Crabby
Graphics
Author: Marlene LaVarta
Title: Marlene's Pansy tutorial
Skill Level: Intermediate
Additional Files: PANSIES3.ZIP.
PI Version: 7 and up
Terms of Service:
TOS
This tutorial is for fairly advanced Photo Impact users. If you are not familiar with Image Objects and Shape Objects, using the layer manager to select objects, and grouping and ungrouping, please do not attempt this tutorial.
You can download the zipped UFO shapes here:PANSIES3.ZIP. If you are interested in how I made these shapes here is a brief explanation, but this tutorial is really about how to make the pansies look realistic.
How to make the UFO
shapes:
First, find a good quality black and white line drawing of a pansy. Scanned
pictures from tole painting patterns work extremely well. Use the magic wand
tool (search connected pixels checked) and select an area - one of the flower
petals for example. Right click and choose Expand/Shrink. Expand by two pixels,
circle- but this depends on the width of the line. Now choose Edit Menu, Trace,
Selection marquee. I usually set the tolerance to 25. Select 2D Object from the
mode dropdown. If the petal is covered by another petal, I used the path edit
tool make the shape into what I thought the petal would look like if it weren't
covered up. I did that so that I could move and exchange petals to create new
flowers from different shapes. To turn the dark lines in the center of the
front petals into a shape, I started with an ellipse selection that surrounded
all of the lines. I then used the magic wand tool to subtract (search
connected pixels NOT checked) the white area. Finally the mask mode to get rid
of the black edges of any petals that were still selected. Then
Edit-Trace-Selection marquee. The leaves and the teacup are part of the PI
Shapes Library.
Once I had all the shapes made, I filled them with various gradients or solid colors. When you download PANSIES3.ZIP, It will look like this:
Start by setting up your tools. There are three different tools that I use to "paint" the pansies.
You may want to save these brush settings by clicking on the add button in the toolbar.
You will need to ungroup the shape objects in the pansies3.ufo file. From the Layer Manager in the Easy Palette, right click on the first pansy and choose ungroup. We cannot paint on a shape object, so we need to convert it to an image object. Object menu, Convert Object Type - From Path to Image. Do this for each object that makes up one pansy.
Click on any petal except the front most one. We are going to create shadows and dark areas, so zoom in and then choose the burn tool. Move the burn tool along the edges where another petal overlaps the petal you are working on until you have a shadow you like. You may want to darken more near the center of the petal. Do this for all the back petals.
Now find the edges of the petal that are indented and make a quick pass with the burn tool from the indented edge towards the center of the flower. Here is what the front three petals look like at this stage:
Now use the paintbrush with the settings above and make a quick pass from the outermost edges of each petal towards the center of the flower. Now it will look like this:
Now, still with the paintbrush, highlight some of the edges of each petal.
Now use the blur tool to soften the edges. It should look something like this:
And that my friends, is the whole technique. Do this to all the pansy petals. Once you have all the petals done, use the Layer Manager to select all the pieces and group them together. Then move on to the next pansy and ungroup, paint, regroup. There is a button at the top of the layer manager to hide group members. Make sure it is pressed in. This makes it much easier to use the layer manager to click on just the object you are working on. Since all the objects began as shapes rather than image objects, they don't have the bleed through problems that image objects have. These will look equally sharp on either black or white backgrounds.
Here is the first finished Pansy head:
And here is the finished picture:
The same technique is used on the leaves. The teacup just has an image used for the color.
I was amazed at how simple this was once I got my tools set up correctly. Don't be afraid to change the tool settings if what I used are not working for you. You may want to start with more transparency and make more passes. Good luck!
P.S. Here is a picture of some impatiens that my daughter Michelle did using the same techniques:
