Drawing Checkers

Step 1 - Game of Checkers

Alright, i've never seen this tutorial on any other forums, websites, or big submission sites. So hopefully you'll find this interesting. What i'll be demonstrating today is how to define a pattern and use it as a background. Then we will use some blending options to create actual checkers. Take a look at my result:

Step 2 - Board Pattern

Checkerboards are black and white repeating. So to do this, we don't want to waste our time and copy/paste all of those black and white marks. Let's just create a new document with the size of 88x88 pixels. Then grab your Selection Marquee tool and look at the top of your Adobe Photoshop window. Find where it says "Style: Normal". Click where it says normal until a drop menu comes down. Select Fixed Size. Now just to the right of it, change the width and height to 44x44 pixels.

Now make a selection in the document and move it all the way to the top left. Then right click in the selection and go to Fill > Color > #000000. Now again, make a new selection, or if you didn't deselect it yet just move it to the right. Then right click on this side and go to Fill > Color > #FFFFFF. Now finally once you have a black (left) and white (right) piece, duplicate the layer. Then go to the top of your Adobe Photoshop window and find Edit > Transform > Horizontal. Now move this to the bottom so it fits the puzzle.

Finally, to complete the pattern, go to the top of your Adobe Photoshop window and find Edit > Define Pattern. Name it Checkerboard or anything you want it to be.

Step 3 - Creating the board

After the pattern is complete, it's time to fill in the whole board. Create a new document with the size 440x350 pixels. Fill in the background with any color. Then right click the layer and go to Blending Options. Finally, go to Pattern Overlay. Now click on the middle pattern and search through all the patterns until you find yours. Select it and hit OK. You should have a background like the one below.

Step 4 - Red Checkers

Alright, once we got the board done, it's time to make the actual checkers so you can play the game. What we'll do is make a circle selection, fill it with red, then put some blending options on it. Start off by selecting your Selection Marquee, but click and hold it until you see a drop menu appear. Click the Elliptical (circle) Selection tool. Now again, change the Style: Normal to Fixed Size. Change this size to 32x32. Now click in the middle of one of the blocks and fill it with #b31414.

Now move onto the next step for the blending options.

Step 5 - Red Checker's Blending Options

Right click one of the checkers you just created and use the following blending options (right click layer > blending options):

Inner Shadow

Bevel & Emboss

Gradient Overlay (White [left], Black [transparent/right].

Stroke

Once you have all of these blending options on a layer, just right click the layer and go to Copy Layer Style. Then right click all of the other checker layers and go to Paste Layer Style. Should look like something in the image below.

Step 6 - White Checkers

Going back to step 4 when we created the red checkers, we are going to do the exact same thing. Use the Elliptical (circle) Selection tool and use the Fixed Size ratio of 32x32. Fill this in with #FFFFFF though. These blending options are the exact same as the red checkers so just paste the layer style into that. However, we will need to make some changes in the blending options.

For the Inner Shadow, just change the Overlay & 75% to Normal and 30%. The Bevel & Emboss and the Stroke stays the same. Finally, just change the gradient overlay's blending mode from Overlay to Normal. You should have something like the image below.

Congratulations, your finished! Here's a copy of the .psd file. Enjoy!