PXL Eyes

Start off by creating a new 300 dpi canvas 8 inches wide by 8 inches wide with a white background.

Put a vertical guide at 4 inches and a horizontal guide at 4 inches.

Make sure you have “Snap to Guides” turned on. To do this, go to “View” > “Snap To” and see if “Guides” is checked. If not, click on it.

Now, prepare the brush. In this tutorial, you will be using only one type of brush, which is the “splatter” brush provided in Photoshop as one of its default brushes. You will see six “splatter” brush diameters in the brushes palette, pick any one of those.

Note: Although, you will be using only one type of brush, you will be using it in varying diameters. And this is easily done by pressing the “[“ and “]” keys.

Anyway, when you’ve picked a splatter brush, set its “Flow” to 12%.

Create a new blank layer on top of the background layer and name it “red diamond”.

Click on the “Rounded Rectangle Tool”

and set its “Radius” to 100 px.

Set your foreground color to #c40000.

With the “Rounded Rectangle Tool” the active tool (click on it if it’s not), Click on the dropdown “Geometry options” menu and click on “Fixed size”. Enter “4.5 in” for the width (W) and Height (H).

Making sure that the “big diamond” layer is the active layer, click on somewhere in the upper left corner of the canvas to create the shape (a rounded square). Note: You can click anywhere on the canvas as long as you will be able to produce your “rounded square” in its entirety. If not, any part of your “rounded square” that goes off to the edge of the canvas will not be filled or “rendered”.

Now, go to “Edit” > “Free Transform” (or press Ctrl+T) and rotate it by 45 degrees.

Using the “Move Tool”, drag the diamond until it snaps to the center of the canvas.

Create a new layer on top of the “big diamond” layer and name it “white diamond”.

Click on the “Rounded Rectangle Tool” again. This time, set its dimensions to 3.75 inches high and 3.75 inches wide and set its “Radius” to 80 px.

Set the foreground color to “white” (or #FFFFFF).

With the “white diamond” layer the active layer, click on the canvas to produce your second and smaller “rounded square”.

Again, go to “Edit” > Free Transform (or press Ctrl+T) and rotate it by 45 degrees.

Using the “Move Tool” again, drag the diamond until it snaps to the center of the canvas.

Now, it’s time to age those diamonds.

Create a new layer between the “red diamond” and “white diamond” layers and name it “red decay”.

With the “red decay” layer active, Ctrl+click on the “red diamond layer” to load its selection.

Click on the brush tool which should now be already set to “splatter” brush with 12% Flow. Set the foreground color to #430000.

Using varying brush diameters (I use brush diameters of 100 px up to 700 px for this), randomly click on the edges of your red diamond. The aim here is to build up some dark areas on the red diamond. Whatever you do, do not click and drag as this will give you a bad effect. Just click once and move to another part of the diamond. If you want a certain area to be darker, keep the mouse pointer steady and click on the same spot repeatedly (about 2 to 4 times or even more depending on your taste). To improve the “randomness” of the splatter, use varying diameters on the same spot. You can easily change the brush’s diameter by pressing the “[“ key to decrease the diameter size or the “]” key to increase it.

In the screenshot below, I have hidden the “white diamond” layer as well as the guides and selection to show clearly the areas that I’ve painted with the splatter brush using the #430000 color.

As an additional tip, try starting off using a big brush diameter. After you’ve painted in your splatter with the big brush, reduce the brush size and click on the inside boundaries of your big splatter. Be patient. Believe me, this is easier done than said. Just don’t get too carried away and always remember to avoid building up “uniform” patterns.

Take a closer look at the screenshot below. Notice the marks made by the different brush sizes I used in making the stains.

Do this again with your foreground color set to white (or #FFFFFF), but this time concentrate on the area surrounding the edges of the inner white diamond. The aim here is to make the red paint appear to be fading, revealing the white base coat/paint. I used brush sizes ranging from 70 to 400 px for this.

Create a new layer on top of the “white diamond” layer and name it “white decay”.

With the “white decay” layer active, Ctrl+click on the “white diamond” layer to load its selection.

Using a large brush diameter, around 250 px to 900 px, and with a color of #761f00, randomly click on all over the white diamond. The aim here is to make the white area look to be showing early signs of rust. Again, the key here is not to overdo it, so better leave some white spaces untouched.

Now, just as you’ve done on the “red decay” layer, using greatly varying brush diameters, randomly “splatter up” your “white decay” layer (primarily around the outer edges and more on the lower portion of the white diamond) using the following colors:

#d03100
#761f00
#763d00
#ce4100

My tip for you here is to slowly build up the colors one by one. For example, use #d03100 first...

