Hello fellow SSers! After a short hiatus, the MM's Artist Spotlight is BACK, and February's Artist of the Month is none other than Miss GrapehGrape, known to some around the site as Sarah. Congratulations Sarah!

SPOILER!!: Part 1: The Interview

Interviewer: Lissy Longbottom
Interviewee: GrapehGrape

Hello SSers, and happy new year! I do apologize for the long break between interviews, but we're back and I have the honor of having the super awesome Sarah, aka GrapehGrape, with me to talk about her graphics! Sarah has been around SS for quite some time and is back with her latest superhero themed graphics shop (which I am in LOVE with, by the way ) So, Sarah, I guess the most obvious question is - WHO is your favorite superhero?

Definitely Captain America. I mean he's a big sweetie and VERY attractive. The perfect combination in my eyes.

MMMM I do love the Cap' - so hard to pick a favorite! So the shop theme is awesome, but you need an even awesomer graphic maker at the helm, and you've definitely achieved a level of awesome in your graphics! So what made you first start to dabble in graphic art? What were some of the first graphics you played around with?

I started dabbling mainly because I just loved the idea of photoshop and I've always had a love for all types of art. After awhile, I finally got comfortable enough that I opened a collaborative shop with a couple of my friends and BAM! I caught the bug. Just playing around with graphics on SS made me decide I wanted to go to graphic design so that was a big plus. Honestly I started off simple: avvie photo edits and simple sigs. I just really started playing with more complex things recently when I started going to college for design and learned more little things the programs had to offer.

So you're studying graphic design now in school? That's awesome! What's a really cool technique you've learned recently that you want to bring to your SS graphics at some point?

Yep yep. Mainly just little things like coloring and the best way to cut out an image so it's clean and crisp on plainer backgrounds...and just getting better at it in general.

yeah, practice makes perfect! And those are always good skills to improve on - I know I'm constantly looking for new coloring and stuff like that! What's a piece of advice you'd give to someone who hasn't really mustered up the courage to jump into graphics yet?

Just give it a try. No one's good right off the bat. Everyone needs practice. Mess around with it. Experiment. It takes time to learn the programs, but once you do it'll become a breeze to make pretty things.

What's your favorite program to use?

I use photoshop for my SS graphics...but for my own design stuff I love illustrator.

Oooh interesting, I've never really dabbled in that program but it sounds fancy haha! Well thanks so much for taking some time to chat with me today, and I can't wait to see your tutorial! Keep making graphics, and good luck with the graphic design programs in school! You're gonna do AWESOME stuff!

SPOILER!!: Part 2: The Tutorial and Examples

Hey there everyone. I love using brightly colored pictures in my graphics and I have a very distinct way of achieving this look. So I'm going to share it with you lovely people! I'm using the Photoshop Creative Cloud to make it, but you should also be able to do this is CS6 for sure.

We're going to go from THIS to THIS.

Step One: I cropped down the image to avatar ratio. I kept it big so it's easier to work with the color but I can always resize it later to use as an avvie.

SPOILER!!: step one

Step Two: Now that it's all sized and proportioned the way I want, I'm going to make the colors a tad bit brighter. I go over to the photoshop layer that has my image on it and right click > copy layer. Once I do that I go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options and change the settings from Normal to Screen. This makes the image brighter. If it's too bright you can adjust the opacity on the layer to tone it down a bit.

SPOILER!!: step two

Step Three: Now that it's brighter, time to mess the vibrancy a bit. I do this by going to Layer > New Adjusment Layer > Vibrance. I set the Vibrancy slider to 100% and the Saturation to 76%. Again, every picture may be a bit different so you can put the saturation one wherever you want.

SPOILER!!: step three

Step Four: Now for the fun part: coloring. First go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color. My percentages for each setting are as follows:

Reds:
Cyan – 58
Magenta – 66
Yellow – 0
Black – 0
Yellows:
Cyan – 44
Magenta – 100
Yellow - -50
Black - 0

Greens:
Cyan - 44
Magenta - -100
Yellow - 22
Black - 0

Cyans:
Cyan - 37
Magenta - -100
Yellow - 24
Black - 0

Blues:
Cyan - 32
Magenta - -100
Yellow - 41
Black - 0

Magentas:
Cyan - 11
Magenta - 38
Yellow - -56
Black – 0

Whites:
Cyan - 43
Magenta - -34
Yellow - -44
Black - 1

Blacks:
Cyan - 59
Magenta - 0
Yellow - 77
Black - -4

Again, you might want to tweak a couple of things to make the coloring look right with the specific image.

SPOILER!!: step 4

Step Five: Now for the final bit. The darks aren’t dark enough for me and the image is kind of washed in a midtone. I go to Layer > New Adjustment Level > Levels. The settings I used are as follows:

Darks – 40
Mid – 1.00
Lights – 255

Tweak things as you need to so that there is a nice balance…and voilà! You have your finished product!

SPOILER!!: end result

Here’s a couple of graphics I made for myself using this image and coloring to show you how it looks in use.

SPOILER!!: examples

After this go ahead and do whatever you want with your image. Resize it to an avvie. Use it on a sig. The possibilities are endless!