Candy Cane – Miss Koppejan

Instructions:

[show]

Thick Stripes

Brush

Change your foreground color to a dark red.

Choose the Brush tool. Change the size to 20 px and the hardness to 100%.

Draw stripes

Add a new layer. Rename the layer “thick” or “red”.

Make sure the new layer is selected!
Draw lines line this – click from the inside and drag it well past the outer edge…

WARNING: If you start drawing and you’re on the shape layer, your cursor looks like this… it means you don’t have a new layer or you have the shape layer active. If you click and drag the brush, you’ll get a pop-up message like this. Click on “Cancel” and go back and do the first 2 steps (new layer, clipping mask)!

Clipping Mask

Hold down the ALT key. Then hover between the layers until you see this arrow…
Click (do not click & drag!) and it should now have that arrow on the left.

Your candy cane should look something like this…

Thin Stripes

Add another new layer. Rename it “thin”.

Now turn it into a clipping mask by holding down the ALT key and hover between the layers – when you see the arrow, click.

Then change your foreground color to a lighter red or shade of pink.

Make your Brush tool thinner – set to 10 px.

Draw 1-2 thin lines between the thicker lines.
CTRL+Z if you don’t like a line you’ve just drawn and try again.

Start & end dragging your lines well outside the cane shape like this so they’re smooth, not wobbly. If I turn off the clipping mask, you can see that the lines are drawn well outside the cane shape.

Shadows

Add a new layer, name it “shadow”.

Hold ALT, hover and make it a clipping mask.

Set your foreground color to a medium gray.

Make the Brush tool bigger – 100 px and totally soft (0% hardness).

Draw a shadow starting at the top middle of the cane, down on the left side, then starting at the top inside and down along the left. Try to keep the brush half on, half off the cane shape…