After this tutorial you should be capable to make a spinning propeller, which could be used for any drawing purposes.

We’re gonna start by making a new document.

STEP 01 – Make main propeller

Make a new layer (ctrl + shift + N), and call it ‘propeller’ Take the ellipse tool (U) Choose #a0a0a0 as your foreground color in the color pallet. Drag a thin ellipse like below:

This is only one part of the propeller so we need to duplicate the current layer (ctrl + J) Move the duplicated layer under the first one, and than duplicate those two layers, so that you can rotate those to have 4 ‘wings’ like this.

STEP 02 – Make the propeller looks real

If all went well, you’ll have 5 layers now. The background layer, which is locked now, and 4 ‘wings’ which makes the propeller as it is now. Now we need to merge the 4 parts. Do this by merging them (ctrl + E).

To finish the first step we’ll need to add some blending options to make it look real. Right click on the merged layer in your layer pallete and press on ‘blending options’.
And apply these settings:

STEP 03 – Make this propeller spinning

Now that you applied the blending options it’s time to make it spinning! Duplicate the layer you just blended 2 times (ctrl + J). Edit>Transform>Rotate; rotate them both about 30 degrees. To get a better spinning feeling, change the layer opacity of the rotated layers to 50% Note: To get the best result change the layer order so, that the original layer is on the back, so this means the ones with the lower opacity are in the front.

You should have anything like this below:

Now merge all the layers together except the background layer. Now we’ll add a nice radial blur, with these settings: Filter>Blur>Radial Blur

After you have done this, you should have this:

Looks nice huh?

STEP 04 – Add finishing touches

In this step we will make the hub to finish this all. Make a new layer (ctrl + shift + N) and call it ‘hub’ Set foreground color to #707070, and take the ellipse tool (U) Make a small circle in the middle where all the wings come together. Note: To make sure the circle is 100% round, use shift while dragging the circle.

We’ll also add some blending options to this layer.

And the last thing we need to do is to add a radial blur to that layer. Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. With these settings:

The result

If all went well you just made a spinning propeller.