Grunge Poster Techniques

I really enjoy seeing grunge posters like the following, but it is always a delicate balance between making it look.."dirty" vs simply trashy following are a few examples.

Some of those are better than others but the concept remains the same. Take fairly clean and simple images(mostly vectors) and combine it with a paperish colored background to make a fairly unique poster. I'm also going to take this time to touch up my skills with the pen tool, and most likely combine the pen and the brush tools. Some filters will be used from the looks of it as well. Results/proof of concept will follow shortly.

Light Effects Desktop

I used techniques developed though my earlier trial and error to produce the following. Most of the actual "glowing light" was achieved though various blending modes along with a bit of layering and liberal use of Gaussian Blur. To help get the smooth curves I used the pen tool with my tablet to get nice flowing paths then hit the check box next to simulate "pen pressure". I had a lot of fun playing around with the various settings on the brush tool, from scattering to brush direction. The amount of control that CS5 gives you is astounding. I cannot wait to do more projects with the tool, maybe look into making a few of my own brushes and seeing what else the tool is capable of.

Lighting Effects Recreation

This is my take on the lighting. I tried to take professor Babcock's tutorial and streamline it in a way that is easily replicated/duplicated. Also learned a neat feature about photoshop to make nice smooth strokes without using a tablet, you can make a path with the pen tool and simply stroke it with a nice brush to get the same(if not better) effect that you would with a tablet. You also have more control over it than you otherwise would if you drew directly with a brush

Advanced Digital Painting Tutorial

I'm sans tablet at the moment but once that changes I'm going to try my hand at this

Hey mom. Look what I found!

Now, Totally don't know how to do that...but I'm going to find out.

Back in action

Sourced from here. Thinking of doing more of something like bellow since it is more complex.

Continuing to look though.

Concepts/Ideas

I also saw this. Which looks really interesting, as I am always looking for ways to improve my digital painting skills.