Tutorial: Creating the tiger star with a easy swirl effect.
Today's tutorial will start with illustrator software. It can be done in photoshop as well though.
1. on a 3" x 3" square, bring in a gradient with your choice of colors and choose Radial type. This is the color choice I am using for this sample.
2. Go to windows, tools, on the left hand side, 7 down, is the Twirl tool. Tear off this set of tools and have fun playing with it, but right now we will just use the twirl one. Using the twirl tool, move it over and around the gradient image above until you get an effect that you personally like. Here is mine.
3. That's it, I said it was easy, now let's make something with it. Make a star with the star tool big enough to cover the swirl effect.
4. with the star activated let's go back to the twirl tool again and use it on one of the points. Do a little or a lot what ever you like. I like a little, then I can dangle something off of it.
5. Now take your star and put it on top of your colorful twirl effect (or whatever shape you decide to use). Now grab both the star and background together, right click your mouse, and hit "make clipping mask". This is what you now will get. the first star shows a gradient with a white background selected, the 2nd is with a black background.
6. Now let's take this last saved file and copy and paste it into photoshop to add some dimension. In photo shop, go to Layer, Layer Styles, Bevel and Emboss, and play until you like what you see.
That's it, this is how the tiger star was made that was featured in today's issue. Have fun!
Here are several other stars to look at for inspiration.
Thanks for visiting!