Tutorial 01: Hand Painted Textures

I’ve been working on some hand painted textures for the environment piece posted above. I wanted to go with a hand painted look without going too simple. It will give the environment a nice stylized look.

This tutorial will focus on the brick base for the pirate watchtower.

Here is the finished texture to show what I’ll be creating. I exaggerated the amount of damage I would normally put into a texture like this for the sake of the tutorial.

I’m planning on going with traditional gray stone bricks, so I started out with a medium gray color.

The next step is to plan out the location of the bricks. Along with that I also lightened the top of the texture to represent the ledge on the base of the pirate watchtower. Make sure you load the texture onto the object to test how well the texture will tile. You want the bricks to be roughly the same size.

I created a new layer set to overlay with a slightly colored gradient to add a bit of color to the brick and some vertical contrast.

To start forming out the stone texture I created another layer and ran a Render>Clouds filter. This layer was also set to overlay.

Now that I’ve got a good foundation, the next step is to further refine the brick. I used a lighter color to add some highlights to the lit corner of the brick, and a darker color to add some shadow to the dark corner of the brick. This will add some depth to the texture.

Now that the bricks are taking shape, the process will be a series of adding bits and refining. I usually start with one brick and use it as a test piece.

I liked where the first brick was headed, so I expanded my work area to the surrounding bricks.

At this point I want to add some more detail to the stone pattern. That will help me determine the damage and edges in the future. To do this I start with a custom brush that’s fairly spaced out with a distinct texture.

With the brush above I painted some colored light and dark spots on the stone. I used the cloud layer added earlier as a guide. Add darker areas where the cloud layer is darker, and the reverse with lighter spots.

With the stone detail painted, I now apply a slight blur filter to break up some of that distinct patter.

Back to adding more detail. Try and randomize the damage, nicks, and the edges of the brick. I added more damage than I normally would for the sake of this tutorial.

To really help define the edges and add some extra pop, I create a new layer and paint some small highlights with a brighter color. This is best used on the edges. Keep it somewhat subtle. I also do this with a dark color on the shadow edge.

The chance of finding bricks that are all the exact same color is pretty slim. To add some variety to my bricks I created a new layer set to overlay with a very low opacity setting. I now use a large soft brush and start painting in some black and white on entire bricks. This will add some subtle variation between the bricks.

The last thing to do is adjust the brightness/Contract, and add a sharpen filter to give it some edge.

And there you go! Here is the texture applied to the base of the Pirate Watchtower.

Thanks for checking it out! And stay tuned for future tutorials.