DESCRIPTION: Paint a seascape using the paintbrush, Gaussian Blur and the Stagger effect.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Save often.

1. Open a new document 600x450 pixels.

2. Using Paintbrush Shape Round, Size 50, Soft Edge 50 in Mode, paint 3 colours for the sky to half way down the page e.g. #292B58, #424584 and #8F93D8 as shown here:

3. Click on the Mode icon again to go out of mode. You now have an object that you can apply effects to.

4. Go to Effect / Blur / Gaussian Blur / Options and type in 50 for the Radius. Click OK.

5. With the sky selected, duplicate (Shift D). Click on the Transform Tool and Flip Vertically.

6. Using the down arrow key on your keyboard, move the duplicate down to the bottom of the image so there is no background showing down the bottom. Grab the middle handle and drag the "sea" up til it overlaps the sky slightly. If you want to change the dimensions of either sky or sea to make the image look balanced, just drag these handles to resize while using the Transform Tool.

7. Select the sea. With Paintbrush Size 20 or 30, paint soft strokes of different blues from the horizon through to the front. (All this does not require exact painting. When we apply our special effect later, it will create some magic.) Make some waves shapes as I have done in the front where they are bigger. You can paint this in Mode if you wish but I didn't.

8. Stroke in a wave motion to get the effect of rolling waves, adding a darker stroke to the horizon and darker undersides to the waves.

9. Grab some offwhite and with a smaller brush, add details to the tops of the waves.

10. With your sea still selected, go to Effect on the menu bar and choose Material Effect / Stagger. Click the 1:1 in the dialogue box so you have a close up view of what happens in the Dual View tab. Click on the After tab occassionally to see an even better view. For Direction, click the "To the right" radio button, since that's the way the sea's flowing. Click the Random button to get different effects. Click OK when you're done.

The effect has moved the sea to the right and the size of this object has more than doubled its width.

11. Click on the Transform Tool icon. On the Attribute Bar click on the locked padlock to unlock so the height doesn't change with the width. In the Width box (mine says 933) type in 1000, or a number that will make the sea fill the area widthways. Use your left arrow key on the keyboard to move the sea over to the left, making sure the right hand side is ok too. If it's not, make it wider again.

12. At this point you can Merge All or add more to your scene before doing so. I merged and added a moon (Effect / Creative / Moon), keeping the ambient light similar to my painted scene so it wouldn't become too dark. I Saved As so that I could keep a copy of the ufo as well.

Thank you for trying out my tutorial :). I trust you've enjoyed it.

Hillie © 2004