drawing

Turning a Photo into an Ink Drawing or a Pencil Sketch (in Photoshop)

Submitted by LouBrz on 29 November 2011 - 12:15am.

In this article, we'll take a portrait photo and give it a hand-drawn touch by turning it into first an ink drawing (below left) and then a pencil sketch (right). As you can see, this guy is quite surprised at how well the technique works.

Creating an ink drawing or a pencil sketch in Photoshop

We'll start by making the ink effect using a Smart Object, Gaussian Blur, High Pass, the seldom-used Note Paper filter, another round of Gaussian Blur, a Levels adjustment layer, the Multiply blend mode, and a little bit of luminance blending. It's hardly a one-click solution, but the results are amazing. Plus, this flexible approach can produce several interesting alternative looks, including a credible pencil effect, also documented here.

Today's article is based on Deke's Techniques 026 and 027, presented by lynda.com. (The ink effect is also documented in video form on this site.) Read more » 

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Deke’s Techniques 016: Turning a Photo into an Ink Drawing

Submitted by deke on 19 April 2011 - 7:15am.
Deke’s Techniques 016: Turning a Photo into an Ink Drawing

It's been nearly a month since my last artistic adventure in Deke's Techniques. (I'm thinking of DTs 012: "Creating a High Key, High Contrast Effect.") And so I reckon it's time for another one. In fact, I have two for you. Visitors to this site can watch me turn a photographic image into a faux pen-and-ink drawing. And members of lynda.com can watch a second video in which I turn the same image into a pencil sketch.

Here's the description from high atop Central Headquarters L-dot-C:

For this week's free Photoshop technique, Deke McClelland takes an ordinary portrait shot, applies several filters (two of which he claims to never use under any other circumstances), and transforms the photo into an "ink drawing." By way of Gaussian Blur, Smart Blur (there's one), High Pass, Notepaper (there's the other), and yet more Gaussian blur, you'll learn how to take a photo like the one on the left and achieve a pen-on-paper effect like the one on the right.

From photo to ink drawing in Photoshop Read more » 

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Martini Hour 071, In Which We Celebrate Summer with Illustrator-based Sno-cones and More More Mordy

Submitted by colleen on 24 June 2010 - 10:45am.

Mordy's visit last week to discuss Illustrator CS5 was so refreshing, that we decided to keep the Summer vibe going and invite him back again this week. And what does he bring? Vector-based sno-cones. Yes, it's another great Illustrator show with Mordy and Deke diving deep into the summer and dynamic effects. And me ingenuously following along, thinking, one day soon, I'm going to learn to use Illustrator so I can put all this knowledge to use. If you feel the same, pull up a sno-cone, maybe toss a little adult beverage on top, and join us.

Martini Hour 071: Dynamic Effects in Adobe Illustrator Read more » 

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Drawing Beyond Colleen-O-Vision

Submitted by colleen on 21 May 2009 - 9:02pm.

For those of you inspired by Deke's recent revival of his classic Cereal comic strip, it's never too late for you to find your own inner cartoonist. I discovered this the other day during an excellent three-hour webinar on Visual Note-taking put on by the folks at VizThinkU. During the first segment of the seminar, Austin-based artist and author, Austin (from Austin) Kleon explained, "If you can write your own name, you can cartoon." OK, maybe not cartooning as well as Austin or Deke can, but certainly well enough for effective visual communication. Here's my favorite of Austin's exercises:

1) Start with nine boxes (you can draw a box can't you?) three rows of three boxes each. Add dots for eyes and half a triangle for noses.

Read more » 

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Creating a Photo-Realistic Line Drawing, Part 2

Submitted by deke on 13 May 2008 - 3:46pm.

Those of you who read Part 1 of this article will recall that we're in the middle of converting a photographic portrait into a credible facsimile of a professionally rendered line drawing. Using a combination of the Photocopy filter, a bit of cleanup, and one layer each of solid black and solid white, we came up with the rather predictable effect pictured below. But this is just the base drawing. The truly amazing stuff starts now.

Progress so far Read more » 

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