I had a request for a tutorial (okay, after I prompted), so here we go. This is the style we're looking at.

The tutorial deals with icon #3, but we'll skim over the first two as well.
We start with a picture. This is a screencap from Romeo and Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann, capped by Anna at Secret Obsession.

*sigh* So pretty. Okay. I select an area, Juliet and her reflection, crop and resize, to get this:

Now for the pencily part. Duplicate the layer, then go to "Adjust - Negative Image" to negativize (for lack of a better word) the top layer. It should look like this:

Next, go to "Image" and choose "Greyscale," resulting in this:

Now set the layer to Dodge. It'll mostly disappear.

Now's where the fun starts. You can create the pencil effect by doing a gaussian blur, but I like to use the regular blur tool, "Adjust - Blur - Blur." Doing that once creates this image:

Try doing it again: "Adjust - Blur - Blur More." More details come out.

And again!

You can keep this up as long as you want to get the details you want. For this icon, I stopped after 3. Careful, though, because the more you do, the more it'll end up just looking like a b&w photo rather than a drawing.
So. After blurring, I merged the layers to create my base. Then I increase color depth to 16 million. The next step for this was to color the "paper." In playing around with blend modes, I've found that multiply works to color the white space without obscuring the lines. So for this, I wanted the water colored separately, so I selected Juliet's face and filled the area with a yellow-gold color, inverted the selection and chose a blue-green for the water, gaussian-blurred the layer by 7 pixels, then set it to multiply.

That was too bright, not old-looking enough, so I added a layer filled with #6C5516, and set it to color at 40%.

Still too bright for what I wanted. I added a black and white gradient at a 45 degree angle and set it to overlay.

Now it's too dark, plus it's not old enough looking. I used an aged brush by
crumblingwalls in a medium gray-brown, erasing it where it obscures the reflection too much, and set it to normal at 60% opacity.

Time for a little more texture. Another aged brush, in a darker cinnamon brown, erasing it from the reflection and set to normal at 14% opacity.

Next the border, and I can't for the life of me remember who made this. Probably
saava or
dtissagirl. It's a dark brown, set to normal at 30% opacity.

I like this without text, personally. But it needed text for a challenge, so I used Aquiline at 10 pt, fading each line to blend with the background. It reads "It's like the mirror. The thoughts are there, but they create no reflection in you." From BtVS, "Earshot."

For this one, I did things a little differently. I created the base as I described above, but after merging the base layer, I added a dark brown raster layer and set it to color. This made the lines brown rather than gray, and the multiplied gold layer on top added richness to the lines as well as creating the paper color. I used some more aged brushes on it, added some noise and motion-blurred it to get the effect of pencil marks.

I did the same with this, except I added a text brush by
crumblingwalls. So so pretty!

Let me know if this tutorial was useful. I'd love to see what you come up with.
ETA: I wrote this at 4 am, and forgot to credit Joseph M. Apice, whose tutorial showed me how to create the base.

The tutorial deals with icon #3, but we'll skim over the first two as well.
We start with a picture. This is a screencap from Romeo and Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann, capped by Anna at Secret Obsession.

*sigh* So pretty. Okay. I select an area, Juliet and her reflection, crop and resize, to get this:

Now for the pencily part. Duplicate the layer, then go to "Adjust - Negative Image" to negativize (for lack of a better word) the top layer. It should look like this:

Next, go to "Image" and choose "Greyscale," resulting in this:

Now set the layer to Dodge. It'll mostly disappear.

Now's where the fun starts. You can create the pencil effect by doing a gaussian blur, but I like to use the regular blur tool, "Adjust - Blur - Blur." Doing that once creates this image:

Try doing it again: "Adjust - Blur - Blur More." More details come out.

And again!

You can keep this up as long as you want to get the details you want. For this icon, I stopped after 3. Careful, though, because the more you do, the more it'll end up just looking like a b&w photo rather than a drawing.
So. After blurring, I merged the layers to create my base. Then I increase color depth to 16 million. The next step for this was to color the "paper." In playing around with blend modes, I've found that multiply works to color the white space without obscuring the lines. So for this, I wanted the water colored separately, so I selected Juliet's face and filled the area with a yellow-gold color, inverted the selection and chose a blue-green for the water, gaussian-blurred the layer by 7 pixels, then set it to multiply.

That was too bright, not old-looking enough, so I added a layer filled with #6C5516, and set it to color at 40%.

Still too bright for what I wanted. I added a black and white gradient at a 45 degree angle and set it to overlay.

Now it's too dark, plus it's not old enough looking. I used an aged brush by

Time for a little more texture. Another aged brush, in a darker cinnamon brown, erasing it from the reflection and set to normal at 14% opacity.

Next the border, and I can't for the life of me remember who made this. Probably

I like this without text, personally. But it needed text for a challenge, so I used Aquiline at 10 pt, fading each line to blend with the background. It reads "It's like the mirror. The thoughts are there, but they create no reflection in you." From BtVS, "Earshot."

For this one, I did things a little differently. I created the base as I described above, but after merging the base layer, I added a dark brown raster layer and set it to color. This made the lines brown rather than gray, and the multiplied gold layer on top added richness to the lines as well as creating the paper color. I used some more aged brushes on it, added some noise and motion-blurred it to get the effect of pencil marks.

I did the same with this, except I added a text brush by
Let me know if this tutorial was useful. I'd love to see what you come up with.
ETA: I wrote this at 4 am, and forgot to credit Joseph M. Apice, whose tutorial showed me how to create the base.
- Mood:
sleepy

Comments
Mandy
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/Kdewhunter/Buffy-and-Spike-drawing-kh.jpg"Buffy & Spike"/>
Thanks for a fascinating tutorial. I'll keep trying with it.
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/Kdewhunter/Spike-drawing-kh.jpg"Spike"/>
which seems to have transferred the technique to PS Elements a bit better. You did say you wanted to see the results! Stopping now I promise.
Thanks again :-D
Firstly should the duplicate layer be at a specific opacity? I ask because otherwise I wonder why have a duplicate layer at all? (confused*
I am also wondering if there are other settings within the 'dodge setting' that I need to fix or something. I go to 'Layers' then 'New Adjustment Layer' then 'Brightness Contrast' then the 'General' tab and pick 'dodge' but there is still quite a bit of the image showing when I do so. (What settings should the opacity and 'adjustement tab' etc be at?)
Subsequently the 'blur step' appears to be doing nothing at all!
Sorry, I hope this makes sense. Typical I seem to be the only one who can't get this to work, heh.
Thanks in advance!
You should set the layer to "dodge" by using the layer palette on the right. Hopefully it's shown; if not, go to "View - Palettes - Layers" to bring it up. There'll be a little click box that says "Normal;" click it and choose "Dodge" for the dodge effect.
Some of the image may still show through. That's fine. :)
I'll post any thing I finish here later for your viewing pleasure (or not, bwahaha).
THANKS again!!!
This is my go at it:
It's two brushes, actually -- one with flowers, and another with a sort of jagged edge and the letter. They're
or simply hit Apple-I
The direction to "set the layer to Dodge" has no single equivalent in Adobe Photoshop - we have Color Dodge or Linear Dodge and neither duplicated the effect the author got in PaintShop.
If we knew what layer effect Dodge does in PSP, we could probably figure out the equivalent in PS.
And since others are sharing their results...
Not overly happy with the border brush I chose... might have to go try it again. But I love the image effect.
I love that icon, especially with the text. Gorgeous.