Make Your Own Retrowave Digital Artwork

In the early days of computing, digital art was something of a rarity. It was expensive to create and required specialised hardware and software. But as technology has progressed, digital art has become more and more accessible. Today, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can create stunning works of art. One of the most popular genres of digital art is retrowave. Retrowave is a style that takes its cues from the visual culture of the 1980s, with bold colours, geometric shapes and retro fonts. It's often used to create album covers, posters and logos. If you're interested in creating your own retrowave artwork, there are a few things you'll need to get started.

First, you'll need some software. Adobe Photoshop is a good choice for beginners, as it's relatively easy to use and has a wide range of features. Once you've got your software set up, you'll need some inspiration. A quick search on Google or Pinterest will turn up plenty of examples of retrowave artwork to help get your creative juices flowing. Once you've got an idea of what you want to create, it's time to start putting it together.

Artwork made by: @dreamfibre

Open up Photoshop and create a new document. I like to work with a canvas size of 2000x2000 pixels. Once your document is created, go ahead and add a background layer. For this tutorial, I'm going to use a solid black background, but feel free to use whatever color you like.

Next, we're going to add some shapes to our canvas. Create a new layer and use the Rectangle Tool (U) to draw a rectangle in the center of the canvas. Make sure that the fill color is set to white and the stroke color is set to none.

Now we're going to add some noise to our rectangle. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and add a noise level of around 50%. This will help give our rectangle some texture and make it look more like an old-school video game graphic.

Next, we're going to add a gradient overlay to our rectangle layer. Go to Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay and choose a black-to-white gradient. Set the gradient type to Linear and the angle to 90 degrees. This will give our rectangle a nice glowing effect.

Now we're going to add another shape on top of our rectangle. Create a new layer and use the Ellipse Tool (U) to draw an ellipse in the center of the canvas. Again, make sure that the fill color is set to white and the stroke color is set to none.

We're almost done! All that's left is to add some text on top of our artwork. Create a new layer and use the Horizontal Type Tool (T)to type out whatever message you want your artwork to convey. I went with "Make Your Own Retrowave Artwork" but you can choose whatever you like. Once you're happy with your text, go ahead and change the font colorto something that contrasts well with your background color. I went with bright yellow for my text layer.

And that's it! You've now created your very own Retrowave digital artwork in Photoshop! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful in creating your own artwork.