After you’re satisfied with what you’ve done with that color, use #761f00 on top of the pattern you have created with the previous color...

And go to the next color...

and so on. If you think you have overdone/overused any of the colors, simply move back to using the previous color.

At this point, I thought that the red diamond is still a bit too bright so I went back to the “red decay” layer and loaded the red diamond’s selection again and did some more staining there using the #880000 color.

Create a new layer on top of the “white diamond” layer and name it “arrow”.

Click on the “Custom Shape Tool”...

and pick “Arrow 18” which looks like a “U-turn” symbol.

Set your foreground color to black (or #000000) and create the arrow inside the boundaries of the white diamond. Hold down the “Shift” key as you click and drag to create the arrow so that it will stay in proportion.

Rotate the arrow 90 degrees clockwise...

...flip it horizontally...

...and move the arrow until it snaps to the center of the canvas.

Note: The only reason why I flipped the arrow horizontally is because I live in a left-hand driving country.

Now, Ctrl+click on the “arrow” layer to load its selection.

Create a new layer on top of the “arrow” layer and name it “arrow decay”.

Similar to what your aim was with the “red decay” layer, the aim here is to make the black paint of the arrow to appear as if it’s fading and showing some of the white paint underneath.

So, with the arrow’s selection loaded and the “arrow decay” layer the active layer, set your foreground color to white again and do as you have done in the previous steps.

Create a new layer on top of the “arrow decay” layer and name it “rivets”.

Using the elliptical marquee tool, create a small circular selection with a size similar to the one shown in the screenshot below and place it about an inch-and-a-half below the upper tip of the red diamond.

Note: make sure that it is centered horizontally, meaning the selection’s center is aligned with the vertical guide.

With the “rivets” layer active, fill the selection with #5e607c.

Deselect.

Now, duplicate the “rivets” layer and move the duplicate down to about the same distance from the bottom of the red diamond as the original circle is to the top of the red diamond.

Merge the “rivets” and “rivets copy” layers. To merge them, make sure the “rivets copy” layer is active and that the “rivets” layer is directly underneath it, then press Ctrl+E.

Double click on the “rivets” layer and apply “Drop Shadow” Layer Style (with the settings shown below)...

Also, apply the “Bevel and Emboss” Layer Style (with the settings shown below).

Now, let’s add some rust trails under the rivets.

Create a new layer under the “rivets” layer and name it “rust trail”.

Click on the splatter brush again.

To be able to see what’s going on, paint on somewhere below your rivet using the following colors:

#b73900 (click trice with a 45px splatter brush)

#ff4f00 (clicked 5 times with a 30px splatter brush at the left portion of the first splatter)

#812800 (clicked 5 times with a 30px splatter brush at the right portion of the first splatter)

#ff4f00 (again with 9px brush at the 11 o’clock position of the first splatter and 15px brush at the 2 o’clock position of the first splatter clicking 10 times each)

Now, press Ctrl+T and stretch the splatter to about 2.5 inches in height.

Move the rust trail up until its widest and most opaque portion meets with the rivet.

Delete the portion of the rust trail above the rivet.

Duplicate the “rust trail” layer and move the duplicate to the other rivet.

Merge the “rust trail” and “rust trail copy” layers.

After you’ve merged the “rust trail” and “rust trail copy” layers, activate the resulting merged layer and Ctrl+click on the “red diamond” layer to load its selection. Invert the loaded selection (Shift+Ctrl+I) and press the “Delete” key on your keyboard. This should erase, if any, rust trail(s) extending outside of the main sign.

To add some depth or thickness to your road sign, duplicate the “red diamond” layer and move the duplicate and place it under your original “red diamond” layer.

Double click on the “Red diamond copy” layer and apply a “Color Overlay” of #570000 to it.

With the “Move Tool”, press the “down” key on your keyboard 3 times to move the duplicate red diamond down a bit.

Now, let’s add a pole to your sign.

Create a new layer below the “red diamond copy” layer and name it “pole”.

Using the “Rectangular Marquee Tool”, create a selection similar to the one shown below.

With the “pole” layer active, fill the selection using the “Gradient Fill Tool” with the gradient set as shown below.

#232323 at 0% location
#b2b2b2 at 73% location
#323232 at 92% location
#c1c1c1 at 100% location

Make your gradient going from left to right. Press and hold the “Shift” key as you click and drag to make sure that your gradient follows a perfectly straight line.

For a quick clear early morning sky background, simply fill the “Background” layer with a gradient of #b7dde6 (lighter blue) and #67b7e8 (darker blue).

Voila! Your done! Below is my final result.