Painted Ocean Waves in PS

[Tom_Cardin]

5. Time to make a mess of things....well actually to smudge things. If you are not already in love with the smudge tool in photoshop this will push you over the edge. New smudge brush, make a size 8 circle brush, again with about 65% edge hardness. We want the shape dynamics on pen pressure again and scattering set to about 250% and control set to pen pressure. Set strength to about 80%, but feel free to tweak this to get the effect you want. This part is the fairly time consuming, we are going to smudge eyelashes on each wave, drag from about halfway between the leading edge and the trailing edge (leading edge being the edge closest to land) and pull outwards away from land. Space each lash irregularly, again chaos is our friend, some lashes should be long and some short. Vary your pen pressure and the speed at which you flick out each lash. When you are done you will have something that is recognizable as waves, but there is more to do.

Addendum: You can lengthen some of the lashes even more by dragging out with the smudge tool again from the mid point of the lash. Some waves can leave quite long trails of foam especially when they break gradually.