Plaid Skirt Tutorial (II)


1. Open the base you want to use. Create a new layer called "Skirt".	2. If you're stuck for colours, have a look at House of Tartan for some inspiration. Set your foreground colour to a dark shade of whatever you want the base colour of the skirt to be. Using the Paintbrush tool, draw in the outline of the skirt.	3. Using the Paintbrush & Eraser tools, tidy up the outline to ensure that it is smooth & 1 pixel thick at all points.

4. Flood Fill the interior of the skirt with a slightly lighter shade of the outline colour (you will need to ensure that any gaps in the skirt outline are filled before doing this).	5. Create a new layer, above your skirt layer, named Thick Stripe 1. Set your foreground to the colour you want for your main pattern. Click on the Line Tool & use approximately these settings.	6. Draw a long stripe at about a 45 degree angle over the skirt.

7. Press CTRL+C to copy this line. Press CTRL+E to paste it as a new selection. Move the selection a little distance away from the first line & when you're happy with it's position, press CTRL+D to drop the selection.	8. Press CTRL+C again to copy both the lines. Press CTRL+E to paste them as a new selection - you now have 4 stripes! Move them into position so that all the lines are the same distance apart from each other. Press CTRL+D to drop the selection.	9. Repeat this process until you have enough lines to cover your skirt.

10. Press CTRL+C to copy your lines. Press CTRL+L to paste them as a new layer. Press CTRL+M to flip/mirror the lines on the new layer. On the layer palette, double-click on the new layer to bring up it's properties. Rename it Thick Stipe 2	11. Looks a bit messy, doesn't it? Go back to your skirt layer. Select the Magic Wand tool. Click on the area surrounding the skirt. Go back to the layer named Stripe 1 & press Delete on the keyboard.	12. Go to the layer name Thick Stripe 2 & press delete. Press CTRL+D to drop the selection. You skirt should look like this so far.

13. Create a new layer called Thin Stripe 1. Click on the Line Tool & use the settings as shown above.	14. Select a contrasting colour to your exisiting stripes or skirt - I'm using a green colour. Draw a line that borders onto one of the existing stripes. You can always use the Move tool to position it exactly, just make sure it's the same angle as the existing line.	15. Press CTRL+C to copy this line. Press CTRL+E to paste it as a new selection. Move the 2nd line so that it is against the other side of the bigger line. Press CTRL+D to drop the selection.

16. Press CTRL+C to copy both of these lines. Press CTRL+E to paste them as a new selection & position them so that they border another of the thick stripes, Keep pressing CTRL+E until all the stripes in that direction have thin borders.	17. Press CTRL+C to copy your lines. Press CTRL+L to paste them as a new layer. Press CTRL+M to flip/mirror the lines on the new layer. On the layer palette, double-click on the new layer to bring up it's properties. Rename it Thin Stipe 2	18. Now, repeat step 11 to delete the excess lines on layers Thin Stripe 1 & Thin Stripe 2

19. On the Layer Palette adjust the Opacity of each of the stripe layers. You may need to play around with these to find out what looks good, but this is what I have set: Thick Stripe 1 - 57% Thick Stripe 2 - 66% Thin Stripe 1 - 57% Thin Stripe 2 - 63%	20. If you're happy with the skirt, you can leave it as it is, but I want to add a little shading. Hide all the layers on your doll apart from those involved in your skirt.	21. Right-click on one of the visible layers & select Merge/Merge Visible. You will be left with a single merged layer from however many you had before.

22. Click on the Retouch tool & use approximately the same settings as above (this will vary depending on the size of your doll).	23. Carefully Darken the area behind each pleat, as shown above.	24. Change the Darken RGB to Lighten RGB & the size to about 3, but keep all others settings the same as before. Add a little highlight to the front pleating & to each of the other pleats/folds.

Your plaid skirt is complete!
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