How to Draw a Steaming Hot Chili Pepper in Photoshop

A very detailed tutorial that will show you how to create a vaporous chili pepper illustration. You will learn advanced painting techniques such as working with custom brushes or achieving vapor effect in seconds. Full resolution PSD file included.

Preview of Final Results

Steaming Hot Chili Pepper Photoshop Tutorial

Details

Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4
Difficulty: Medium
Completion Time: 1 Hour

Step 1 - Preparing the background

It's actually good idea- and I'm telling that in most of my tutorials- to start with big resolution while drawing. Besides the fact, that you will have better quality of artwork after scaling it down, maybe some day you will want to print your work. My background has pretty big size. For now it is in 72dpi, but after changing the resolution to 150dpi (without resampling image) I was able to print it on A3 format in pretty good quality. As you can see above is a link to background I've used. It will be a good start for you. If you want, you can prepare your own background, but be sure to have at least similar resolution of image to mine. I will use various filters and settings that will work prefectly only with my sizes. To be honest, at the beginning of the tutorial I wasn't really sure how my background will finally looks like, so don't be surprised when it will change dynamically in next steps. If you want to know how to prepare such background by yourself, you can just follow first steps from one of my tutorial where I explained it all pretty clearly. I just used Color balance to make it more like green than orange. Remeber to work with layers. I'm not mentioning that, but you should with every bigger action use new layer.

Step 2 - Simple shape

Firstly we have to choose the right color to work with. I think that #b00207 will looks well here. Not only we have to choose good color for pepper, but also a color that will blend nicely with green background. Now pick up Pen tool and create some basic shape.

And now we will start to shape it. Right click on a Pen tool icon and choose Convert point tool.

Click on a point that you have made previously with Pen tool and drag it with mouse. You will see two lines that make a curvate. Release the mouse button and click on the end of a single to modify only one side of curve.

And that's how you will shape the base chili layer.

Here's a final shape of mine.

Step 3 - Finishing the shape

Our pepper shape is mostly done, but we have to end it with green stem. Pick the color of #9ab02e and again- use Pen tool to create some basic pepper's petiole. It should enlace pepper with a right flow.

And just start to place points that will imitate a final shape.

To modify the placement of shape points use Direct selection tool.

And- what you already know how- use Convert point tool to add some flow to the shape and make it less cubic. In fact I have left a bit of cubic look on the pepper's stem so it will looks more like from some cartoon.

Finished stem shape

Step 4 - Casting shadow

Pick Eliptical marquee tool and make a selection underneath the pepper.

Now fill the selection ( [SHIFT] + [F5] ) with some dark color, I used #220708. Well, maybe it should be more green, but I will leave it as it is. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur and choose the radius of 2,5-3 px.