Before You Begin:
Purchase and download Transfuchisan’s Bokeh brush set by CLICKING HEREStep 1: Open a new document and set up your art board to the size you want. For this tutorial, I am using a simple 11 x 11 inch square document. Using the Rectangle Tool (M) create a new shape the size of your art board and fill it with a Gradient of your choosing. For this tutorial, I used a light red to blue gradient. Here are the colors I used (from left to right): B7151B, E6404B, E98A7B, 7C78B8, 00B0B0, 7B76B6, E7322F.
Step 2: Create another Rectangle and place it on top of the gradient you just created. Fill this one with a full color black (C,M,Y & K all set at 100%). Adjust the Transparency down to about 70%.
Step 3: Make sure you have your Bokeh brushes loaded up and ready. We are going to build the effect by drawing a few different lines. This is an experimental process. If you find that the Bokeh elements aren’t placed the way you like them when you apply the brush, simply click the brush again and it will change the scatter of the brush. Keep clicking until you are satisfied with the placement.
Here are the settings for each line starting with the bottom layer. For this tutorial, each stroke is set to pure White #FFFFFF:
Line 1: Create a new layer and using the pencil tool, create a loose line across your art board. For this line we are going to use “Scatter Brush 1” with the stroke set to 1pt. Change the transparency mode to Overlay.
Line 2: Create another loose line and use the “Full Blur” brush. Set the stroke to 1pt and Transparency to Overlay.
Lines 3&4: These lines will use the “Half Moon” brush. Both Transparency modes set to Overlay. I set one line with a 0.75pt stroke and the other with a 2pt stroke.
Line 5: Set the brush to the one titled “Strike Through”. Set stroke to 2pt and Transparency to Overlay.
Lines 6&7: Use the “Half Blur” brush. Set the stroke to 1pt with Transparency set to Overlay.
Lines 8-10: Using the “Round Bokeh” brush, you will want to layer a few different lines until you are pleased with the design. In this example, we made one line at 1pt and the other two lines set at 0.5pt stroke. All lines have their transparency mode set to Overlay.
Lines 11&12: Create a couple of small lines and use the “small sparkle with glow” brush. Set the stroke to 1pt and Overlay.
Lines 13-15: Using the “Small Sparkle” brush, create a few small lines set between 0.25 to 0.5pt stroke set to Overlay and place them over the other sparkles.
Line 16: Finally, you will add some extra glitter with the “Tiny Spots” brush. I set the stroke to 0.5pt with the Transparency set to overlay. I also lowered the Opacity down a little to 80%.
Congratulations, you are done!
If you would like to add some text to the design like in the example image, all you have to do is lay out some white text and set the blend mode to Overlay. Make a copy of the text and “Paste in Front”. Then offset the pasted text a few points to the right and down.
Additional Vector Bokeh Experimentation:
We can change the colors of the design as a whole by simply changing the color of the gradient in Step 1. You can also change the layout simply by selecting some of the lines and re-applying the brushes to them. By changing the background gradient, here are some variations we came up with:
