1st tutorial

Okay, this is my very first icon tutorial, so sorry if it sucks. I use PSP8.

The icon we'll be making:

Okay, this is my very first icon tutorial, so sorry if it sucks. I use PSP8. If you don't understand something, just ask and I'll see if I can help. Oh, I suck at explaining things, so sorry if this is confusing.

The icon we'll be making:

Start off with your base. I'm using this base:

    I can't check who made it because the memories are down

Copy the image and paste as a new image so you're not working on the original.

Take the following texture by colorfilter and paste it as a new layer. Set it to screen.

Now the bottom words are blocking her mouth, so I smoothed them out with the smudge tool to look like this-

Now duplicate the bottom layer and bring it to the top. Completely desaturate it and set it to soft light. Duplicate it so there are two soft light layers. Make a new raster layer and flood fill it with #011637. Set it to exclusion

Take the following light texture by colorfilter, flip it, and set it to screen.

Now make a copy of your very bottom base layer and bring it to the very top. Set to soft light opacity 48%. Now you should have something like this-

Add this border-

Almost done. Make a new raster layer. Add this brush from ohpaintbrush to the lower righthand corner:

Take this border brush (can't remember who made it. If anybody knows, please tell me)  and mirror it. Adjust it to fit in the same corner as the text and erase the parts covering the the middle of the icon. Now we have this:

Now, in case I didn't make much sense, this is what your layers should look like:

Merge the layers.

For the finishing touch, duplicate the layer. Edge Preserving Smooth at the setting 3. Duplicate the smooth layer, and sharpen it. Mess with the opacity of the sharpened one if it's too much. That's it. Again, sorry if I was confusing.

Finished icon:

I'd love to see if you can make anything using this. And I don't care if you follow it exactly.