Dana's Rein Tutorial
For Photoshop CS6
Hello and
welcome to my little rein tutorial. A lot of people asked me how I do them, so
I thought a tutorial is in order. Here I will show you how I draw my reins. I show this with a western bridle which
usually has open split reins but all this applies to shorter, closed reins as
well.
What you will create:
Step 1 – The pen tool
The pen tool is your friend! I’m using Photoshop CS6 where it’s become incredibly easier to work with the pen tool, but everything here you can also achieve with earlier Photoshop versions. Grab the pen tool (keyboard shortcut P) and zoom in on the area where the reins will be. Before you click anything in the picture, adjust the pen settings as following: |
Set the
drop down menu to shape, the fill to
none, the stroke color to a black and the size to 3 for now.
Next, click on the part of the bit where the rein attaches to it and then click to the part of the rider’s hand where the reins are held. You will get a straight black line connecting the horse’s mouth to the rider’s hand. But this is way too straight, so we need to add a little sag to the rein. With the pen tool still selected, click somewhere in the middle of the rein again and it will look like this: |
The new
order is from bottom to top: background layer, new layer and rein layer.
Select the pen tool again and create a line on the horse’s neck close to the rein. Remember where your light source is and how the shadow of the rein would fall on the horse’s neck. Add a new point to the path by clicking on it in its middle. Select the Direct Selection Tool again and click and drag the middle point a bit upwards towards the rein. |
The rein is
closest to the neck where the neck is thickest, so about in the middle of the
neck. So the shadow is closest to the rein here. We don’t have a straight line
of a shadow because the neck is round.
Select a black stroke and about the same size as your rein (mine was 4.38 pt). Now click on Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur, confirm the rasterize question with OK and choose a radius of about 1.8 pt and confirm again. Select the Eraser tool (keyboard shortcut E) and choose the following brush settings: |
Now, a little info on rein physics and their
effect on the picture:
a. Here is an example of a hunter jumping an obstacle. Because the rider is holding the reins pretty tightly, they don’t hang down but rather make an upwards curve, this kind of upwards line gives a feeling of momentum and speed. b. In this picture, the rein also has a slight upwards curve and is a result of the horse’s speed and the short hold of the rider. c. When the horse is making a sharp turn, the (long and loose) reins tend to sway in the opposite direction. This is a great way of showing how fast and sharp your horse can turn. d. This horse is going at a medium lope and is just going in to the suspension phase, so the (long and loose) reins can go in different directions. |