Just in time for the holidays – learn how to draw a candy cane in photoshop! The great thing about this tut is that it’s not too hard, but the end result looks great.

Get your mitts on, pop open Photoshop, and let’s get started.

You’ll first need to open a new canvas – mine was 400×400 pixels. I’ve decided to first pop in a background to build my candy cane on – I chose a nice blue gradient. Check out the pictures if you’d like to make something similar:

Select the Gradient Tool.

Make sure it’s set to Radial.

Start at the center of your canvas and drag out.

Now we’re ready to create the candy cane. Select the Text Tool, type in a capital J (using Arial Rounded Bold) and use these settings:

You’ll notice that your candy cane is probably blue, so change it to something a little off-white. This will serve as the delicious candy base.

Unless you want an upside-down candy cane, we’ll need to flip this over. Click Ctrl-T to enter Transform mode, right click on the J, and select Flip Vertical.

Death-defying!

Select the Move Tool and grab a corner – rotate the sweet till it’s on a slight angle.

Remember to commit.

Now we need to make the red stripes. Duplicate the text layer you just created. Change the colour from red to white.

Now we need to rasterize the type so we can rip out chunks of it. Right click the new red layer you’ve just created, and select Rasterize Text.

This is what you should have so far:

Head on over to the next page to finish up the cane!

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