Deborah Woehr

I was browsing through the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) tutorials this morning and came across a tutorial for Smart Gradients. By the way, you’ll find tons of great tutorials in this members-only website. Anyway, this tutorial involved creating smart objects, and then creating wavy gradients with the freeform warp tool. The first image is the result of my initial test.

After I save my first image, I decided to experiment with the freeform warp tool to see just how far I could push it.

Gradient 1

I liked the color combination and the somewhat 3D look of this design.

Gradient 2

This took me all of two seconds to create, once I set up the color scheme.

Gradient 3

This design was created by distorting the radial blur.

I found this video on Corel Painter Resource blog and thought I would pass it along. This reminds me of the times I would go to tourist spots and see artists sitting along the sidewalk or off the beaten path, whipping up a scenery painting within minutes. I admire anyone who can draw a face from scratch, because faces have always been tough for me. I’m not sure how long it took this artist to draw the likeness of Lost’s John Locke, but this five-minute video speeds up the process with some impressive results.