Advanced Winter Hat & Snowman Tutorial

adapted & written by Pat Kemp
PSPMadeEZ Moderator

(An advanced version based on the selections tutorial Winter Hat by Mona @ graphics.carverhouse)



Thanks Chris, for the cute tutorial this week for the winter hat!


I always see selection tutorials as a challenge - and need to try my hand at duplicating it by using vectors and, in this case, the warp tools. But then i got carried away, and built a snowman to wear the hat- (with the snow we had here this week, i could have built a few real ones too LOL!)

So............. I challenge all of you members who have passed the beginners stage to give it a try as well - and have included some tips for any who are perhaps uncertain of how to attack this one ;)

The hat is really just basic shapes - a rounded rectangle for the cuff, a circle for the pompom, and an ellipse for the hat itself.Make the point of the hat centred for now - makes the knitted look more realistic when it gets warped!(the stripes are added later)make each vector shape on a separate layer!

after converting to raster layers, then you can add the stripes to the body of the hat.follow the original tut for adding the vertical lines.You can add the cut-out shading now, or after the warping steps. 

Then using the warp brush on push (I used a hardness of 48 and a strength of 30 - varying the size) to shape the hat and rimand on contract (hardness 0, strength 62) to pull in the ribbing in places it would be compressed,then on the pompom, the smudge brush (size 63, hardness 71, density 11) around the edges to make it fluffy. 

I added a higher noise value (15%) than the tut, on each layer, as i wanted a tweedy look ;) 

Also the darken brush  (hardness 0, density 71, opacity 34) to accentuate the folds

 

and that completes your hat! For the snowman, simply 3 vector circles  - i don't like to use white so that I can add some white highlights later,so a pale grey-blue like #e7e5f5 is what I used.the arms, stones and carrot are freehand drawn with the vector pen tool(if you want the stones perfectly round, use the preset shape circle) 

  

 I added noise and an inner bevel to the stones, and cut-out shading to the 3 snowballs, carrot, and arms.To make the stones seem slightly sunken in the snowman, I added a drop shadow in white of +2, +2, and in the shading colour (#817d9d) of -2, -2 These are only the way I did things - use your own imagination to do things your own way ! 

Have fun! 

Looking forward to seeing your hat, and snowman if you choose to make him ;)
hugs
Ü

EZ Mod