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Cilenia Curtis: Get Artsy with Brushes as Masks
Hi there and happy to be back with you on the RP blog for some more artsy tips and techniques.
As most know, I LOVE to paint and get artsy in all of my artwork, real and digital. I create many of my digital brushes and items from my real life artwork and brushwork. But in digital, you can get so much more artsy and even change your mind easily with no mess. OK, I like the mess, but you get what I mean.
So let’s get a little messy in digital with no real life mess to clean up.
Loading Your Brushes
In Photoshop it’s easy to load a brush and it can be done several ways.
Option 1: Simply drag your ABR brush file to your PS icon on your desktop. You will see the brushes appear at the bottom of your brush panel.
Option 2: Double click the ABR file to have it automatically load into Photoshop. Again, you will see the brushes appear at the bottom of your brush panel.
Option 3: In your Brush Panel
1. Click on the tiny pull down box you will see to the far top right of you panel.
2. Click on either Load Brushes (to add to your brushes), or Replace Brushes to delete what you have and replace with the new brushes.
3. Browse to where you have your brush ABR file saved and click on Load at the bottom right of the dialog box.
You can always reset your brushes by going to this menu and choosing Reset Brushes for the default PS Brushes.
Using brushes as a clipping mask is a fun and easy way to give your photos and papers an artsy feel to them.
Notice in my layout below, I have done this on both my photos. Here is how I did it.
Credits: Follow Your Art April Explore Bundle
1. Create a New Layer where you would like your photo to appear.
2. Drag in your photo of choice above this layer.
3. Clip your photo to the blank layer. Your photo will disappear, don’t worry, we are going to “paint” it back in with our brushes.
• CS: Shft+CMD/Cntrl+ G OR Right Click and choose Create Clipping Mask, OR hover between the two layers and hold the ALT key and click, all done while on your photo layer to clip to the layer below.
• PSE: CMD/Cntrl G OR hold your ALT key between the layers and click, OR from the menu Layer>Group with Previous.
My personal favorite is the Alt key and clicking between the layers in both programs.
I’m going to show you how this will look first with a white background and using black as my foreground color to brush in the mask so you can see clearly what I am doing.
1. Select your brush tool (B)
2. Select one of your brushes
3. Now “stamp” or “paint’ it down on your blank layer below your photo. You should now see your photo appear.
NOTE: You can use your move tool on either the stamped brush or your photo layer and size accordingly also at this point.
IF not enough of the photo is appearing, you can stamp some more of your brush (or use a new brush), where you would like to see more of your photo, or if too much of your photo is showing, you can erase some of the mask too with a brush. If the brush you are using is not dark enough, simply unclip your photo temporarily, duplicate (CMD/Cnrtl J) and merge the two mask layers and clip your photo again.
TIP: When I am editing a mask, I like to make my brush smaller and lighten the opacity to blend in my edges of my mask. It’s a personal choice.
In the example above, I used a smaller watercolor brush to ‘paint in darker around Bailey’s face where the original brush was a little opaque and I also painted in more of our art piece to show that also in the mask. I then erased a little off the top where her Mama was sitting. Pretty kewl huh?
I have put the red arrow where I added or deleted parts of the brushed mask to make it easier for you to see.
TIP: You can even change the blending mode of your layer mask or the opacity too to create even more kewl effects. Done easily with papers too!
Hope you enjoyed today’s little artsy lesson. And to get you started on your own lovely artsy creativeness, I’ve got a download for you today. A couple of artsy mask Photoshop brushes to play with. Now don’t just sit there, go play!
DOWNLOADS
