Every year July in Pennsylvania brings me thoughts of the battle of Gettysburg. I have visited the battlefield several times and I was geeked up enough to create these commemorative banners for the Gettysburg 150 a few years ago. I did one for each day of the battle and used them as banners on my Facebook page.
I created these by first, drawing and sketching in pencil all the individual elements as stand alone pieces. Then I scanned each drawing into my computer. Next I did a bunch of paint splotches with different types of paint on pieces of scrap canvas, and scanned those in. Once everything was digitized, the fun began.
Using Photoshop, I then designed and composed each of these to the proportionate size of a Facebook banner. At that time I had them on a white background with square cut edges. Then I thought it would be cool to put these on a textured, antique paper and create a weathered, distressed look to the edges.
The fast trick in Photoshop to layering imagery like pencil drawings over texture, is to put the pencil drawn layers in multiply mode. That way everything that is not pencil drops out - But even so, the pencil drawing still needs to be sharpened and cleaned up a LOT first or it will look dirty. These were super fun to create and they, along with the entire poster, are now available for purchase by clicking HERE.
