Make Abstract Wallpaper with Brushes

Preparations: In this tutorial, we will try to mimic the nice abstract preview (shown on the left) that Axeraider70 made for his Ultimate Brush Pack 3. Hope this will give the beginners a better idea on how to use these great resources. Download Ultimate Brush Pack 3 here. All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners. Step 1 – Setting Up Background: Create a document of size 750×550 pixels then make a new layer and name it as Back Glow. Select Soft Brush tool, set its size to 700px and foreground color to #752341. Paint a large dot of pink at the center like the one shown on the left. Step 2 – Brush Layer Masks: Other than simply stamp the brushes around, we can use them to create simple effects on layer mask too. Select the Back Glow layer and create a New Layer Mask. Load all the brushes in Ultimate Brush Pack 3. Select some of those grundgy brushes and paint them with black (#000000) around the border of the mask. Step 3a – Setting Base Colors: Create a new layer and name it as Base Color 1. Using the same grundgy brushes used in Step 2, set the foreground color to #FF99B4 and paint a few spots of pink as shown in the diagram. Step 3b – Setting Base Colors: Set the Blend Mode of Base Color1 to Soft Light. Now set the foreground color to #FED2DD and repeat Step 3a and 3b. Step 4a – Colors and Contrast: Create a new layer and call it as Black Shapes. Briefly identify a center point on the document and find those brushes that stretch out in various directions. We will need to make these shapes look as they diverging out from the same point. Set the foreground color to #000000 and use those brushes in different sizes as shown in diagram. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Soft Light. Step 4b – Colors and Contrast: Create a new layer and call it as Blue Shapes. Using the same grundgy brushes in Step 3a, paint a few spots of blue around. Step 4c – Colors and Contrast: Set the Blend Mode of Blue Shapes to Linear Dodge (Add). This will blend the blue spots with those black ones under them and added some glow at the same time. Step 4d – Colors and Contrast: Create a new layer and call it as Pink Shapes. Set the foreground color to #E25884 and repeat Step 4a with other brushes. Leave the Blend Mode of this layer as Normal. Step 5a – Adding Glow Subjects: Create a new layer and name it as Glow 1. Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF and choose those brushes that you wish to make them your main glowing subjects. Paint them on this layer. Step 5b – Add Glow Subjects: Right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow and set Mode to Color Dodge, Color to #FF0000, Size to 30px and leave the rest as default settings. Repeat Step 5a and 5b with a larger brush. Step 5c – Add Glow Subjects: Repeat Step 5a and 5b with random sizes all around. Try not to overdo the addition of these glow subjects else they will "steal" the focus of those colored shapes at the background. Optional: There you have it! Your abstract art is done. You can create different variations of the piece with the use of Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. For the Blue, I am using -140,0,0 and for the Yellow, I am using 43,0,0. Hope you will find this tutorial useful. Click here to view the final image.