Signature Stop, Photoshop signature tutorials, renders, tag tutorials and signature backgrounds!

Today we will learn how to make the signature below, using pentool, some patterns, the erase tool and stock placing. Its a very simple, yet effective method to create attractive looking tag. For a signature like this to look good you will need some good stock though, one with a lot of different characters or detail on it. I will post the stock below. Enjoy!

We will be using this Gorillaz stock image to create our signature. As you can see, it has a lot of different shading, colors and characters on it. This is good!

I started with a canvas size 320 x 110, open a empty canvas and fill it with a dark color, I used #212121

Now we’re going to fill our canvas with a pattern. We used this one, you can use one of your own if you like. What’s important is that it has an attractive color. We will be inverting the color of this pattern later on, so if you use a black or white pattern the outcome might not look as appealing. Also, the colors sort of match our stock.

Pattern used (you can copy this if you like, Paste in new file > Edit > Define as Pattern)

Filling our canvas:

Take a splatter brush (we will be having lots available soon in our resources section) and erase around it untill it pleases you. Try to create some sort of flow from left to right.

Take your soft brush around size 15 and choose the patterns colour with eyedropper tool and brush around the edges, set it to lighten and take a normal brush and smudge the circles you made with the soft brush.

Invert your previous pattern and you will get something similar to this one. We changed the color slightly, if you like you can copy ours (Paste in new file > Edit > Define as Pattern). Fill your canvas with the pattern, and grab your splatter brush eraser again. erase most of the pattern, but leave some on top.

Our result after erasing most of the pattern:

Now take your stock, and slice out a good looking section of the canvas. We will be using the blue guy at right with the hat as focal. Put the stock in your signature and erase and erase everything around him, and set this layers blending mode to lighten.

Stock used:

Now create a new layer below the stock layer, take a soft round brush around size 10 and brush behind the stock with a darkish color. We picked #212121.

Result of the brushing with the stock hidden:

with stock shown:

Take your soft brush again, choose a slightly brighter pink and make a new layer above the stock layer and brush around just a little bit and smudge/erase it untill you get what you want. Create some lighting around the main character. Our result:

This is the tricky and hard part of the sig. We’re going to use the pentool to create a divider between several parts of the stock . Select your pentool, set it to paths, and try creating paths like shown in the image below (or any other sort of divider):

Now select Paths on your layer palette, right click and select fill. Choose a white or light color:

Slightly burn the edges of the white area, or smudge if it’s too sharp. Our result:

We’re going to add the next part of the stock. Paste your stock onto your canvas, resize, and erase everything around it. Place it somewhere near the divider we just created:

This is the stock we’ve used. As you can see, we havent erased everything around the layer, because we’re going to change the blending mode to lighten. This way you won’t really see the dark edges because they will blend into the background:

Now rotate the stock to following the flow of the divider we’ve made, and set the layers blending mode to lighten:.

Paste the original stock back in again, and place it to fit the upper left hole. Make sure the layer is placed under the white divider we’ve made:

We’re going to remove the area that is outside of our divider. You can either use a layer mask for this (more detail about layer masks can be found in this Depth layer mask tutorial) or simply use your eraser tool.

We will again insert our stock into our sig and move it around untill we get the look we want. The guy has some interesting text on his T-shirt, so we’re going to move it around to fit into the other hole we have left.

Once again take your pentool (you can also use the lasso tool if you feel more comfortable) and select the other lines of the space. Erase the area outside of our divider again:

Create a new layer and place it on top of the stock we just placed. Set this layers blending mode to lighten. We’re going to brush with a bright pinkish color over the Hand With The Rising Thumb area. You can use a different color, we used pink selected with the eyedropper tool:

Blending mod eset to lighten:

We’re almost done with our signature. There’s some final touches you can do. For example, the section next to the head of our main character looks a little empty. You can use a Cinema4d Render set to Lighten or Screen, or you can softly brush in this area with a good looking color. Try smudging the brushing around. Our final result:

Thanks for viewing this tutorial! Thanks again to scalper for providing the tag and being an awesome dude!