‘And the Cupboard Was Just Plain Bare’ 2008-01-19 Hangers — For Illustration Friday, ‘Plain’.

2008-01-19 Hangers — Rich Texture, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Been working through an amazing book on Photoshop techniques, and kicking myself for never having given myself a chance on this incredible package.

It is literally THE most powerful art creation tool in the universe.

While I’ll stick to ArtRage for all the painterly stuff, I’ll be playing a lot more with the range of techniques Photoshop opens up for me.

In this one, I took a reference pic of some coathangers on a rack in our bedroom.

I then mashed the photo around, playing with things like contrast and hue and all sorts.

Then I used my lassoo tool to loosely model shapes which I filled with colour.

The original pic is no in this picture. It’s entirely hand drawn in shapes.

I used loads of layers. A different layer for each coathanger, for example.

Finally, I added some texturing to the flat colour I used.

I made this pic as a response to Illustration Friday‘s topic, ‘Straight’. At least, I THINK that’s what the topic is. Don’t recall. Will check later.

[UPDATE:]

Nope. The topic is ‘Plain’. So I think I’ll retitle this pic, ‘And the cupboard was just plain bare’.