How to Create Painted Text on a Wood Surface

In this step-by-step tutorial I’m going to give you a walkthrough on how to create typography with a painted feel on textured backgrounds. In this example, I’m showing you how to create an airbrushed/stenciled feel on a wooden background. You can watch the video tutorial to this as well!

1. Get a Textured Background

• I’m going to use a wooden background. There’s tons of cracks and crevasses on this that I can pull from that will make the typography interesting and realistic in the end of this.
• I got my artwork from here.

2. Get a Silhouette Vector

• I just goggled silhouette vectors in Google and got tons of these. Here’s where I found mines: Vector4Free.
• Open the Silhouette vector in Adobe Illustrator and fit to screen. We’re going use this silhouette as our guide to laying out text.

3. Lay Out the Text

• I randomly laid out text in different directions, places and sizes to give it more personality. Be sure to stretch out the text just a hint over the edge of the silhouette outline that way we have some sort of border.


• You can use the rectangle tool to fill in blank areas like I did here. This helps re-creating the silhouette’s outline once we remove the black vector.

4. Copy Everything into Photoshop

• Select just the Silhouette vector in Illustrator and copy and paste it into Photoshop. Paste as “Smart Object” if prompted (depending what version Photoshop you’re using).
• Name Layer as “Silhouette”


• Now back in illustrator, select EVERYTHING but the silhouette vector and copy and paste into Photoshop. Paste as “Smart Object” if prompted.
• Name layer as “Text”

5. Apply Layer Mask

• Align the layers to match up as much as possible using the arrow keys on your keyboard.
• CTRL+Click (or COMMAND for Mac) on the “Silhouette” Layer and select the “Text” layer and hit the “Apply Layer Mask” button at the bottom of the layer pane.

6. Create Spray Paint Marks

• Create a new layer and name it “Paint Marks”
• Select the same swatch color as your text, in my case, white (#FFFFFF) and use a grungy paint brush and apply strokes around the edges of the silhouette.
• You can download the same brushes I’m using by downloading my collection of 1000+ brushes found to the top-right in the sidebar.

7. Apply Silhouette to Paint Marks

• With the “Paint Marks” layer selected, CTRL+Click (COMMAND for Mac) on the Silhouette layer to get the silhouettes outline selection.
• In the top menu, go to SELECT > EXPAND and make the value 1px.


• Then, go to SELECT > INVERSE.
• With the selection still active, click the “Apply Layer Mask” button on the bottom of the layer pane.

8. Finishing Touches

• Hide (or delete) the “Silhouette” Layer.
• Duplicate the background layer and bring it to the top of all the other layers.
• Select the Background Eraser Tool and max out the size of the brush.
• In the Background Eraser Tool brush settings, make sure Limits is “Discontinuous” and Tolerance is “100%”.
• Now just find and click on the brightest color in the textured background to get a nice texture overlay to top it off.

And that’s It! Download the PSD below to further examine this tutorial or watch my Youtube tutorial. Comment below and let me know what you thought of this.