Create scribble art

James Paterson shows how to create fun portrait effects in Photoshop

- James Paterson

THE MISSION

Use masks and brushes in Photoshop to create a scribble portrait

Time needed 20 minutes

Skill level Intermediate

Kit needed Photoshop CC

If you’re a fan of doodling, then this project will be perfect for you. We’ll look at how to transform a portrait into a piece of scribble art. It might look like a complicated effect, but it’s actually rather simple to pull off.

We begin by cutting out our subject (using automated selection tools to speed things up), then we hide the portrait behind a mask, grab a brush and start scribbling. Of course, scribbling is best done with a pen and tablet, as this way you can make use of pressure and tilt to vary your strokes. But if you only have access to a mouse then it’s still easy to create the scribbles, as we can use helpful features like Smoothing on our brush tip to combat the jagged strokes you get with a mouse.

To add depth to our scribble effect we can build it up over several layers, using layer opacity to blend them together. We can also paint a few watercolour splashes around the image to give it a more painterly feel. Adobe offers an excellent watercolour brush set for this. To download it, go to the Brush picker, click the cog to open the flyout menu and choose ‘Get More Brushes’, then download the excellent Watercolour set from the Adobe site.