Agony an Art Lesson #1
How to Make a C7 Logo Really Fast- Page 2 of 3
I use the
Elliptical Marquee Tool (holding down SHIFT), once again, to create a big circle border and then...Step 10
...I Edit-->Stroke...(again, with a 50px line) to create the visible border. Here, whether I choose to Stroke the line on, outside, or inside the flashing dotted line thing doesn't make as much difference.
Step 11
All this has been pretty simple. Now we get into the drawing phase. For white/black line drawings like this, I like to use the
Pencil Tool in conjunction with the 
Pen Tool. The image is supposed to look like a girl looking at us through something like an iron frame. I need to draw in the support bars that connect the C and the 7 with the outer circle frame. Originally, as in the sketch above, the supports were just random lines, but I want a little more order to it. Almost an organic shape. The Pen Tool will be the tool of choice here, as it can be used to create perfect curves or just lines without the raggedness of human error(especially when using a light pen or- yeeech!- a mouse to draw).I use a line somewhat thinner than the 50px stroke used in the characters and the circle(just pick a pencil tool brush with a size that you like). I go around the circle, connecting lines from the circle to the characters, always using the second anchor point to bend the line into a pleasing curve. For that organic look, I bend them all in the same direction, varying the degree, so as to look something like simplified chambers of a nautillus shell. Nothing grand, and certainly nothing to pat myself on the back for, but it is pleasing.
Step 12
Next, I create a Duplicate Layer: Layer-->Create Duplicate.... Don't worry about naming the layer or anything, just duplicate it.
Step 13
I make sure that WHITE is my background color and select Layer 1 as the active layer. Now, I use the
Rectangular Marquee Tool to select the entire layer's contents and Delete them. This leaves me with a white background layer.
Step 14
Now, I go back to Layer 2(the Duplicate Layer) and I use the
Magic Wand Tool to select negative space(holding down the SHIFT key to select additional areas) until all areas have been selected.
Step 15
Back to Layer 1(the white layer): I make Layer 2 invisible, so that I can only see the flashing dotted line thing in the shape of the "ironwork ring's" negative space. Edit-->Stroke..., this time in BLACK with 35px on the INSIDE of the selections.
Step 16
Delete Layer 2- I don't need it anymore.
Step 17
Now, here's where the cheapness starts. I need to draw the girl now. Oh, I could scratch away at an image and go through all the trouble of making her facial structure just right and aligning her eyes with proper symmetry and-- oh, but that's really hard! I open Poser 4 and load up the hand models. They're in Additional Figures and they're actually very useful!
Now, once I find the pose I want,the easiest way to get the image into Photoshop is to PRINT SCREEN. Yes, that button in the upper right section of your keyboard. I just hit PRINT SCREEN and then open up a new document in Photoshop, Edit-->Paste, and then crop out just the hand portion of the screen capture. Using the
Move Tool, I drag the hand image onto my "ironwork ring" image and resize it as necessary, using Edit-->Free Transform. BTW, I got rid of the black frame that borders the image(that was formed by the Stroke in Step 15) by using the 
Paint Bucket Tool loaded with WHITE.
Step 18
Okay, here I've already dragged over both the right and left hands and positioned them as I've wanted. There are 3 layers to the image here- I've adjusted the Opacity of the hand layers- Layers 2&3- so I can see where the fingers are going. I use Edit-->Free Transform to rotate the hands so that their position is convincing. I want it to look as though the fingers are grasping the "metal."
Step 18
Pretty cheap, huh? Oh, but it doesn't end there. I still have the face to do! Should I keep at least a little of my artistic integrity and at least use a photo that *I* took? I'm in a hurry, so, hell no. I breeze on over to the firstVIEW fashion designers site and quickly find a suitable image:
Step 19
Yup. I drag her on over to our image, change the Layer Opacity to something around 57%, and adjust the image size and orientation as necessary. To simplify things, you may merge both hand layers and the face layer into one- just make sure that the opacity levels are where you want them, because once you merge them, you're stuck with it.
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