As some of you might know lately there was an article on Smashing Magazine where they asked their readers to create a wallpaper calendar. And they gave them full creativity without limitations. Only that they had to put a calendar in and have the resolutions of a wallpaper. I, ViniMan who’ve written a few articles here on photoshopblog, made also one called Bearwitness.
The most great thing of all is that they’ve featured my wallpaper, Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2008.
You’re probably all wondering why I’m telling you this, well I created a little walkthrough/tutorial about the wallpaper itself.

(download for the package)

Some parts of this tutorial could be probably unclear. I don’t want that people just copy paste stuff, it’s too easy than. You’ve got to have inspiration yourself, how to place objects for getting a good composition, etc. Though I want people to learn techniques that I use. That’s why some parts of this walkthrough are still more tutorial-like. Come and follow me through this!

Step 1, the background

First of all you’ve got to create a new document (Ctrl+N) in Photoshop, choose a size you want your wallpaper to be. For the background I used a couple of grungy brushes. You can find a lot of them on deviantART, search for grunge on popular. The dots where done with Random Grunge by ~Scully7491.
If you finished doing that go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters (beware this is a Photoshop CS3 and higher option only). First sharpen (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen) your background twice. Than go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction and put Fix Red/Cyan Fringe on somewhere around -25, and Fix Blue/Yellow Fringe around -100. For Vignette you can put the Amount on -80. All the rest stays on the defaults.

Now make another Lens Correction but now the options of Vignette on Amount -100 and Midpoint 0. And the filter blending options on Color Burn and 25% opacity.

Now create a new layer and paint with a thick brush of 90% opacity in a green color or whatever color you would like to use in your wallpaper. Be sure to not just paint bucket the layer in green with 90% opacity, because than you’ll not have texture in the color. Put the blending mode of that layer on Pin Light. Now you’ll have something like this.

Step 2, placing an object

Now we’re going to place an object where we will be working around. Like for example I used a bear, because it had something to do with my subject. I used google to find an image, but you can always use stock sites like Stock Xchng. After finding an object you’ve got to find a way to get it in your image in the best way. I did that by Live Tracing it in Illustrator, so it was vectorized, and than copied it in my wallpaper. You can ofcourse use lots of ways. After that, I Sharpened it and gave it a Lens Correction with Red/Cyan Fringe of -100. I played with my object by cutting parts out and placing them somewhere else. You can do this by using the Polygon Lasso Tool selecting a part and just move it around. See what you think is best. I also putted a black rectangle over the eyes of the bear. You use the Rectangle Tool get it over the eyes and Free Transform (Ctrl+T) it for turning it slightly around. I also gave the bear a black Outer Glow with the options Overlay 75% opacity and 25% Noise, the size was 75px.

Step 3, behind the object

Create a new layer behind the object. Pick up the Chalk brush which is in the basic brushes of Photoshop (Reset Brushes…). Make it 7 pixels small and pick up a light green color and just scribble around the object.

Use the Elipse Tool and create a new circle and add another circle (shift while clicking). Give that circle 0% Fill(!) Opacity and give it a black Outer Glow of 75% Overlay with 15% Noise and one that 200 pixels big. I created 3 circles.
Create new layers where you’ll be adding brushes. I used some vector brushes and eroded stripe brushes.
The circle brushes I gave them Overlay with around 40% opacity, used black and white. I duplicated the layer with the circles and gave it a Radial Blur (Filter > Blur > Radial Blur). The stripes I gave Hard Light 75% Opacity in white and also used some yellow ones. What I also did is that I added the world, and gave that the same outer glow as the circles. This is what you’ll have until now.

Step 4, more objects and a title

Here I want you to be free and I’m not going to explain every single thing I’ve done. I want you to have your own inspiration and not just copy paste.
For example I created lots of new objects. Cutted out a building and placed that a few times behind the bear. Cutted out two jesus images and placed that behind the bear but in front of the buildings, gave them a white Outer Glow Overlay with 100% opacity and 20 pixels big. I also used some abstract models and colored them up. A vector skull that I used quite some times, and a few more brushes.

Step 5, lines and text

I putted some cool lines I created with Illustrator in the background. You can learn that on Illustrator Tutorial – Create a Colourful Abstract Wavy Ribbon, and as colors I used the ones out of the image from light colors to darker. Put one of them on Color Dodge as blending mode and a duplicate on Multiply. For the title I used a font out the section Eroded of Dafont called Birth of a Hero.

Step 6, print screen

As you can see on the finished wallpaper I picked a small area of the original image zoomed in so you can see the pixels really big and press Print Screen on your keyboard. Than paste it on the wallpaper turn it a little and give it a Layer Mask and brush away parts you don’t want to see with a grungy brush. And put that layer just above the on of the background colors.

Step 7, finishing

For the finishing I just used some adjustment layers, which can be found on the layer palette. The circle with black and white.
First Brightness and Contrast, than Hue/Saturation, third Curves, than again Hue/Saturation and last but not least a Color Fill with pink/magenta on Blend Mode Hard Light with 6% Opacity.

Hope you’ve learned something from me today and you’ll enjoy making also a wallpaper in this style.