Psychedelic Wallpaper

I was messing around with the background for the Magic 8 Ball poster I made and posted about here.

I added the woman’s photograph from Creative Rehab because I wanted a focus point, and used several of the free-for-use textures I’ve accumulated over time. There’s about fifteen or sixteen textures in the background alone, all at different transparencies and with various blend modes – some Vivid Light, some Hard Light, some Multiply. There is a base, heavily patterned and contrasting image as the base, then several watercolor splash type textures in between at various transparencies and blend modes, and then a unifying texture on the top, set at the Lighter Color blend mode to give that faded/washed effect.

On top of that was the photograph, set at Darken and 73% transparency. Then I added, with a speckled brush, setting size to pressure sensitivity and with scattering among other things, to do the dots. I added some very transparent large dots to the top right corner as well, and I tried several blending modes for this (including duplicating the layer and setting the second one to divide for an embedded effect), but in the end, this was less garish while still noticeable. The swirl across the top was done with a transparent brush and a Bevel and Emboss effect to give it that translucent/watery look. It’d be more noticeable if I turned up the transparency,  but then that fights for attention with the other elements, so I had to tone it down.

Overall, really just messing around for practice. But I like the end result a lot, so up it goes on my desktop.

Look forward to some more Uruguay pictures this weekend!