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Drawing an Abstract Lightbulb

Posted by Joe on Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Hello again, in this tutorial I want to cover a couple of techniques, namely

Glows using layer styles
Stroking paths
Particles using brush dynamics
Bokeh effect

The PSD and full size image can be found at the bottom of this post and we’re going to draw a lightbulb:

preview1

Step 1:

Create a new document, 1600×1200 and fill the 1st layer in black. Then set your primary colour to white and set your brush hardness to 0% and a size of 30. Create a 2nd layer and then use the pen tool to draw the coils of the lightbulb. Once finished, right mouse on the path and select stroke path and make sure simulate pressure is ticked.

step1

Step 2:

Add inner and outer glows to the resulting line to produce a suitable glow effect. I used an outer glow size of 27 with a mid orange and an inner glow size of 5 with a slightly lighter orange. Next, click on the paths tab to reselect your coils path, change your brush size to 7 and set it to 25% hardness, create a new layer and stroke the path again, and again add inner and outer glow layer styles. Finally move each smaller coil a few pixels so that they’re not directly overlayed on top of each other. (Repeat this process twice to achieve the effect below)

step2

Step 3:

Next we’re going to create the particles around the coils. Click on your brush tool and enter Brush Dynamics. Set hardness to 0%, spacing to 1000%, tick shape dynamics and set size jitter to 1000%, tick scattering and set scatter jitter to 1000% percent

step3a

Create a new layer, then with these brush settings, paint around your coils. Once finished, copy the layer style from one of the coils and paste it onto this layer. Next customize the layer style so that it resembles something like this:

step3b

Step 4:

Use the techniques demonstrated in steps 1 and 2 to draw the edges of the lightbulb in new layers. Set their opacity to 10% so that the focus remains the coils

step4

Step 5:

Now we’re going to add some colour to the interior of the lightbulb. Click on the gradient tool, then edit the gradient so that it goes from a strong colour ( e.g. bright green) to 0% opacity. Then in a new layer create a radial gradient near the top of the image. Then, draw another radial gradiant using a different colour (e.g. bright blue to 0% opacity). Finally add a layer mask to this layer and paint out all parts of this layer that fill beyond the extremities of the lightbulb. Finally set this layer to 25% opacity.

step5a

Step 6:

Create a new layer and repeat step 5 again with 3 radial gradients, using a mid green at the top and 2 orange/red gradients at the bottom. Next add a layer mask, set your foreground and background colour to white and black respectively and then use the render clouds filter to simulate a smoke effect. Go to image> adjustments> brightness & contrast and up the contrast of the layer mask by 100%. Finally set this layer style to color dodge.

step6

Step 7:

Next we’re going to add a bokeh effect. Bokeh is a term used to describe light sources out of focus, think blurry circles. An example of what bokeh is can be found here. Hopefully you’ve retained the brush settings from the particles in Step 3. All you need to do now is change them slightly, so set the brush size now to 75 and set hardness to 100%. Create a new layer, set the brush colour to a mid/light orange and then proceed to draw over your image. These circles still look a bit too defined, so then use a gaussian blur filter with a radius of around 5%. Finally set the opacity of this layer to around 9%.

step7

Step 8:

The final touches involve creating a new layer and using a standard brush to paint over the coils with a dark purple colour, then setting this layer to color dodge, and this enhances the glow effect of the coils. I also added some text along the path of the edge of the lightbulb.

step8

And that’s pretty much it. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful.