Create Grungy Style Artwork, Mixing with Great Lighting and Shattered Effect in Photoshop

Posted on January 5th, 2010 under Photo Effect, it has 32 Comments and 37,824 Views so far.

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this Grungy Style Artwork, Mixing with Great Lighting and Shattered Effect in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial and some steps can be tricky, but why not just have a try :)

Along the way, we will cover creating shattered/disintegration effect, lighting effect, how to generate more depth to your image, as well as using Pen Tool to create awesome abstract lines. This tutorial is also a great opportunity to practice your brush painting skills.

Here is the preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Alternatvie version with different colour scheme: (click to enlarge)

PSD File for this Tutorial

You can have this PSD File for only $2.00 via Paypal! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be redirect to the download page automatically.

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need to the following stocks:

Female Model

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 1000px, fill the background with black colour. Create a new layer on top of the background called “grunge texture”, download a choice of your grungy brushset from sites such as qbrushes.net or brusheezy.com, load it into Photoshop, and use them to paint a light-grey background on this texture layer, as shown below: (make sure you set the flow and opacity of the brush to a low level, around 20-30%)

Once you’re happy with the texture, duplicate this layer once, and resize the duplicated layer as shown below:

Now here is a trick you can use to quickly add some depth to the image – after resizing the image, don’t cancel the selection, straight-away right-click and choose “perspective”, as shown below:

Perspective your selection as shown below:

Erase the upper edge this layer as shown below, so the two layers can sort of blend together:

And you can by doing so, we add depth to the background texture so making it easier to add the model onto the canvas later on:

Step 2

Load the Female Model stock image into Photoshop, use whatever method you like to extract the gril out, copy and paste her onto our canvas, resize and position it as shown below:

Name this layer as “model”.

Apply the following Smart Sharpen filter on this model layer:

Add the following three adjustment layers on to this layer, make sure to tick the “use preivew layer as clipping mask” option:

Black and white

Make sure to change the blending mode of this Black and White layer to “Vivid Light”

Curves

Vibrance

and you will have the following effect:

duplicate the orginal model and drag the duplicated layer to the top, apply the following Spatter filter to it: (Filter > Brush Stroke > Spatter)

You will now see the whole girl image is covered by the shattered piece – of course we don’t want that. So add the following layer mask to hide those parts we don’t wish to see:

By doing so, we only leave the shoulder and the upper legs part to have shattered effect.

Change the layer blending mode of this layer to “Hard Light”, and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Duplicate the original model layer once more and drag it on top of all previous layers. Apply the following motion blur settings to it:

Add the following mask to the motion blur layer:

Change the layer blending mode this layer to “Screen”, you will have the following effect:

Optionally, you can duplicate this motion blur layer a few more times, and drag them around the model’s body for more effect.

Step 4

Now let’s create some abstract lines. Firstly turn off all previous layers (except the background grungy texture layer) we made so that we have more space to use our creativity. Create a new layer above the grungy texture layer, grab the Pen Tool and draw a path as shown below:

Stroke the path as shown below with a 3-5px soft brush: (You can choose any colour you like)

You will have the following effect or similar:

After stroking the path, duplicate it once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings to it:

You will have the following effect:

You can see by doing so we add a glowing effect to the abstract line we created.

To futher enhance this layer, we merge this two layers, duplicate the merge layer once, and change the blending mode to “Vivid Light”, you will have the following effect: (I resized this line a bit):

That’s all for create the abstract line. Then we can simply duplicate, position those lines around the model, as shown below:

Step 5

Now we can add a bit of shadow for the model because I intend to have light coming from the top. So we simply create a new layer called “shadow” just below the original model layer, grab a soft black brush, paint some shadow on the bottom:

Create a new layer, use the grungy brushset you donwloaded or choose a different brushset, paint some grungy texture around the model’s body, as shown below:

This step can be a bit tricky to complete – try mixing different brushes in the set, set the opacity and flow to a low level around 30-40%, and use the tip mentioned in the screenshot. It’s all about getting used to the brushset and find the feeling :)

Once you finish the painting, duplicate this layer once, apply the following Motion Blur setting to it:

and you will have the following effect:

Add the following three adjustment layer on top of it, with respective layer masks:

Curves

Curves Mask (Use Eraser with Grungy Brushset, along with soft round brush to create this effect)

Levels

Levels Mask

Color Balance

You will have the following effect so far:

Step 6

Now let’s add some final touch-up for the image. To do this, I decided to use Len Flare + Cloud Filter to add some highlight to the model’s body.

