Paintshop-Pro Tutorial: How To Create Cute Fireflies With Glass Protection

This tutorial will show you how to create cute fireflies with paintshop pro, from scratch. We'll also create a nice glass bottle.
Everything in this scene was made from scratch.

Everyone wants to catch fireflies in glass jars. In this tutorial i'm going to make catching them impossible by giving the firefly a glass protection! Just as fast as they switch on their lights, they can switch on their glass protection!

I looked at a bunch of firefly pictures to see what they looked like and I used a glass jar picture as a starting point to make my glass jar - which I will put in as a source because it was a reference.

Thanks to Sha Sha Chu for the glass jar.

Sources used:
1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shashachu/277049272/

End result:

Author:

Views: 21003

Score: 7.22 / 10

Author earned: $2

Practice tutorial

Tags:drawingfireflyglassjar

Step 1

Open a blank image. Add a new layer.
Fill with gradient.

Step 2

Add a new layer. Open the picture tubes and select the preset grass blades.

Step 3

My tube size changed from the back to the front but it was around 20-30 or so. Start painting your grass by holding your left mouse and moving along your canvas until you get the desired grass.

Step 4

Add a new layer. Now just paint a bit of grass, as shown in picture, so that you can place some fireflies "in" the grass.

Step 5

Open a new canvas and add a new layer. Using your shapes tool, use the ellipse shape in silver and make sure "vector" is checked and start to draw the body of the firefly.

Step 6

Add a new layer and draw the wings. Add a new layer for each wing. I used the ellipse shape again in black.

Step 7

Right click on the wing and click "node edit".

Step 8

Square out the top part of each wing. You can add nodes by holding CTRL and click where you want your node added. After you are finished there, you can right click again and click "quit node edit"

Step 9

Here is both wings squared out.

Step 10

Add a new layer and change your vector shape to a rounded rectangle and draw a rectangle for the head. I used a yellow/gold color.

Step 11

Edit the nodes on this rectangle to make the head a bit pointy.

Step 12

Go to your layers pallette and right click on all the vector layers and convert them to raster layers.

Step 13

Now you will start to give the firefly color by outlining the wings in yellow/gold using your paintbrush. Use your retouch "dodge" tool on very low opacity and start working on the outline.

Step 14

Use your spray can tool and paint some black dots along the gold outline. Add a new layer and spray paint some whitish glare on the wing and add a blur to it to make it look like the wing is elevated or shining in the elevated area.

Step 15

Do the same for the other wing.

Step 16

Now work on your head by painting some black in and some red. Use your retouch dodge tool for the yellow/gold and again spray paint some dots. Paint in a whitish line in the middle of the head and soften that line.

Step 17

Add a new layer and draw legs in black with your paintbrush. Add a bit of white to round the legs--soften the white with your retouch tool on soften.

Step 18

Duplicate this layer and mirror it for the other side.

Step 19

Duplicate this layer. Move the leg halfway down the fireflies body. I used my selection tool on freehand and selected 2/3 of the bottom half of the leg at the joint. I rotated this selection to the left a bit and moved it to join again with the rest of the leg. I then erased what was left in that position (the program PSP7 basically copies the selection when you move it). Duplicate this layer and mirror it.

Step 20

Duplicate this layer and move it to the lower part of the body and then duplicate it again and mirror it. Turn off the background if you started with a white canvas and then merge all visible layers.

Step 21

Copy the firefly and paste it on the grass image as a new layer.

Step 22

Resize the firefly.

Step 23

On the same layer, use your paintbrush at a low opacity and the hardness at 0, paint a soft glow in yellow over the fireflies rear end.

Step 24

On that same layer, bring the size of your brush down just a tad and paint another glow over top of the first one.

Step 25

On that same layer, bring the size of your brush down to paint a bit of glow between the wings. Work your way from the rear end to the top of the wings.

Step 26

On the same layer, bring your brush size all the way up and bring the opacity down even more and put on big glow on top of the rear end again.

Step 27

On that same layer, bring your brush size down again and change your color to bright green.

Step 28

Paint just one green glow on the rear end. Fireflies seem to have a green glow to them sometimes; that is why I added this one green spot.

Step 29

Duplicate this firefly layer as many times as you want a firefly in your picture.

Step 30

Move the layers around in the picture and resize them, smaller the farther back.

Step 31

The farther back the firefly, the more of an average blur you need to apply to it.

Step 32

You will want to move a few of the fireflies to make them look like they are in the grass. Drag the layer you want under the second grass layer you made earlier but above the first grass layer.

Step 33

Do this with a few of the firefly layers and move the fireflies to where they look best behind the grass.

Step 34

Now open the glass jar image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/shashachu/277049272/ and add a new layer. Please ignore "merged" in the picture- I took a screen shot after I finished this part.

Step 35

With your paintbrush at 0 hardness and color white or gray, start drawing where you see highlights on the background jar. Use your retouch tool on soften at a low opacity and soften these hightlight lines. At points, I added new layers and painted white and added gaussion blur instead of using my soften tool. Turn off the background layer by toggling the glasses and then merge visible layers.

Step 36

Copy your jar and paste it onto your grass/firefly image as a new layer. Rotate and flip the jar. At this point, clean up any edges on your jar--it is easier to see on the green grass.

Step 37

Add a new layer. Using your selection shape tool on circle, select a circle around the firefly. Add the cutout effect on one side of the circle.

Step 38

Add a new layer and apply the cutout effect again to the other side of the circle.

Step 39

Add a new layer and paint a soft white thick line along the edge of the circle.

Step 40

Apply gaussion blur.

Step 41

Add a new layer. Paint a soft white dot on the other side and add gaussion blur.

Step 42

Add a new layer and change your color to green and paint a thick line the opposite side of the rear end. Add a gaussion blur.

Step 43

Add a new layer and paint a bit of green alongside the bubble near the rear end of the firefly.

Step 44

Add gaussion blur. Now add a new layer under the grass layers.

Step 45

Now paint some mountains with a soft brush.

Step 46

Sometime around this point, I wanted to move my glass jar closer to the firefly. Because it was closer, I needed to paint a bit of reflection from the fireflies light onto the glass so I added a new layer, painted a bit and softened it.
Now back to the mountains....duplicate the mountains and drop the lightness all the way down so the mountains are black.

Step 47

Now using your retouch tool on smudge, start just above the top of the mountains and bring your smudge brush down at an angle alongside the top of the mountains. This lets the colored layer show through.

Step 48

Keep smudging until you reach the desired effect. If you haven't done so already, move these mountain layers behind the grass layers.

Step 49

In the layers pallette, I brought the opacity down on both mountain layers. The black one only about 50% but the colored one down even lower.

Step 50

I decided that I didn't like the goldish mountains so I used my color replacer tool to change the gold to blue by changing my background color to the gold color using the color picker and the foreground color to blue---just double click on the gold mountain and it should change to blue.

9 Comments:

Guest says:

Kpassssssssssssssssssssh. it's wonderful

(3 years and 259 days ago)

devangel says:

beautiful

(3 years and 258 days ago)

Guest says:

hey it's awesome

(3 years and 257 days ago)

k5683 says:

thanks!

(3 years and 255 days ago)

gitsadr says:

your fireflies dont fly!!!other then that good tut

(3 years and 220 days ago)

Guest says:

cool!

(3 years and 201 days ago)

Guest says:

Awesome. That is a well written tutorial.

(3 years and 35 days ago)

Guest says:

well!!! for me its nice ....

(2 years and 308 days ago)

Guest says:

Very good explanation of step by step process...Lovely art work

(1 year and 106 days ago)

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