Transform a Photo into Chinese Painting

 

Preparations:

Share a photo of White Tiger that I took at Singapore Zoo yesterday. Download it here.

We also need to download three brushes:
Bittbox’s Watercolor Brushes II (download)
Krako’s Chinese Stamp (download)
Midnightstouch’s Grasslands (download)

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.
   

Step 1 – Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750 by 550px.

Fill the background with #D7D7D7.
   

Step 2 – Cropping the Tiger:

Next is to crop out the White Tiger with Pen tool and place it at the center of the document.

You can use one of the extraction methods listed over here.
   

Step 3 – Apply Watercolor Effect:

Select the tiger layer, go to Filter > Artistic > Watercolor.

Set the Brush Detail to 14, Shadow Intensity to 2 and Texture to 1.
   

Step 4 – Adding Black Strokes:

Create a new layer under the white tiger.

Load the Watercolor brush that you downloaded from Bittbox and select Sampled Brush 13.

Set the foreground color to #000000 and brush size to 450px, paint the two patches as shown in the diagram.
   

Step 5 – Adding Red Strokes:

Create another new layer under the black strokes.

Select Sampled Brush 9 with size 250px and foreground color as #cc0000, paint a few patches of red under the black strokes.
   

Step 6 – Adding the Grasses:

Load the Grasslands brushes downloaded from Midnightstouch’s DeviantArt.

Set your foreground color to #000000 and select Sampled Brush 12 to paint a few strokes of weeds and grasses.

You may do the same with Sampled Brush 13.
   

Step 7 – Chinese Caligraphy:

This is the time for freeplay. You can add in any chinese texts you think it fits the meaning of the art you’ve done.

Otherwise you can simply add a Chinese Stamp downloaded from Krakograff.
   

Step 8 – Changing Colors:

We can either stop at the earlier step or adjust the colors like the one I’ve done on the left.

I created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer at the topmost and set the Hue to 40, Saturation to 25 and Lightness to 0. Followed by another Levels layer and input the values 36, 1.03, 251.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Click here to view the final image.
I am Johnson Koh, a graphic and web designer in Singapore. Founded 10Steps.SG in August 2008 with the purpose to share my experiments and interesting design news.

29 Comments | Write a Comment

  1. neurological rehabilitation says:
    February 18, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    Lol that’s one way to look at it ;)

    Reply
  2. byron napier says:
    January 1, 2010 at 10:33 am

    http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/byroncnapier2134/zodiacegpt.jpg

    Reply
  3. Mathias says:
    December 15, 2009 at 10:29 pm

    I’m rabbit in the Chinese zodiac so here is my try:

    http://mathias5r.deviantart.com/art/Chinesse-rabbit-146840024

    Reply
  4. CgBaran Tuts says:
    April 23, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Nice work

    Reply
  5. Kristine says:
    March 18, 2009 at 12:36 am

    Nice – but it does take the fun out of painting with chinese brushes and ink…..:)

    Reply
  6. fuel for creative minds says:
    March 3, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    cool !!!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply
  7. Rocco says:
    February 12, 2009 at 4:30 am

    hola amigos. excelente tutorial y muy creativo, acá esta mi resultado, http://www.lozanoweb.com/pinturachina/tigre_by_Rocco.jpg

    Reply
  8. Manuel Minino says:
    February 6, 2009 at 12:04 am

    you took the tiger pic??? awesome!! i like it a LOT!!

    Reply
  9. Wilson says:
    December 20, 2008 at 9:09 pm

    Can i ask, how do i type chinese letters? :)

    Reply
  10. Johnson says:
    November 4, 2008 at 7:40 am

    Thanks Auricom. Welcome to 10Steps.SG :D

    Reply
  11. Auricom says:
    November 4, 2008 at 2:41 am

    Very straightforward, you can see the progress as you go, easily understandable tutorial. Thank you very much for sharing.

    Reply
  12. flopie~~ says:
    September 23, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    very nice.. but i don know how 2 turn the black stroke 2 red..
    can u tell me??

    Reply
  13. Johnson says:
    September 23, 2008 at 8:07 am

    Thanks for your support, Ross!

    Reply
  14. Ross says:
    September 23, 2008 at 6:56 am

    Great tutorial Johnson, really simple and a brilliant result :)

    Reply
  15. Johnson says:
    September 22, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Thanks guys!

    Hi Daniel, yes. I’m made in Singapore ;)

    Reply
  16. Daniel Richard says:
    September 22, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    That’s a great work there on this tutorial! Ya from Singapore too ey? :)

    Reply
  17. exumer says:
    September 17, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    very nice tutorial. thank you for this!

    Reply
  18. Xed says:
    September 17, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    what can i say – dude – this is insane.

    i cant believe how simple you’ve made it.

    good job dude!!

    Reply
  19. Michael says:
    September 10, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    I am always fascinated by the chinese drawings. Thanks for introducing the best way to taste their design.

    cheers.

    Reply
  20. evertt says:
    September 10, 2008 at 9:08 am

    very nice
    thanks

    Reply
  21. Rob del Ar says:
    September 10, 2008 at 2:39 am

    Very nice! I have been looking for something like this for my Buddhist artwork. Excellent…thanks thanks and more thanks!

    Rob of del aR Films

    Reply
  22. sadhu says:
    September 9, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    this is nice man…

    Reply
  23. zvonko says:
    September 6, 2008 at 9:50 am

    nice effect…

    Reply
  24. Johnson says:
    September 4, 2008 at 8:28 am

    I’m glad you like it :D

    Reply
  25. Natalie says:
    September 4, 2008 at 6:48 am

    awesome- this is a really nice effect to use. thanks!

    Reply

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