Creating Cool Abstract Waves in Skateboard Jam

Skateboard Jam is an artwork I created for my personal portfolio, JSK.SG (coming soon). I discovered an easy yet interesting way to make beautiful abstract waves and hope to share with you in this tutorial. We will touch on using common tools like Warp and various brush effects.

Preview of Final Image

The texts and images are copyrighted to 10Steps.SG and their respective owners. You CANNOT copy the whole tutorial, either in English or translate to another language.

Create an A4 size document with 300dpi resolution. Set the Foreground color to white and Background color to #2bbcef. Using the Reflected Gradient tool, create a gradient similar to what I did below.

Open the Brush Settings panel. Click on Brush Tip Shape and enter the values as shown below.

Check on Scattering and enter the values and shown below.

Create a new layer above the blue gradient and rename the layer as Bokeh. Set the Foreground color to white and Brush Opacity to 30%. Select Brush tool with earlier settings to paint around the document area.

Create a new layer above the Bokeh layer. Rename the new layer as Color Bars. Make a rectangular selection and fill it with brown color.

Repeat the earlier step but with orange gradients this time. Experiment around with the brightness and tones of similar colors.

Repeat the same steps again for various tones of blue colors and gradients.

Select the Color Bars layer. right-click and choose Convert to Smart Object. Then go to Edit > Transform > Warp. Bend color bars like the way I did below.

Go to Edit > Transform > Rotate. Turn the bent color bars towards the left.

Duplicate two more color bars and overlaying them the way as shown.

Create a new layer in between the color bars and paint some light shadows on it with the Brush tool.

Download Skateboard Jump from ShutterStock. Crop the man out from his white background and place him on one of the color bars. You may refer to this post for various cropping methods.

Repeat the same step for 2 more person, put each of them close to a different set of color bars.

Duplicate the first man layer. Select the original layer, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Set the Lightness to -100 so the image will turn black. Go to Edit > Free Transform and scale it the way shown below. Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 40px.

Repeat the same steps to create shadows for the other 2 jumpers behind.

Right-click on the first man layer and choose Blending Options. Check on Outer Glow and fill in the settings shown below.

Check on Inner Glow and fill in the settings shown below.

You will get a nice glow effect on every jumper.

Create a new layer and rename it as Light Streak. Make a white rectangle like I did and rotate it slightly.

Using Eraser tool with 500px and Soft Brush type, fade the sides of white rectangle such that only the top border remain sharp.

Duplicate a few of the Light Streak layer and overlay them to form beautiful light crossing effects.

Create a new layer and rename it as Glows. Using the Brush tool with size 200px and Soft Brush type, paint a few glowing dots around the man.

Let us create some 3D objects to fill up the document. You may refer to this post for how to create fake 3D objects in Photoshop.

Position your 3D objects in any manner you like.

And we are done after having all the 3D objects! I hope you find this tutorial useful. Thanks for reading.