Surreal Design

This design uses only brushes, a font and Photoshop’s layer styles and filters, therefore, there are a lot of resources.

Resources:

Clouds Brushes from deviantart.com

Spanish Moss Brushes from deviantart.com

Water Brushes from deviantart.com

Mountains Brushes from deviantart.com

Waterfalls Brushes from deviantart.com

Tree Brushes from deviantart.com

Beyond the Mist Brushes from deviantart.com

Muted Gradients from deviantart.com

Fantastic Creatures Font from dafont.com

Credit:

Credit goes to MediaMilitia for gathering most of these brush sets into one list and making my life so much easier.

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Install the brushes and gradients before opening Photoshop.

To install brushes (Windows):

Zip Files: Extract just the .abr file directly to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS3 (or whatever version you are using)\Presets\Brushes

.abr Files: Move or copy the file into Photoshop (same path as above)

Install gradients in the same way, but place them in the Gradients preset file.

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This will be the finished result:

Click on the image for full size view

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Open a new file 1280 x 1024, 72px resolution

Create a new layer

Fill with blue #BEDEEA

Create a new layer

Select the Brush Tool and Clouds Brushes, foreground colour white

Place some clouds across the top of the canvas:

Create a new layer

Select the Brush Tool and Mountains Brushes, foreground colour black

Choose one of the mountain ranges and apply to your canvas

Ctrl + T to transform the object

Hold down the Shift key to maintain the shape and enlarge the mountain to fit the width of the canvas:

Create a new layer

Select the Brush Tool and Waterfalls Brushes, foreground colour light blue #CDE3EC

Place some waterfalls on the mountains:

Create a new layer

Select the Brush Tool and Beyond the Mist Brushes, foreground colour dark green #132D02

Select the second brush, increase the size to 2500px, and apply the trees to the canvas

Ctrl + T to transform the object – make the trees taller:

Create a new layer between the trees and the waterfalls

Select SS_Water Brushes, set foreground colour to blue #596797

Select the brush Ripples 1, reduce the size to around 340px and apply about 4 instances of the ripples between the trees and mountains:

Create a new layer

Select the Brush Tool and stay with the same brushes, set the foreground colour to white

Select the brush Seafoam 3 and reduce the size to around 308px

Apply a few instances of the seafoam to the water

Set the layer mode to Soft Light

Select the Text Tool and Fantastic Creatures Font, foreground colour black

Set the size to 500pt

Type a Capital P

Create a new layer above the text layer

Select the Brush Tool – you should still have SS_Water Brushes loaded

Select brush Splash 1, foreground colour white

Apply a splash near the trees:

Select the Eraser Tool

Reset the brushes and select a soft round brush, size 100px

Erase the part of the creature’s tail that is in the water

Double click on the text layer in the layers palette to bring up the blending options. Apply the following Gradient Overlay and Bevel and Emboss settings:

Create a new layer below the text layer and select the Brush Tool

Select a hard round brush, size 13px

Set the foreground colour to black

Paint behind the eye of the creature

Select a soft round brush size 5pt, set foreground colour to white and apply a small white dot in the eye:

Create a new layer above all other layers

Select the Brush Tool and Spanish Moss Brushes

Apply some moss at the top of the canvas

Filter>Distort>Wave and apply the following settings:

Double click on the layer in the layers palette to bring up the blending options. Apply the following Gradient Overlay and Outer Glow settings:

Create a new layer at the top of the palette

Set foreground colour to white

Select the Gradient Fill Tool – reset gradients

Select Foreground to Transparent gradient

Set to Radial Gradient and check Reverse

Drag a line from the middle of the canvas almost to the corner

Reduce the layer opacity to around 54%

I then reduced the size of my project to 844px width, auto height – but that is purely personal preference and what the design is required for.

Click on the image for full size view