Warning

This tutorial has lots of images .

Written by Jane Braz
My Main site is
http://www.psptubes.com

If you belong to a group or list and want to post this tutorial
please let me know first...Thank You .
jbrazeal@hotmail.com

Ok..I have had several people ask me to write this tutorial so I thought I would
attempt it.

This first part is just a small tut on using the Retouch Tool and how to do the strokes.
If you want to skip this part and go on to the coloring..
go   HERE
 

I am just using a colored blank here to show how to do the blending strokes.
 

Select your Retouch Tool...set with these settings

Now..darken a small half circle area by going over it with
the retouch tool.  The more you go over it..the darker it gets.
I went over this one about 4 times.

Now..Set the Retouch Tool to Smudge, with these settings

Using the smudge tool...start in the shadow area and drag some of the shadow
to the right. At first it may not seem like it's doing anything here but the more
you go over it..the more it will show. Doing it in small amounts lets you control it better.
When I do mine..I drag some of the dark out to the right..then in places
I drag some of the lighter from the right back to the left.
Keep doing this till you get a soft shading.

Now if you want to add a little more darker to it you can use the Paintbrush
Set your foreground color to black and use these settings

Then add 2 or 3 small lines or spots of black to the edges.
You can go over them again to make them darker if you want or you can increase
the opacity settings

Like this
When I took the screen shot..I had only painted the black lines once..but
when I started to blend it..it was too light so I went over them again a couple times to
make them darker

Now..use the Retouch tool set to smudge again..only decrease the size to about 7 or 8.
Keep the other settings the same.
Use the same technique as before..dragging the dark black line to the right.

Now this is what I came up with.

Now..if you use the exact same technique..only set the Retouch Tool to
Lighten RGB..then you can add highlights to the right side.

One more tip now and then on to coloring something besides a green square  *S*

In the sample below..I have darkened a straight area at the top

Now I will drag some of it down using the smudge. Only set the smudge size to
about 7 or 8. The smaller the smudge brush..the more of a line effect you will get.
It makes it looked streaked. Also you can increase the opacity to about 80 or 85.
See how streaked it looks where I drug the dark down ?

Sometimes..you want some things to look streaked. But if you want to smoothe out these streaks
and make it look more blended..just run the brush back and forth from left to right
down at the end of your streaks.
A good tip on using the smudg brush is...don't keep the button down and go back and
forth..instead..click and go to the right..let off the button..then click and go to the left.
It's just like painting with a can of spray paint..left to right..let off..right to left
let off..then back again.  See now how the shading graduates from dark to light ?

All I can say from this point is play with using these techniques!

The size and opacity of your smudge brush determines a lot of how your
shading will look. To get a more streaked effect ..make the brush smaller
and increase the opacity.

The best tip is ..don't do this with the opacity set to 100. It may seem like a good idea
to try to do it all at once but it is better to go over it again in small
amounts till you get it looking the way you want it.

And don't forget the UNDO tool..it's my best friend in PSP..*S*

Now..on to Coloring Something !

NEXT