Design an Awesome Freestyle Nature-Themed Artwork in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Design this cool looking,  Awesome Nature-Themed Artwork in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial and some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try!

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Here a preview of the final effect: (click to enlarge)

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

Rock

Waterfall

Tree 1

Tree 2

Hawk

Step 1

Create a new document sized 900px * 800px, leave the background colour as white.

The way I intended for this artwork is somehow the overall shape would resemble a number “1” shape. So Firstly I create a 3D text model using Illustrator (I won’t demonstate the steps to create this 3D effect as it’s irrelevant to this Photoshop tutorial) to use as a model for this abstract effect.

You can download a copy of this image and paste it on your canvas, by clicking the image below:

Of course the final effect won’t include this 3D text, however it gives a good starting point for the abstract effect I’m going to make.

Load the “Rock” texture into Photoshop, grab the Quick Selection tool and select a random piece of rock according to the settings below:

Important: Tick the “Auto-Enhance” option on the top toolbar for the Quick Selection Tool, this will help improving the edges of the selection.

Select Random Rock Pieces from this rock stock image:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, resize, rotate and fit it onto any position you like on the text:

Select another different piece from the rock texture using the quick selection tool:

Paste it onto the canvas, and after you paste it, make sure you use a soft eraser to get rid of any edge roughness, so as to blend it with the background and other rock texture.

Hint: Use the Chalk brush (comes with Photoshop by default), with a 40% flow and opacity to erase the edges. You will find it quite effective in situation like this.

Repeat the select, copy and paste routine, make sure you select a different piece of the rock texture each time, until you cover the whole 3D text as shown below: (Erase the edges with soft brushes along the way)

Also use the dodge and burn tool to darken and lighten some areas of the rocky texture so we have some lighting dynamics and increase the depth of the image:

Please note that the above screenshots only provide an indicative guide, you will need to experience the effect yourself as the textures may differ from mine to yours.

Step 2

Load the “Waterfall” stock image into Photoshop, use whatever selection method you prefer to cutout the waterfall portion, copy and paste it on our document, name this layer as “waterfall”, resize and fit it to the portion as shown below

use soft brush to erase the edges of the waterfall so it blends with the rock and the background:

Add the following Curves adjustment layer on top of the waterfall layer: (make sure to select “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Duplicate the waterfall layer once, flip it horizontally and put it to the lower position as shown below:

Add the following Curves adjustment layer on top of the waterfall layer: (make sure to select “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

We can also do some tiny adjustments for the overall effect. So add the following two adjustment layers on top of all previous layers:

Vibrance

Curves

Here is the effect so far:

We can now hide the original 3D text layer cos we won’t be needing it anymore.

Step 3

Load the “Tree 1” texture into Photoshop. Cut the tree portion of the image with Channel Masking technique (if you’re not familar with this technique, please refer to Step 3 of this post for detailed explanation) and paste it onto our document. Name this new layer as “tree 1”, resize it to a small size and fit it on top of the rocks:

Make sure you erase the edges of the tree layer as depicted below:

Add the following Curves adjustment layer (make sure to select “use previous layer as clipping mask” option) on top of the tree layer to bring out some extra lights:

We can also add some grass texture on to the bottom of the tree for more details. So grab the lasso tool with a 40px feather to select a piece of the grass from the tree  stock image:

Copy and paste it onto our document and put the new layer below the Tree layer, resize it to fit the size of the rock base, change the blending mode to “overlay”, you will have the following effect:

Step 4

I feel like adding more tree images on the rocks for more details. So load the “Tree 2” texture into Photoshop. Use the same channel masking technique to cut out the tree from the stock image, paste it onto our document, into the the following positions:

Top Left

Add the following Curves adjustment layer on top: (make sure to select “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Bottom Right:

Add the following Curves adjustment layer on top: (make sure to select “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Step 5

Load the “Hawk” image into Photoshop, cut out the hawk and paste it onto our document, resize it to a very small size:

To add some motion for the hawk, duplicate this new hawk layer once, apply the following motion blur settings to the duplicated layer:

Change the blending mode the duplicated layer to “Hard Light”, drop the opacity to 30%:

Adding more details, we can also put aonther hawk on the left side of the rock:

and here is the overall effect so far:

Step 6

Ok we’re almost done! For some final adjustments, I added the following two things:

• Lens flare – not a popular option in Photoshop, but in this occasion I think it brings extra effect and color into the image
• Cloud texture – for the surrounding environment

To add the lens flare effect, we can create a new layer on top of all previous layers, fill the new layer with black color, then apply the following Lens Flare settings:

You will have the following effect:

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

You can move, duplicate this Lens Flare layer for more effect:

For the cloud texture, you can either use cloud brushsets or stock image to achieve it. I painted some cloud on the top and bottom of the canvas:

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

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and learn something new!