doo·dle [dood-l]

A doodle is a type of sketch, an unfocused drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. I am always doodling while on the phone, often over important work related notes. While not all doodles are worth keeping, some are. What follows below is a quick and easy photoshop tutorial to use on your hand drawn sketches. The end result, see below, is not perfected art but rather a very stylish, edgy look. More like what you might achieve with a brush and ink.

Creating a vector mask will ensure that the art is ideal for stock art, as you will be able to scale the final image up and down without losing any quality.

*Note that this tutorial works best when you tend to go over and over your lines. If your doodles are single, delicate, thin lines this tutorial may not be for you.

Step 1. Scan in your doodle. Isolate your doodle. I use the polygonal lasso tool to quickly select around the doodle, invert the selection (Ctrl + Shft + I) and hit delete.
Click here to use my sketch for this tutorial.

Step 2. Remove any colour with Desaturate.
Image >> Adjustments >> Desaturate

Step 3. Adjust Levels to create a black and white image.
Image >> Adjustments >> Levels
* Note this is the most important step. You can see on the image below I have moved the black, grey and white markers towards the peak in the graph above the sliders. You want to keep the lines of your sketch nice and thick.

Step 4. The following steps are going to create the smooth inked look. Go to your Channels palette and select Load channel as selection. See image below.
Invert this selection (Ctrl + Shft + I) so as to select the black.

Step 5. Convert the selection into a path. In the paths palette select Make work path from selection.

Step 6. Back to your layers palette. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shft + N). Fill the new layer white using your paint bucket tool. Name your layer “white”.
You can now clearly see your work path on the white. See image below…
Create another layer and name it “inking”. Your layer pallete should look like the image below..

Step 7. From the top menu in Photoshop create a Vector mask from the current path.
Layer >> Vector Mask >> Current Path
Fill with black (Change the foreground colour to black and click on your image using the Paint Bucket Tool).
Save (Ctrl + S)

Due to the vector mask our resulting art is now a vector and you can scale the “inking” layer up and down using transform (Ctrl + T) and it will not lose any quality.

Thanks for taking the time to read my tutorial. Feel free to leave your comments below…

Finally, just a little side note. Did you know that some professional graphologists (people who analyze handwriting) like Anna Koren believe that these drawings reveal things about an individual’s personality?
Doodle Decoder
According to this decoder for my monster doodles… “Hmm, could you be suspicious? These types of faces indicate a lack of trust, rebelliousness or defensive feelings.”…eek!

A big trend for the last few years has been using texture in design. In this quick Photoshop tutorial I’ll show you how to maximize the texture look, by allowing the background texture to show through the text. This tutorial will be handy if you want to fake some graffiti or stencil art on a wall.

To get the texture to show through your text you could adjust the blend mode of the text layer to something like Soft Light or Multiply, or you could lower the opacity of the text layer, however you won’t have the control to create a really good effect.

Create a new canvas
Ctrl + N
Mine is 600 x 300px if you want to follow along. Save the psd. I named mine texture-to-text.psd

Next open up wall texture photo. I’m using a concrete texture found here.
Drag your texture image on to your new psd and name the layer “wall”.
The concrete image I’m using was huge for this project, so I scaled it down using transform to 25%.
Ctrl + T

You can delete your original “background” layer. See image below…

Select your Type Tool. I’m using an excellent stencil font “Know Your Product” which is available here to download. Type in your text. It doesn’t matter what colour font your choose at this stage, as we will adjust it later.

In Photoshop everything is neat and perfect, so to make it more realistic it’s best to mess things up a little. I rotated my text -1.5 degrees using transform. Ctrl + T

Once you’re happy with the general layout of the text, select the shape of text by going to your top menu options.
Select >> Load Selection…

In your layers menu, click on the “wall” layer.
Then copy Ctrl + C
Then paste Ctrl + V

If you turn off the visibility of “wall” layer and the original text layer, you’ll see the new layer you have created is your text in the texture of the wall.

