Creative Content

In this snippet of a tutorial I'll show you how to go about developing a truly unique painting from your mind. I use Photoshop CS4 but any program that allows you to use layers will work. No computer? No worries, this method works with markers, pens, or pencils on tracing paper too.

A word of warning and caution, this technique in highly addictive and it works best when you are proficient in drawing fundamentals. That said have fun.

First create a rather abstract shape. I use a tweaked round brush so I can take advantage of the pen pressure settings to use with my Wacom.





Duplicate (command + J) this shape on another layer then flip it horizontally (edit menuÑtransformÑflip horizontally) so it is mirrored on the other side. Depending on how dark the image is I will either set the mirrored shape to darken or multiply blend mode located at the top of the layers panel and left of opacity settings. Play around with moving the shape until you get it to where you are satisfied with the placement.



I played around with a few placements including warping the shape (command + TÑwarp) a bit and combining different warped shapes before settling on one that I found interesting enough to me to develop further. You may find something sooner or play quite a bit before choosing one or more shapes to develop into finished painting.












This technique works for developing photorealistic paintings or loose abstract paintings. You can see how I used this method for a recent abstract painting here.

Leave a comment to let me know if this post was helpful, interesting, or if you would like to see more posts like this.