The trick is really simple: Create a new layer on top of all previous layers, use the Lasso Tool (with 25px feather) to create a selection, render some cloud inside it then apply the following Lens Flare settings:

and you will have the following effect:

We then change the layer blending mode to “overlay”, “color dodge” or “vivid light”, totally up to you. Make sure you duplicate this layer a few times, and move them around the model’s body for more highlights.

Below image shows the areas I chose to highlight: (I turn off color so you can see the arrows a bit better)

Important: experiment with layer blending mode with this cloud filter + lens flare layer, you will be amazed how interesting this combination would bring you :)

Here is the effect so far:

Final Step

For this final step, I flatten the image, smart sharpen it a bit, changed the color scheme and adjusted the brightness and contrast as well. I will leave those settings up to you so you can experiment with them :)

Here is the final effect for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Alternative version: (click to enlarge)

That’s it! Hope you enjoy this tutorial! Drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out!

taryarL Says:
in step 2
after i add three adjustment layers
(black and white,Curves,Vibrance)
the model is totally turn into black and white
but ur is atill have a color
did i make smoething wrong?
James Qu Says:
@taryarL: sorry buddy the blending mode of the black and white adjustment layer should be “vivid light”.
Thank you so much for pointing it out “)
ramirez Says:
Nice tutorial man :) it shows a lot of different techniques that we can be mixed around for interesting effects. Thanks for taking the time.
taryarL Says:
thank for answer me back and thank for always care for what
we said :)
here i start follow the tut again :)
Dumm Says:
I like what you did with the girl. nice work
Patrik Says:
Hi
Great picture, but can u plz make an tutorial video? I really want to learn but this is to hard, i cant find all the tools in photoshop. Make an tutorial or an dvd with some videos and i´ll buy it directly ;)

//Patrik
Erik Says:
How do i resize the image, im a totally beginer… :=)
portrait Says:
What’s the color you used in that faded background?
Chelsea Says:
@Erik go to Edit -> Free Transform. The hold your shift key down to keep the image constraints or whatever they’re called lol. Or when you have the layer selected you can do Ctrl T. Then you can right click on it when you’ve done that and select lots of nifty other things (like perspective). Hope that made sense, good luck!

That was another great tutorial! I love ‘light’ stuff like that, and grunge art is way cool, but I never realized how awesome it could be until I started using photoshop! Thanks so much for the tut!

The only thing is I did all those Layer adjustments (the first 3 that we do) and my image didn’t look like that…It had the pink but her body was completely black; you couldn’t see the stripes or anything. I did it over and over but I kept getting the same result… Maybe I’m just doing the same thing wrong lol. But in thie end I copied that layer, added a layer mask then erased the black part, and that worked all right.

I really like the way mine turned out, and that’s like a first for me lol. Thank you!
jeprie Says:
Nice tuts, but looks like you captured the screen with Photoshop zoom level at 66% or 33% and the results are very jaggies. You should consider using 25% or 50% to make it smoother and then resize it (if needed).

Thanx, will try it soon. I bookmarked this page.
James Qu Says:
@chelsea: thanks for helping out answering questions! really appreciate it!

@jeprie: thank you so much for the advice!
hedda Says:
Thank you, this was a fun tutorial – some nice techniques! If I might suggest a couple things? It would be a good idea to have screenshots of your layers panel so people get an idea of what the layers should look like. Also, a step-by-step guide on using the pen tool to achieve the swoosh. I know how to do it, but other may not. :)
Ryan Says:
Nice tutorial, will be helpful to a lot of people. For anyone serious about photoshop check this out (USA only) http://bit.ly/psoffer
rae Says:
cool! I really need time to learn this. love this website.
Sanne Says:
Wow! Really nice tutorial! Thanx! Learnt lot’s of new stuff! :D
mmiicc Says:
where can i find the brush you used?
Joseph Says:
I did the the 3 adjustments with the vivid light and i still got an black body. also i tried the spatter efffect turns red not gray (thats with the hard light)