1wonderment | [Tutorial #22] Purple Paint-y Icon

From this:

to this:

Requested by

skysedge for Ask the Maker 2025 @

icontalking

For the sake of the tutorial, I will start with the background, but I already had my subject Kuraki Mai prepped before I started work on the background.

I knew that I wanted to have a moon in the background (one of my favorite songs by Kuraki Mai has the English lyrics "eternal moon"). I chose this texture by

bambinainnero from her When Night Falls set.

(Click to enlarge)

I was feeling a bit nostalgic and wanted to use the old school frames (who remembers these?) so I used this texture by 77words. I first added a color fill layer of 357591 and pasted the texture (I flipped the texture horizontally and inverted it) into the layer mask.

Next, I added this texture by

lookslikerain and set it to screen, 100% opacity. The black from the moon texture was too black, and the contrast between the frame texture was also too much. Now the icon feels a little more cohesive.

Another frame texture! I added a color fill layer in 0000ff and pasted this texture by

77words into the layer mask. It actually ended up covering most of what I previously did, but you can still see a bit of the first frame layer and the "sparkle" texture.

Now to add my subject. I cutout and resized Mai and pasted her into my icon.

Mai was sticking out a little too much and needed to be brighter so I added a copper gradient map (Photoshop preset) and set it to soft light, 40% opacity.

Next, I wanted to brighten the icon a little more while make the shadows a little darker. I added a brown and cream gradient (1d1507 at 5% to ece8ce at 45% to fbf6e3 at 50% to ece8ce at 55% to 1d1507 at 95%) and set it to soft light, 20% opacity.

Mai was looking a bit too pale so I added a gold and hot pink gradient map (e6b224 at 0% to ae0052 to 100%). I set this layer to normal, 12% opacity.

The icon doesn't look very cohesive at this point. I wanted to add some color to tone down the warm tones. I added Night, a curves layer from

jaejunggim's Holiday Special Gift 2011 set, but here's a screenshot of the curves layer if you'd like to try and do it yourself.

I added another curves layer to brighten the icon. For the setting, I used the Lighter (RGB) preset in Photoshop, but, again, you can just follow this screenshot.

The curves layer from earlier made Mai's hair bluish, and I wanted to keep the warm tones in her hair. I added a gradient map layer and chose this peachy gradient from Evey-V's #1 Gradient Pack (2nd row, 2nd column from the left) and set it to soft light, 100% opacity. I masked out everything but Mai's hair.

Now for some color in Mai's hair. I drew some strands in 7073a8 and set the layer to screen, 100% opacity.

Next, I drew some strands in b5ffb3 and set the layer to soft light, 100% opacity.

I duplicated the previous letter and set the layer to screen, 100% opacity, to make the light green stand out a little more.

I drew some strands in 5686b0 and set the layer to screen, 100% opacity.

Mai looks a little bland so I duplicated the original cutout, brought it to the top, and set the layer to soft light, 100% opacity. Now, she looks a bit more defined and shiny.

The icon still looks unfinished and not very cohesive. I decided to add some textures to give some uniformity to the icon.

I added this texture by

midnight_road and set it screen, 100% opacity, to blend in the blue frame and the moon background together and to add some interest to the icon.

Next, I added this texture also by

midnight_road and set it to screen, 100% opacity, to add some shine and to minimize the contrast in the colors.

I also wanted to soften the icon a little bit and add a bit of shading in preparation for sharpening later. I copy-merged and pasted the layer into the icon (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E or CTRL+SHIFT+CMD+E) and then used the cutout filter (Filter>Filter Gallery>Artistic>Cutout) with the following settings: Number of Levels: 3, Edge Simplicity: 1, Edge Fidelity: 3.

Now for the sharpening! I copy-merged again and pasted the layer into the icon (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E or CTRL+SHIFT+CMD+E) and then used the paint daubs filter (Filter>Filter Gallery>Artistic>Paint Daubs) with the following settings: Brush Size: 1, Sharpness: 1, Brush Type: Simple.

The icon still had too much contrast between the brighter parts and the darker parts. I added this texture by

midnight_road, erased or masked out Mai, and set the layer to soft light, 100% opacity.

To bring a little brightness to the bottom right part of the icon, I added this texture by

proverbsun and set it to screen, 100% opacity.

I thought it needed just a tad bit more sparkle so I added this texture by

innocent_lexys, erased or masked out the parts covering Mai, and set it to screen, 100% opacity.

Voila!

There you have it!

.psd

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tinny

I finally have time to look at this tutorial. I love how the background image slowly melds into the blue textures and how you unify the coloring between background and subject. Very interesting!

I also like the idea of using the cutout filter to soften edges! Neat!

Thank you so much for writing it up <3