Feather Boa Tutorial

Although I have written this tutorial for Paint Shop Pro, any program that support layers, like Adobe Photoshop, Serif Photoplus, Corel Photopaint or Ulead PhotoImpact, can be used. It does assume that you are familiar with whichever graphic program you are using.

1. Start with your completed doll that you want to add the boa to.	2. Create a new layer named Boa. Click on the Airbrush tool. Make the settings as above. If you are making a boa on a larger base, you can set the Size bigger. The most important settings are the Hardness, Size, Opacity and Density. You can always play around with these to vary the effect.	3. Choose the base colour for the boa. I usually use one of the colours from the dolls dress, but it's entirely up to you. Airbrush the boa on as above. Don't worry if you draw over the doll, we can clean it up later.

4. Select a slightly lighter shade and go over the boa again. You can also alter the Opacity, Density or size at this point to keep this interesting.	5. Repeat this process until all white gaps are filled within the boa and you like how it looks. I usually use about 3 different colours, as you have set the Opacity quite low, you get quite a lot of colour variation anyway. I also find it looks better if you use the base colour several times over the lighter layers, as this gives it some definition.	6. Now we get to start cleaning up. As you can see, I have gone over the arms and dress in several places.

7. Drop the Opacity of the layer named Boa to around 50%. You should be able to see where the boa overlaps the doll. Use the Eraser tool with a Size of 1 and Opacity of 100 to erase the unwanted bits (remember which way it is draped!).	8. Set the layer opacity back to 100%. Your doll should now look something like this.	9. The final step is to clean up the edges. Use the Paintbrush tool with a size of 1 to fill in any gaps and use the Eraser tool again to clean up the edges of the boa - try to keep the "fluffy effect" pixels to just 1 or 2 pixels wide and it there is an area where the edge is just flat, delete the odd pixel to make it look "fluffy".

Your Feather Boa is complete!
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