Remove the colour, from this new layer. We are only interested in the highlights and shadows.
Image >> Adjustments >> Desaturate

Adjust the contrast of this textured writing by adjusting the curves. This step will make the texture “pop”.
(So you can see the result as you go, turn on the visibility of the “wall” layer but leave the original text layer’s visibility off)
Image >> Adjustment >> Curves

The line in the “Curves” dialogue box will appear as a diagonal. Click on this diagonal line twice and drag these two markers until your line forms an “S” shape (as shown above). The lower marker will increase the black values as you pull it right. The upper marker will decrease the grey values as you push it left. The exact shape of YOUR “S” curve will depend on YOUR picture, so watch your image as you move these markers until you achieve the desired result.

The result should look something like the image below.

Now change your textured text to the colour you want by using Colour Overlay.
Layer >> Layer Style >> Color Overlay

Depending on the colour you want, the Blend Mode and Opacity will need to be adjusted.

For dark colours, try using the blend mode Multiply and light colours try Overlay…you’ll need to experiment to get it just right.

Turn on the visibility original text layer. Change the colour of the text layer to the same option as you used for the colour overlay and rasterize the layer. (Layer >> Rasterize >> Type)

Roughen up this layer to reveal some of the layer below by using a scratchy easer. (I used the Spatter 24, flow set to 50%). Lower the opacity of this layer until it looks good to your eye.

Finally some extra styling touches. Add in a couple of paint runs. I used the brushes dribbb27 & dribbb23 (with master diameter set down to about 45), you can download the Free Photoshop Brushes here.

To imitate the stencil look, I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool and created a rough rectangle selection around the text. Then I inverted the selection, and used various small spray and splatter brushes at the corners and a little on the sides.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

There’s already millions of Adobe Photoshop brushes available for free. It’s a good idea to create your own brushes because…
a) It’s super easy and fast to do
b) Not all brushes you download for free are available for commercial use and you never know, if your not doing professional work now, you might be in the future
c) Versatility, you may not find what you’re looking for
d) Freedom to share your brushes with others

To create the intial splatters I used some black Student’s Acrylic Paint, mixed it with water, then experimented flicking a paint laden brush at some white paper. I also found using a teaspoon and dropping drips from varying heights quite good. In 10 minutes I had well over 20 good quality splatters, drips, dribbles and spray.

Step 1.
Scan in your page. Choose Grayscale as there’s no colour needed in your final brush.

Step 2.
Create a new PSD (Ctrl + N). Use the settings shown below…(These settings are for CS2, CS3 and CS4)

* If you are using Photoshop CS then make the dimensions 1000px

Step 3.
On your scanned in image use a selection tool to select the part of the splatter that you like.
Copy (Ctrl+C)
Paste (Ctrl+V)

Step 4.
Drag and drop this layer to your new large PSD. Use Transform to scale the “splatter” layer

Step 5.
The final step for perfecting the brush is to create a nice clean black and white image. The black areas will become the brush, the white areas will drop out. You can see in the image above my layer still shows the paper and has shadows where the paper has rippled.

Use Image >> Adjustments >> Curves…
Click on this diagonal line twice and drag these two markers until your line forms an “S” shape (as shown below). The exact shape of YOUR “S” curve will depend on YOUR picture, so watch your image as you move these markers until you achieve the desired result.

You can also use Bightness/Contrast and crank up the contrast but it’s not as good in my opinion.
Image >> Adjustments >> Brightness/Contrast…

You can use a white paint brush to paint in any extra unwanted parts.
Finally it’s a good idea to use the Eyedropper Tool and click around the non-brush white areas and make sure it is white (ffffff). If it is even of a fraction removed from being perfect white then it’s going to show up when you use the brush multiple times in the same overlapping area, which may be a problem.

Step 6.
Edit >> Define Brush Preset…
Name your new brush and click OK

Your new Photoshop brush is now ready to use!
To create an .abr file, so you can save and share your Photoshop Brushes continue reading…

Step 7.
Select your brush tool, and then select Preset Manager (see image below)

Select the brush or multiple brushes (hold ctrl and click on each one you want) and SAVE.

If you want to download the brush I made in this tutorial use the link below. The brush set contains 14 FREE Adobe Photoshop Brushes -Splatter, drip, dribble. Free to use in commercial and non-commercial projects. Enjoy!

14 FREE Adobe Photoshop Brushes -Splatter, drip, dribble