John K.

Digital Painting - hat, leather texture cheat

Added 2023-04-24 17:28:33 +0000 UTC

We're back to this guy again.

I figured out a way to fake render felt or leather texture without having to draw every speck individually.

I start by zooming in on the inked hat that is filled with flat color.

I select the top of the hat from the 'fill' layer.

Using a spatter brush I spray over the selection with a color slightly darker that the hat fill.

Here's the cheat. On the spatter layer, I go down to the FX at the bottom of the layer window and turn on 'drop shadow'. This gives the effect of making the texture 3 dimensional. I make sure the drop shadow colors are not too contrasty or opaque with the spatter color.

Then I turn off the spatter layer and use a brush with a rough texture to paint some shadows -not realistically but in the style of Mel Crawford.

I turn on both layers to see how they blend. I notice that the 'Mel shadows' layer somewhat obscures the spatter texture underneath.

So I turn the brushed layer to 'multiply' and turn down the opacity a bit so that the shadows blend better with the spatter layer.

Now onto the brim. I'll use a similar cheat with a slight variation.

Again start with the flat fill layer in the brim group and select it.

On a layer above I use a spatter brush again to spray on a subtle texture. (I turned off the fill layer so you can see the spatter better.

This time instead of giving the spatter a drop shadow, I try using the inner bevel effect. This creates a shadow and a highlite for each individual speck. Imagine if you had to paint every dot individually and paint on the shadows one by one. It'd take all day and drive you batty.

Next I turn off the texture layer so I can see what I'm going to do next. I brush a thing edge to the top of the brim to give the illusion of thickness to the fabric.