Tentacles Tutorial

1: Firstly, create a new document with a suitable resolution. I'm going to use a white 400x400 canvas for this example. Onto a new layer (this is important) on the canvas, draw a triangle in the colour you want to use. You can create a new layer by pressing ctrl/cmd + shift + N.
To create the triangle, use a 3 sided polygon with the shape tool, or create a triangle with the polygonal lassoo tool, then fill the selected area with your desired colour and press control/cmd + D to deselect it.
Don't worry too much about the colour at this stage, as we can colourise the final image later.

2: Now go Filter || Distort || Shear, and place waypoints on the line in the popup box to curve your triangle.

3: Now we're going to start bringing it to life - create a new clipping layer above the current one by clicking the 'New Layer' button or pressing ctrl/cmd + shift + N. To make this into a clipping layer, hold alt and move the mouse cursor over the line separating the two layers in the layer box, as shown here.
Creating this clipping layer means that what is put onto the layer will only be visible in what is in the parent layer - i.e. the tentacle.
Select the brush tool (B), and use settings similar to these for a nice soft air brush. Press D then X to reset your palette, and apply white to your tentacle - dont worry about it being neat at this stage.

4: Now comes the clever bit - go Filter || Blur || Gaussian Blur. I have used a 5px radius blur for mine. When you've done this, you can repeat stage 3 and this one with another clipping layer, this time black, for a shadow.
To make a second clipping layer, you must first merge the tentacle with the clipping layer by linking the layers and merging them with ctrl/cmd + E. A new layer can be created and made into a clipping layer.

5: All that's left to be done is finishing touches. Merge all the layers by linking them and pressing ctrl/cmd + E, bearing in mind that if you want a transparent background its best to leave that out of the merging. Press ctrl/cmd + U to open the colourise menu (making sure that the 'colourise' box is ticked), and move the sliders until you find a nice colour, if you arent using one already.
Finally, adjust the layer opacity to somewhere near 60%, depending on taste.
This is just a quick version - for tentacles I have taken more time over and examples of how these they can be compiled, see the tentacles section of the gallery here.

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