Comic art style

This is a method that you can use to produce abstract art using Adobe Photoshop. Randomness, detail, colors and contrast plays of course important roles now.

Defining a pattern

First, we will define a patter that we will use later. Begin by creating a new document using these settings:

File > New…

Doodle!

Draw a nice patter, it does not matter how it looks. Just be sure to keep 50% of the image white, like this one:

Note: The 1px black border is not part of the image

Define the pattern

Now, select all and go to Edit > Define Pattern

Name your pattern to something appropriate that you will remember in 1 minute (like FortuneCookie32 or BlackEdgedFox).

You may now close this document.

The random part

Create a new document, this time the size does not matter. Make it about 500 by 500 pixels for practice. Leave the rest of the settings as we set them in the previous step.

Create a new layer and fill it with your recently created pattern

Now to the creative part of this tutorial where we will go crazy with shape modifying filters.

Use filters like Polar Coordinates, Offset, Liquify. Make rectangular selections, apply a filter. Make circular selections and again apply the filter. Use of the shortcut (Ctrl + F) is advisable.

Take a look at the following pictures. The shapes was created using selections and the filters mentioned above (applied many times with different selections).

Smaller selections + Filters:

Many selections and filters later, this is what I got:

The Comic style

Right now we have a layer filled with lots of interesting abstract shapes. So what do we do now? Well, to apply the Comic look, we have to do 2 things: Filter and Colorize.

Filtering

Begin by adding a Inc Outlines filter.

Filter > Brush Strokes > Ink Outlines

Play with the sliders and try finding a good result. I used 45/35/25 as values for my 1024×768 sized picture.

Colorizing

To colorize this piece we will add a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer.

Set your foreground and background color to two interesting ones, I will use these:

Then go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map.

Final touches

Cool. Now we can of course keep working on this picture. Maybe mask out some parts that you do not like, try changing colors and maybe filter even more?

Inspiration

With some more Adjustment Layers, filters, reference photos and line drawings it can look like this.

Comic Books Alive - Copyright © Mickel Andersson
Click for detail

I hope this tutorial was helpful and that you have learnt something new. Keep on playing with different values and you will get different results!