Texas Snowman

I’m diverting from the restoration tutorials because, well, it’s Winter and I want to build a snowman! The only problem with that is that I live in North Central Texas and if we ever do get snow, which we don’t very often, the ratio of snow to dead grass is most often sorely lacking! When we do get a little snowfall, schools shut down, accidents abound and everyone rushes out to make snowmen! Quite an feat in a quarter inch of snow! Needless to say, even if we could gather enough snow to make a nice, fat snowman, he’d look a little… different next to all the normal snowmen of the world! So, since there’s no chance of snow here for Christmas, I’m going to build a snowman today, with you – a Texas snowman!

First, start with a new document. I made mine 800×800 pixels. With the Elliptical Marquee tool, on a new layer, make a nice fat round shape and fill it with white.

Repeat on a new layer, making a smaller circle, placing it above the first shape. Fill with white.

Now we’ll give Snowey some depth. On the first layer, the body, choose the Inner Shadow layer style. Change the default black to a medium grey and bring the size slider up to around 75%.

Repeat on the second layer, the head, by copying and pasting the layer style, or just use the same settings. Next, make a simple nose – and I mean simple. Changing the foreground color to a nice, carrot like orange, use your brush tool to make a elongated triangle shape. Place in the general area a nose might go.

Make a new blank layer above the nose. Changing the foreground color to black, use the brush tool to make a smudge of black along the bottom edge of the nose, as shown below:

Use a Gaussian blur on it, between 7.0 and 7.5 pixels, and bring the opacity down to about 40%. Make a new blank layer and, again using the brush tool, foreground black, make a shape to the right of the nose, as shown below:

Gaussian blur, about 7.5 pixels and bring the opacity down to about 25%. On a new, blank layer, make two black dots for eyes. Add a couple layer styles, Bevel and Emboss, Inner Bevel, default settings and Drop Shadow, lower the distance to 1 pixel.

Now, for a quick scarf, and maybe some earmuffs. Of, course, you can dress him up however you like (a knit cap? A cowboy hat?), but he’s going casual today! Change the foreground to whatever color you like and draw his accessories on a new, blank layer.

Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Set the Distribution to Gaussian and check “Monochromatic”. Put the Amount slider at somewhere around 60%.

To give the earmuffs and scarf some texture, take the Blur tool and move it from the center out to give a furry look.

Now, to give him that “Texas” look – from my part of Texas, anyway!

Make a new, blank layer above the Snowey’s body and below the nose, eyes, etc. Set your foreground color to something that might resemble, oh, I don’t know…dead grass. Something like #dbcb9e. Select the brush tool and go to the Brushes engine. In Brush Tip Shape, pick and oblong oval shape. In Shape Dynamics, take the Size Jitter up to around 85%, Minimum Diameter around 25%, Angel Jitter, about 65%, Roundness Jitter, 45%. In Scattering, check “Both Axes” and take the Scatter slider up between 60 and 65%. Lower the size of the brush itself to something in keeping with the size of your snowman – remember, it’s winter and hopefully the grass was cut short at the end of Summer! “Paint” the grass in all over Snowey and clean up around the outside edges.

At least that’s how the snowmen I’ve seen look! Merry Christmas everyone!

Some other posts by Janine Smith

• Color Away Discoloration with Photoshop
• Toning Down Hot Spots
• Seeing Red
• Ten Things
• Looking At: SiteGrinder 3
• "Fixing" Blurry
• Dark II; Photoshop's Layer Blend Modes
• Book Review: A Village Lost & Found

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Tags: Brush, Janine Smith, Photoshop, Snow, Tutorial