Painted Ocean Waves in PS

**Tom_Cardin** · 11-09-2009, 01:03 AM

6. Now we paint with the eraser, this is the most time consuming part. Set your brush to about size 6, 65% hardness and shape dynamics to pen pressure. We are going to cut into the trailing edges of the waves and both clean things up and add more painterly style to the whole deal. Similar to how we made the lashes in the previous step we are going to start our eraser strokes just behind the brightest areas of foam and stroke outwards and away from land, making some of the lashes narrower and erasing most near the ends of each wave so that they taper more. You can also erase some from the leading edge of the waves, creating more spray in the whiter areas, just don't overdo it...this part is fun because you can see the final waves take shape as you cut away at them. Again use very light, short, quick strokes. Use this opportunity to clean up mistakes and ensure the flow of the lashes and the waves are contoured pleasingly. Yes I know I am being very subjective here but its time to let your artist out. Depending how you sweep and curve your erasures you will end up with all kinds of looks, its possible to go from realism to stylized almost anime looking waves at this point. I suppose I am somewhere in between with this particular image.

Addendum: You may want to go back and forth some between this step and step 5 with the smudge tool, especially where your erasures look too regular and to smudge out some of the sharper trailing edges of the lashes. You can see how I did this in the close-up view.

**Tom_Cardin** · 11-09-2009, 01:03 AM

7. Last part! Lets make the waves furthest from land more transparent so that the focus of our map comes back to the landmass itself. You may want to take the whole wave layer and turn its opacity down some. I reduced the opacity of my layer to 75%. Then using a large soft eraser (size 60-80, hardness 0%) set to 10% opacity and no shape dynamics I started carefully erasing - just to lower the opacity of the outermost waves initialy but working inwards, leaving the waves closest to shore alone.

Addendum: You can also with a bit smaller eraser go over the outer ends of the waves to dim them a bit more - and the inner areas between scallops if you have a long wave with multiple scallops. Again its just a slight change really but it just adds a bit more depth and variance that says "painted".

**Tom_Cardin** · 11-09-2009, 01:07 AM

Here is the map I am working on using this technique. It is a map of my son's campaign world which I am illustrating for him from his direction. I am using an isometric perspective and as you can see its still very much at the beginning. I was really happy with how the water came out and I thought I would share my process.