By doing this tutorial you agree to my terms of use.
Screen shots were taken from PSP7 and as such copyright belongs to JASC.
Corn tube used from Designs by Joy. (Joy doesn't seem to offer tubes now)

You will need my selections, download here
and my fur jpg, download here

The fur jpg was obtained here and recoloured

OK, lets role up our sleeves and get creating.

1. Open an new image 400x350 with a transparent background.

2. Add a new raster layer naming it feet. Go to selections/load from disc and open m_feet.sel. Flood fill with #C49B90. Selections/select none. Effects/3D effects/Inner bevel at these settings

3. Add a new raster layer naming it tail. Go to selections/load from disc and open m_tail.sel. Flood fill with PSP's leather preset pattern. Selections/select none. Effects/Texture effects/Fine leather at these settings

Effects/3D effects/Inner bevel at these settings

4. Add a new raster layer naming it body. Go to selections/load from disc and open mbody.sel. Flood fill with the mfur.jpg. Selections/select none.

5. Add a new raster layer naming it nose. Go to selections/load from disc and open mnose.sel. Flood fill with #C49B90. Selections/select none. Effects/3D effects/Inner bevel using the same settings for the feet.

6. Add a new raster layer naming it eyes. Go to selections/load from disc and open m_eye.sel. Flood fill with black. Selections/select none. Set the foreground colour to white and use the paintbrush at these settings to highlight the eye.

7. Add a new raster layer naming it snout. Go to selections/load from disc and open msnout.sel. Flood fill with the mfur.jpg. Selections/select none.

8. Add a new raster layer naming it inner ear. Go to selections/load from disc and open m_inner_ear.sel. Flood fill with the mfur.jpg. Selections/select none.

9. Add a new raster layer naming it ear. Go to selections/load from disc and open m_ear.sel. Flood fill with mfur.jpg. Selections/select none. 

10. OK, now for the artistic bit, we are going to work through all the fur filled layers lightening and darkening the different area's. The more you apply the effect the lighter or darker the area will become, I used brush strokes rather than a continual hold on the mouse button. For the very edge of the particular area place the brush so that it is half on and half off. These are the settings for the retouch tool and a screen shot of what I have done so far.

I hope you can see just where to darken and lighten our mouse.

11. With the retouch tool at these settings soften the edge of the eyes, both ear layers, the snout and the nose where it joins the snout.

12. OK, now we start to smudge the fur. I have seen tuts where you merge all the visible layers and then use the smudge tool but I found it easier to work on all the individual layers. Change the retouch tool to smudge with these settings

Pull the fur out at the edges on the body layer and slightly smudge the darkened fur near the eyes. It is then only the snout layer that needs the fur smudging. Right click on the layer palette and merge layers visible, simply smudge the area's where the layers have merges so that the joins are less visible, if you go wrong there's always the undo tool :o)

13. The finishing touch is to create a new layer above your merged layer and draw on some whiskers. Use the draw tool set at free hand, solid line, width 1, antialias checked, I used colour #CCCCCC

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