Tutorial / How to Fake that Chalkboard Look on Photoshop + Champagne Blending Illustration for Tatler HK

How to get a realistic chalk effect on Photoshop.
This trick looks more like chalk than CaCO₃, I learned it from a Jessica Hische talk. Speaking of which, talks and podcasts by creative people are the only way I survive while working since I spend 8+ hours drawing by myself, my sanity is just hanging on by threads. My absolute favourite lately is Your Dreams My Nightmares by artist / educator Sam Weber, he interviews illustrators and art directors and it fulfils all my podcast listening fantasies: weird music, cool people, talking about minute things only illustrators care about, NYC!

Anyways back to this tutorial, it really is super easy.

- Using a 2B or darker pencil draw the words or pictures you want on a piece of paper (bond paper is fine).
- Smudge it all around with your hands, that's why you need a 2B pencil, any harder and it ain't messy enough.
- Touch all your belongings and make everything dirty. 
- Scan the paper and open it up on Photoshop.
- Invert the image so the white part becomes black and voila! Finally play around with the levels until you're happy with the black to white ratio.

Here's one of my latest illustrations for HongKongTatler.com for their article on champagne blending where I used this chalkboard technique. Uh huh huh, I had a tres bien time drawing that French man.

Thanks to the editor Charmaine and the writer Esther.