How-To & Freebie: Modern Cubism Wallpaper

October 24, 2009 // Freebies

While looking for new art to put in our recently redecorated bedroom with my wife, I noticed quite a few pieces that were roughly based on cubism, but had that rustic grunge look that is oh so popular in home decor these days. Although it could be considered to be over used, I can see why. It is really nice looking and goes well with almost any decor within your color scheme.

My desktop was looking a little bit out dated, so I decided to take a whack at recreating the art we looked at, but as a wallpaper instead. Here is how it was done, as well as a downloadable wallpaper pack of my creation.

1. Head over to Colour Lovers and find a color palette that you like. Open a new document at your desired size, and fill your background with a light grey. (#f5f4ec)

   

2. Create a new layer. Change your foreground color to a darker grey (#bfb5a5). Select your brush tool and set your Opacity to 75%, and Flow to 90%. Now using any and all of your grunge/cloud/watercolor brushes, fill the space at random. If you overfill it, you can always add a layer mask and get rid of some of it.

   

3. Create another blank layer. At random, create squares and rectangles with a brown(#392b0e) 8px border.

   

4. Create a new blank layer below your outline layer, and fill one of your shape areas with a color from your color palette that you got from over at Colour Lovers. Repeat this for each block of color. New layer, fill shape, new layer, fill shape, and so on, until you have all of your shapes filled. It is important to keep them on separate layers for our next step.

   

5. All of my color block layers got set to Overlay in the blending mode drop-down, but depending on your color scheme, this may not work out the best for you. Alter the layer opacity and blending mode on each one of your color blocks until you get something you like.

   

6. Finally, add a layer mask to your outline layer, and dirty it up a bit. Flatten your image, and there you go. A grungy modern cubism wallpaper.

   

Download the set below.
Sizes are 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1440×900, 1280×1024, and 1024×768.