Designing a Vintage Watercolour Artwork with Old Newspaper Elements in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we’ll explore the steps to create a sophisticated Watercolor Vintage Artwork with Old Newspaper elements in Photoshop.

The PSD file of this tutorial is available via the PSD Vault VIP members area.

Throughout the process, you’ll discover techniques for blending custom watercolor brushes with aged newspaper textures to achieve a vintage ambiance in Photoshop. Given the intermediate level of this tutorial, some steps may pose a challenge – if you’re ready for it, let’s dive in.

Preview of the final effect: (click to enlarge)

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

Watercolour Brushes (choose one from the list)

Paper Texture

Model

Newspaper

Step 1

Create a new document sized 700px * 1020px with white background, use the watercolour brush you download, paint some texture over the background:

Pro tip: Adjust the brush flow and opacity to around 40% for a subtle effect.

Load the paper texture into Photoshop, select a portion as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over our document, set blending mode to “overlay” for this new layer:

Add the following 2 adjustment layers on top:

Levels

Curves

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 2

Load the model image into Photoshop, cut out the model and place it to the position shown below:

Apply the following Watercolour Filter to this new layer:

Add a layer mask to this model layer, and use the watercolour brush as eraser to remove some parts of the model, as shown below:

Apply the following “Reduce Noise” filter to this model layer (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise):

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 3

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

Black and White

Layer mask on black and white adjustment layer:

Levels

Layer mask on levels adjustment layer:

Curves

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 4

Load the Newspaper image into Photoshop, use Lasso Tool with a 10px feather to select a portion of it:

Copy and paste the selection below the model layer, duplicate this layer a few times, rotate and resize them, then place them around the model as shown below:

Also place a copy above the model layer to the position shown below:

Use a soft eraser to remove the edge of the newspaper texture to fade it into the background:

Paint some more watercolour texture on the model as shown below:

I further adjusted the colour balance a bit to give it a bit of old paper feel, and here is my final effect:

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