Introduction

Sea anemones are largely stationary aquatic animals related to coral and jellyfish. These colorful creatures are found adhered to rocks, reefs, and even seashells, and make beautiful additions to your underwater scenes. Best of all, they’re easy to draw!

Sketch

Create a new document and add a new layer. We’ll call it “SKETCH.” Select your favorite drawing tool and begin by drawing an oval for the base. Anemones have a centrally located mouth surrounded by a ring of tentacles, so keep that in mind when determining placement. You don’t have to draw every tentacle, but you should be aware of the overall shape and direction(s) of motion.

Lines Part 1

When you’re happy with your sketch, reduce the layer opacity and create a new raster layer above it. We’ll call this layer “LINES 01.” Click onto the new layer, go to the Layer Property palette, and configure the settings like so:

 

Effect: Border effect

Border effect: Edge

Thickness of edges: 3.0 (this may need to be adjusted depending on the size of your image)

Edge color: Black (#000000)

[x] Anti-aliasing on border effect

Expression color: Color

 

Now every line drawn on this layer will have a 3px black border.

 

Select the Pen(P) tool and choose the G-pen from the Sub Tool menu. Choose a brush size that matches the thickness of the tentacles and a color that contrasts with black. On your LINES 01 layer, draw over the tentacles that are furthest away. You should have something that looks like this.

Create a new raster layer called “LINES 02” and repeat this process. Continue stacking layers of tentacles until you’re satisfied with the shape and density of your anemone. For this example, I used seven layers. At this point we’re finished with our SKETCH layer, so you can either turn off its visibility or delete it.

Lines Part 2

Next we’re going to extract the line art from each of our LINES layers. Turn off the visibility on all layers except LINES 01. With this layer selected, click the “Lock transparent pixels” icon in the Layer palette and fill (Edit > Fill) the layer with white. With this layer still active, go to Layer > Rasterize, followed by Edit > Convert brightness to opacity. You should be left with only the black line art. Here I’ve placed a layer of neutral grey underneath to demonstrate.

Repeat this process to convert all the LINES layers to line art only. This is a good time to go in with a small G-pen to make corrections to the lines as needed. Don’t worry if the result looks a little odd; we’ll resolve that in the next step.

Colors

Now it’s time to add some color. This anemone will have two colors: a pink that spans the entire length of the tentacles (primary), and a blue that will be concentrated at the base (secondary). Once again, we’ll start by turning off the visibility on all the LINES layers except LINES 01. Create a new raster layer under LINES 01 and call it “PINK 01.” With this new layer active, select your Magic Wand tool set to “Refer to all layers,” click inside the line art, fill it with your primary color (on the PINK 01 layer), and deselect.

Next, make another new raster layer, name it “BLUE 01,” and place it between LINES 01 and PINK 01. Click onto BLUE 01 and click “Clip to Layer Below” in the Layer palette. This will prevent anything we add on this layer from going outside the bounds of the filled area on PINK 01.

Select your Airbrush(B) tool, set your Sub Tool to “Soft,” and add some blue to the bases of the tentacles. I decided to set this layer’s blending mode to “Multiply,” but I encourage you to experiment with different modes and opacities to find something you like.

To keep things neat, let’s make a new folder, call it “01,” and move LINES 01, PINK 01, and BLUE 01 inside. Repeat these steps for the remaining groups of tentacles.

Before moving on to color correction and effects, let’s drop in our background. I’m using a simple dark underwater background I prepared earlier. I also added a rock so our little anemone has something to hold onto.

Details and Effects

This is a perfectly fine anemone, but a few more adjustments will take it to the next level. Let’s go back in one last time and turn off the visibility on all the folders except 01. The black line art looks rather stark against these bright colors, so we’re going to make sure our LINES 01 layer is still set to “Lock transparent pixels,” and fill it with a soft purple.

Next we’re going to add some translucence. Click onto the PINK 01 layer and select “Create layer mask” from the Layer palette. Select the Eraser(E) tool, set the Sub Tool to “Soft” and the Brush Density to around 70, and erase down the center line of each tentacle, stopping short of the base (for this step, double check that you’re on the layer mask). Repeat this for all the folders.

Make a new raster layer above all the folders and call it “STINGERS.” Set the layer mode to “Screen” and select your soft Airbrush(B). With the color set to your primary pink, lightly airbrush the tips of the tentacles to form the stingers.

Finally, we’re going to collect all the folders and the STINGERS layer into another folder and call it “ANEMONE.” Duplicate this folder by going to Layer > Duplicate Layer, and merge the copy by going to Layer > Merge selected layers.

With ANEMONE Copy active, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur… and set the Strength somewhere around 3.00.

Set the blending mode to “Add (Glow)” and lower the opacity to your liking.

Finishing Touches

Finish off with a bit of dust and a few bubbles. Sit back and admire your beautiful sea anemone!