This is a very simple tutorial on how to make a Feather. I've given you my settings, but yours may vary. Experiment till you find what looks good to you. Have fun!
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1. Start with a 400x400 canvas with a TRANSPARENT background. Flood fill with a color that will contrast with your color for the feather so you can see what you are doing. 2. Add a layer. Using the Bezier Tool (my settings are shown below) make a line. Now pull first one handle and then the other to form the center line of the feather. This may take a little practice if you aren't familiar with the bezier tool. |
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3. Add a layer and drag it under the line layer. Now select the color for the inside of your feather and set it as the background color, white as the foreground color. Using the shapes tool (settings below) make an ellipse. Click on Node Edit and drag the top down a bit and sort of center it under the line so it looks like a feather. (see image below) 4. Now click on the retouch tool and select smudge (my settings are below). Smudge outward, slightly curving the smudged areas and smudge down into the colored area. Sometimes feathers have little cut or separated areas. When smudging the bottom you can make little fluffy feathers or leave it smooth. You may need to adjust the opacity and density for different areas to get the look you want. |
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7. When you are done smudging click on the line layer and select the line. Use the bevel or a Blade Pro preset to give it some shape. 8. Now using the smudge tool sort of make the tip are within the feather a little pointy. 9. When you are happy with the way it looks, hide the background layer by clicking on the little glasses in the layer palette. The click on an active layer and go to Selections/ merge visible. You can now delete the background layer and crop to the size you want and save as a tube. The finished feather will look something like this below. |
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I discovered that you can colorize these feathers and only the colored part changes..the white remains white. What color they change to depends on the original color of the feather. The darker shades below were from my blue feather, the light ones from my gray feather. Now that you've tubed it you can make dream catchers and other neat things. Hope you had fun.:) |
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