Photoshop Tutorial: Mimicking Natural Media

Mimicking natural media in Photoshop CS3

by Karyn Lewis

This tutorial covers some basic techniques you can use to create digital art that has the look and feel of traditional media.

1) Part One: Playing with PS brush presets

You can make your own brushes, but Photoshop comes with some built in presets that already mimic natural media and are a good starting point.

They are:

• Natural Media
• Dry Media
• Wet Media

I use the brushes in these sets so often, to make things easier on myself, I loaded all three into my brush menu, then saved them as a set.

In the cat sketch above I used the Conte Pencil on Bumpy Surface, Drippy Water and Large Texture Stroke brushes. Here they are below, along with some of my other favorite Photoshop presets:

To change your brush, click on the the brush control menu under “window” or click the brush icon over in your Tool Presets (See example, left).

These brush tool controls are incredibly powerful. With them you can change the size and shape of your brushes, adjust the your settings to tablet pressure or pen tilt, cause them to scatter as you draw, add texture, play with color and opacity dynamics and more.

2) Part Two: Texture Texture Texture

For me, this is the single biggest secret in making natural looking media in Photoshop.
You can make or use your own custom textures, but Photoshop has several built in presets. My favorites are the “Artist Surfaces” and the paper ones.

A quick note on the texture settings (See right):

Scale: changes the size of the texture

Mode: changes the amount of texture in your brush stroke. This is pretty variable depending on what brush you are using. I find that Subtract (pictured to the right) tends to give you the most texture. Color Burn and Multiply are also good choices.

The best rule of thumb is to experiment and find what settings work best for you.

3) Part Three: Color Dynamics

Color Dynamics is another great tool that gives your digital work a more traditional feel.

How it works:

Basically, color dynamics takes your foreground color and mixes it with your background color as you draw/paint  (See example below).

What’s so awesome about this is that you can combine entirely different colors, or different shades of the same color, without having to go back and keep picking up different colors with your eyedropper or selecting color by hand.

I like to think of it as a painter who’s got two colors going at the same time on a dirty brush. Using color dynamics with slightly different hues or values of the same color is also a great way to add a bit more liveliness to your strokes and colors with very little effort.

And it’s very customizable. You can adjust how much hue, saturation, brightness, purity is affected. And you can set it to go crazy with mixing foreground and background, or to be subtle. I like to control it by pen pressure, but you can also choose fade, pen tilt and more.

4) Part Four: Layering your techniques

Digital media is, by it’s nature, flat. What you need to create is the illusion of a bumpy canvas or the 3-D layers of paint on paint.So when you’re working, don’t settle for one of these effects discussed in this tutorial. Instead, use a variety of brushes, textures, and techniques  in the same work to create interest and depth.

5) Part Five: Don’t be perfect!

Lastly, the final key in making your digital art look like traditional art is to be messy. For example, if you’re mimicking watercolor, let your ‘paint’ bleed a little bit outside the lines.

Going for a traditional pencil sketch? Leave some of your lines sloppy, sketchy and light to simulate pencil marks.

Remember, when you erase layers of pencils on real paper, you can’t always get rid of them entirely. So you should leave a hint on your digital paper too. Erase in stages, with lower opacity.

If you’re going for acrylic or oils, steer clear of the overly smooth airbrushed look, and let the energy of your strokes show.Try using textures to create a dry brushed-looking top layer, and use color dynamics to get muddy, or surprising, layers of ‘paint’ color.

For watercolors, don’t cover every inch of your work. Remember to to use the white of your canvas just as you would the white of your watercolor paper.