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1. Open a new canvas, 400 x 400, white background, 16.7 million colors. Set your foreground color to black and your background color to white. At this point it is a good idea to turn on the rulers (View - Rulers) to make things much easier as we progress.
2. Add a new layer (Layers - New) accepting the default values. You can call this new layer Base if you so desire.
3. Choose the Flood Fill tool with fill style set to Rectangular Gradient. Click on Options and set horizontal and vertical sliders to 50% each. In PSP6 and PSP7 choose the Foreground-Background gradient and set repeats to 0.
4. Flood fill layer with rectangular gradient. For PSP5, go to Colors - Posterize and set Bits per Channel at 4. Click OK. For PSP6 and PSP7, go to Colors - Posterize and set Levels to 17.
5. Add a new layer named Circles.
6. With the Circles layer active, grab the selection tool and set it to Circle (feather=0, antialias=checked). Set your cursor at gridpoints 100,100 using the rulers and/or the co-ordinates shown in the bottom left corner of your screen. Click and hold the left mouse button down and drag to create a circular selection that measures 180 x 180, then release. Change to the Flood fill tool and fill the selection. (Do not change any of the settings for the flood tool).
7. Head back up to the Colors Menu and choose Posterize, making sure the Bits per Channel is still set at 4 (Levels at 17 for PSP6 & 7) and click OK. Deselect.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the next three circles, but begin the second circle at co-ordinates 300,100; the third circle at 100,300; and the fourth circle at 300,300.
Your graphic should now look like this.
9. Ensure the Circles layer is still the active one, then mosey on up to the Layers menu and choose Duplicate. A new layer is created called Copy of Circles. Make certain that it becomes the active layer before moving on.
10. Go to the Image menu and choose Rotate. Set it up as follows: Direction=Right, Degrees= Free 45, All Layers=unchecked. That last bit is very important, hence all the boldness and italicizing. ;-)
11. Okay... here's the neat part... go to the blend modes on your layers palette and set the modes for Copy of Circles AND Circles layers to Lighten. Your finished palette should look like the one below.
12. All that's left to do is merge your layers: Layers-Merge-Merge All (Flatten). We can now colorize it...Colors - Colorize... choose 50 as the Saturation level and whatever grabs your fancy on the Hue slider (I chose 195 for this graphic). Now you can crop, resize and save it. Be aware, however, that the subtle hues will be altered by .jpeg compression... but sometimes the outcome is even nicer than the original. Experiment with colours and all the different blend modes... you'll be amazed at some of the results. Most of all... have fun!
©2003 Just Mousing Around
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