking that as a beginner I may approach this in a way that other beginners might find more useful than a tutorial by someone who actually knows what they are doing...
So here goes....a beginners approach to the art history brush (AHB)...
Original below....this is the photo of an orchid that we are going to try to turn into a painting...
Next you have a choice...you can either open a photo that has been sized, cropped and converted to 8-bit already....or.....you can just convert "this" photo to 8-bit as is shown below....go into the image>mode box and select 8-bit...
Next you want to set the "state" for the AHB....this means tell the AHB what to try to imitate....to do this we will click on the snapshot icon as illustrated below.....
Below shows what it looks like after clicking the snapshot icon...VERY IMPORTANT...click in the box next to "snapshot 1"....a little brush will appear telling you that you have set the "state" for the AHB...
Now we need a new layer....
This shows what it should look like so far...after the new layer (empty)
Next we want to create the Background for the "painting"...or you could call it the "canvas"...I do it by filling the empty layer you just created with a color....any color....could be white...could be black....anything....I chose one that I thought was complementary to the photo....
Go into the edit menu and choose fill (Edit>fill)..
This shows me picking the color...
After you fill that layer, this is what it should look like....notice you can't see the orchid anymore...
Next you want to make the layer you just filled transparent so you can see the orchid underneath and be able to paint better....set the opacity of this layer to about 80% as shown below....notice the orchid showing through :-)
OK... almost ready to paint. You could just start painting on this layer, but I like to create a new empty layer to start my painting in...leave it empty
Now....make suuuuuuure the layer you just created is the "active" layer and then click on the AHB....go up into the brush menu and pick a brush style and size.....I picked watercolor 67 pixels....see below...also note the other settings in the brush menu....
Now take the brush and make a pass over your "canvas" from left to right..you do this by clicking and dragging.....as you see below, the AHB "magically" knows when to change color...it is trying to return the "painting" to the state you set in the beginning.....it will look very abstract, however, because the pixel size of the brush is so big...much like in real painting you would use a big brush for big stuff and a tiny brush for finer details....I made four passes with different sizes of brush (shown in red..70, 40, 20, 10) to show you the difference the different sizes make.....
In the illustration below, all I am doing is making multiple passes from left to right, over the "canvas" with the 70 pixel brush....as you can see, it is still pretty abstract....
Next make another new empty layer....you will paint in this layer with a smaller brush...
All I am doing is creating a new empty layer each time I change brush sizes (my method....lots of other ways to do it)....and I am choosing a smaller brush each time....70 pixels first then about 30 then about 10 then about 5 etc.....make short brush strokes over the canvas and you will see the detail come out more the more you "paint" and the smaller the brush...
I ended up with a brush of about 5 pixels.....here's the "final" product....
happy to answer questions...this is a simplistic approach (intended)...there are many other variations....try it...you will get hooked like I did after seeing what DianeR has done......
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regards, Mike
http://mglennn.smugmug.com/
Comments or Questions to this tutorial are always welcome, a discussion and comment thread is located here:
http://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?p=614057#post614057
Paul aka Montydog 09:02, 3 August 2006 (EDT)
