Beaches

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In this tutorial I will take you on a guide to illustrating beaches. As well as teaching you to achieve the beachy textures and different effects (such as feet in the sand) that make the image come to life, I will teach you how to create the perfect beach background. Here is an example of where I've used this effect before. If you find this tutorial useful a credit link will be appreciated, if you need any help on executing this tutorial then contact me.

To begin, open up Paint Shop Pro and create a new image that matches the size you want your illustration to be. My image is sized 748 x 295.

We're going to start off with the sky. Of course the colour of the sky changes all the time, at this point in time two other of my tutorials address illustrating a sky and these can be found here and here. In this tutorial I will teach you another sky illustration technique.

I'm going to begin with filling in my background a solid colour of #7DD5B9. Then take the Selection Tool (S) () and match your settings to mine below:
Selection Type: Rectangle
Feather: 100
Create a new raster layer and select 2/4's of the image and use the Fill Tool (F) to fill it in using the colour #FFFFFF, set this layer to Luminance (L) at 46%.

Create another new raster layer, and using the selection tool with the same settings as before select half of the Luminance layer, fill the selection tool this time with the colour #F5ECAD and set it to Overlay at 100%. After, merge all of your layers together.

At the moment the sky looks bland, the colours are dull and it's not blended together well; this can all be fixed with some colourizing and blurring:

• Firstly, go to Adjust > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and blur the image to a radius of 43.00.
• Next, duplciate the base layer and set it to Soft Light at 100%.
• Merge all of your layers together, then to to Adjust > Blur > Motion Blur and blur the image at an angle of 354 and a stregnth of 44%.
• Next, dpulicate the base layer again and to Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colourize, adjust the saturation to 0, this gives a quick gray scale effect to the image.
• Almost done! Set the gray layer to Multiply at 18%, then select the Paint Brush (B) tool and change the size to 212 and the Hardness to 0.
  
• Use this to draw some colour bubbles over your image, in order to blend them out go to Adjust > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and blur the bubbles to a radius of 24.00. Set this layer to Dodge at 18% before merging your layers together again.

Now that we're done with the colourizing, we can work on the other elements. First of all use the Deform Tool (D) to move your image up in order to make room for the actual beach but still preserve the nice effects/colours we've created.

Select the and make the first pallet transparent, fill the second pallet with the colour #D7B494. Use this tool to fill in the bottom space we've just created. Then select the layer beneath the vector layer we've just created and created another rectangle, this time with the colour #6EAAE3 that resembles the sea.

Merge all of your layers together. Then take the Selection Tool (S) () and match your settings to mine below:
Selection Type: Rectangle
Feather: 38
Create a new raster layer and select 1/4 of the bottom section. Use the Fill Tool (F) to fill it in using the colour #000000, set this layer to Soft Light at 38%.

Merge all of your layers together. Then duplicate your base and go to Adjust > Add / Remove Noise > Add Noise, select 'Uniform' at 50% and with a monochrome setting. Set the layer to Normal at 14% and merge it down so that you only have one layer.

Almost done! There are just a few more things needed to tie this image together, first of all... foot steps in the sand. Doing this is simple, select the Pen Tool (V) () and match your settings to mine below:
Segment type: Point to point
Meter limit: 15
Create as vector
The line width is not important as the top pallet has been made transparent.

Cross out your first pallet and match your second pallet to the colour #99C144 - then it's just a case of tracing. In order to trace your shape with curve, click where you want the shape to begin, click at a different point and then drag the mouse (Example (from my illustration guide tutorial). Use the pen tool to trace the shape of feet; it automatically fills itself due to the second pallet being higlighted. Once you've traced two feet convert the vector layer to a raster layer, then right click and duplicate that layer various times using the Deform Tool (D) to spread out the different foot steps - set this layer to Soft Light at 40%.

And those are really the basics to creating a beach illustration. There are some extra things you can do to spice the image up, the first is to add sparkles in the water and also some white colour bubbles (see above for the settings), the sparkles can be done either by using a brush or by using the with the Star 1 shape and bluring any of the stars to a radius of about 2 to give it a good effect - you can also set this layer to dodge.

Lastly are the clouds and the sun, again you can make these using the preset shape tool and playing with the opacities. In this tutorial I explain how to create these two elements.

Good luck. ^_^