Funky Frog from Melted Crayons (Sweet Squares #5 & #6)

© 2012 Sylvia Liu

I enjoy making patterns and backgrounds to play with in Photoshop. My daughter and I did this today by melting crayon shavings between waxed paper.

Starting with that as a background, I sketched a frog, and then started experimenting. Here are the end results:

Funky Frog © 2012 Sylvia Liu

In "Funky Frog," I used the paint bucket tool to randomly drop colors onto the existing wax patterns in the frog. Clicking the bucket tool repeatedly to increase the size of the color swatch resulted in interesting effects like the outline around the eyeballs. I painted the background using a large watercolor brush tool.

Swirly Frog © 2012 Sylvia Liu

In "Swirly Frog," I used the bucket tool inside the frog and the smudge tool on the background.

What kind of handmade or painted backgrounds have you used for digital illustrations? (P.S. This entry covers sweet squares #5 and #6).



If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy these other illustrations I've done using scanned hand painted or hand made patterns:

• Illustration Friday: Stay (watercolor wash for the water)
• Happy Chinese New Year (older daughter's painting for dragon body)
• Illustration Friday: Dusty (painted moon as background)