Manipulative Human Artwork with Particles and Flying Flower Petals in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create this Manipulative Human Artwork with Particles and Flying Flower Petals in Photoshop. We will go through several techniques such as hair drawing, particle rendering from a stock image, and making a custom flower petals brush.

This is an intermediate level Photoshop tutorial so some steps can be tricky.

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version.

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

PSD File Download

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

Model by mjranum-stock

Metal Texture

Step 1

Create a new document 724px * 1024px with black background. We will prepare some ground texture first, so let’s load the Metal Texture into Photoshop and select a portion of it with the rectangular marquee tool:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, use the free transform tool to perspective this as shown below:

Then, use a soft eraser to remove the edges of the texture to create some depth:

Add the following 3 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this texture layer:

Black and White

Levels

Layer mask on the levels adjustment layer:

Curves

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 2

Load the model image into Photoshop, and cut out the model as shown below, resize and place it above our ground texture:

Tidy up the edges of the model with a soft eraser, as well as fade the lower body a bit so it blends into the background:

Hint: set the eraser tool’s flow and opacity to around 50% for a subtle effect.

Add a levels adjustment layer as clipping mask to this model layer:

Attach the following layer mask on this levels adjustment layer:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

The hair looks a bit boring in my opinion so I decided to draw some instead. Create a a new layer and draw a path with the Pen Tool:

Choose a 4px hard brush:

Go back to Pen Tool and Right-click on the Path, choose “Stroke Path”:

Stroke the path with this brush, and turn on “Simulate Pressure”:

and you will have the following effect:

I repeated this above steps many times and adjusted the shapes, size and colour of the hair, and I have the following effect as a result:

This can be a lengthy process so be patient :) If you have difficulty with this step, check out this video tutorial I have on the PSDVault Youtube Channel:

Step 4

We can now paint or render some cloud over the background with either a cloud brush, or cloud filter, make sure you adjust the layer opacity to a low value to ensure we only have a subtle effect:

We can add some particles around the model – once again we utilise the metal texture and select a piece from it:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document and place the layer below the model layer, add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to it:

Black and White

Levels

Warp this particle layer so it forms a flying shape:

and here is the effect you will have:

Repeat the above steps and add some flying particles to the right hand side as well:

Step 5

OK we can now make a new brushset for painting the flying flower petals, create a new document (size doesn’t really matter), create a new layer and paint a single dot:

Warp this dot into a petal shape with the warp tool:

Then hide the background layer, go to Image > Trim and trim out the transparent pixels, then go to Edit > Define brush preset:

Give the brush a name, and go the brushes windows and apply the following settings:

Use this brush to paint the flower petals according to the flying Hair path:

and you will have the following effect so far:

I further added some colour adjustments over the image, and you will have the following final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Till next time, have a great day!