Blooded Knife

First you need to open up a new document; about 800x600 will be more than enough. Get the elliptical marquee tool and draw a circle shape. It does not need to be a perfect circle. Fill it in with black.

Now on the same layer draw smaller circle.

And press delete. You should now have some thing similar the shape below.

Where the new formed curve is, you need to make a rectangle marquee, around the top half. (See picture for guidance).

Press delete. Now where the flat edge is u need to draw a rectangle marquee again but this time to give the length of your blade. It must touch both the top edge and bottom of the shape your have just created. Fill this in black and you should have something like the image below.

Now we have our basic blade shape. Its time to use some gradients to give it more of a metal look.

Duplicate the layer and draw a rectangle marquee from the tip of the blade along the top edge.

Then hit delete and its time to use some gradients.

Make sure you turn off the original layer’s visibility (the little eye icon)

Control and click on the layer we just deleted a section form. Get the gradient tool. Use a white to black and draw gradient from bottom to top until you have something that looks similar to this.

Make the bottom layer visible again and control and click on it. Draw another gradient from top to bottom this time, play around until you have something that looks like this.

Merge the two layers together. Click on the background layer and fill it with black. Right click on the layer holding your blade and go to blending options.

Your need to apply a bevel and a gradient overlay, use setting similar to mine. (You may need to play about with them depending on your shape)

Once applied you blade will look something like this.

Now we need to add a handle.

Create a new layer and on that layer create rectangle marquee.

Make it slightly thinner than your blade; length depends on your preference

Fill this with the default copper gradient.

Fill top to bottom.

It should look like this.

Now press ctrl+u and make sure the colourize box is ticked. Set the hue and saturation to 0 and press ok.

We need to make a new layer. On this layer use the free form poly lasso tool and draw a thin diagonal line (use the shift key to draw straight and at 45 angles)

F ill the selection black and you should have something like the picture below.

Duplicate this layer, and move it to the right for about 2 pixels or so, and then invert it (ctrl+i) set the layer opacity to 45%.

Merge theses two layers together (ctrl+e). Then set the opacity for the merged layers down to 50%.

Duplicate this layer a few times to create the “grips” and then merge all these layers with together...

Press ctrl+g and this will make a clipping mask.

This means that only parts of this layer will show if there is part of another layer blow it (in other words the grips will only show inside the handle.

Then merge this layer with the handle layer.

Now open up the blending options for this layer and you will need to do a pattern overlay and a colour overlay.

My settings are:

The pattern I used was Streaks.

And hopefully you should have something like this.

Create new layer.

And this time draw a small rectangle marquee,  just where the blade and handle join and fill this with same gradient as before and use the ctrl+u to make it grey (0 hue and 0 saturation)

Now you can leave it like this and miss out the next step.

Or if you want you can create a curved guard.

To do this. Place the guard roughly in the middle of the page and go to

Filter>distort>Sheer

Then on the middle of the graph drag to the left a few square until you get a nice curved guard.

Put the guard back its right place and then go to blending options and drop shadow.

These were my settings; you may need to mess about with them to it to look right

You may want to save before continuing.

Create new layer above the background layer and then merge the layers down in order starting with the lowest first (do not merge onto the background layer)

This keeps will merge all the layers while keeping the layer style applied. If you try to merge the top layer with the layer below when a style is applied, the merged image will obtain that style and look strange) so click on the layer above the newly crated layer and merge down. Then repeat until you are left with just the layer with the knife on and the blade.

Now to add some shaping to the handle

You may want to save before continuing.

Take out the smudge tool and round of the rear end of the handle. Start with the out side edges, click and drag bit and then round it off. Use the smudge tool on about 11px. Use the image below for guidance.

Use some shot smudges to fill in the middle and you will end up with a nice rounded handle.

Run the smudge tool down each side…only click and hold, once down each side. Then go over the edges with the blur tool

Should no have something like the image below.

The knife is just about finished all that is left to do is add blood. This involves some air brushing.

You may want to save before continuing.

Create a new layer. Pick the colour read and select. The brush like the one below

(Select the paint brush tool and right click on your canvas and scroll to this brush)

Splatter and make it 58 pixels.

Set the flow of your brush to opacity 40% and flow 35%

You do not need to paint it exactly like the image below. Use your imagination.

Press ctrl+g to create clipping mesh and the edges will disappear.

Set the opacity down to about 54%

And then create new layer again and add some more blood if your want (in the same way as above), again use your imagination. And your can have some thing that looks like this. You can keep going until you are happy with the effect.

With a bit of practise you can form a much nicer knife with a better blood effect. If your want you could add some drips of blood.

If you take you’re time and follow this tutorial carefully your can have something that looks like the knife below

Click to enlarge