Donna B Miller

Fun Friday Freebies: Vector Art

Once you've mastered the basics of Photoshop, you may want to start playing with paths and vector-based art. There are several sites I frequent that off free vector-based art. Because vectors are created using mathematical formulas rather than pixels, the quality of the images is much greater.

Bittbox offers a wide range of vector art, everything from watercolors to flowers to gears. The site often offers accompanying packages of brushes to match the art.

Vecteezy is a fun site, billing itself as "stupid name, cool vectors." If you're looking for variety, this should be your first stop. Because the work on this site is submitted by designers from all over, you'll find tons of different subjects and styles.

I'm getting ready to dowload T. Scott Stromberg's Leafy Pod, myself.

If you're interested in creating your own vector art, be sure to check out Melissa Clifton's tutorial or the index of tutorials at Vexels.

Photoshop Tools: More Fun than a New Box of Crayons

If you've been following along on my blog, you already know that I'm hosting Quirkshop 101 at Scrapbookgraphics. It's a six-week workshop aimed at teaching traditional digiscrappers how to incorporate artistic techniques into their layouts.

This week, we're looking at all of the tools available in Photoshop -- filters, actions, styles and blending modes -- and how you can combine them to artistic effect. I've been meaning to do a piece of artwork for one of my nieces, a high school sophomore and a real sweetie. Since one of this week's workshop assignments was to do a piece of art, I finally got motivated enough to pull out her photo and begin blending, filtering, and erasing. Here's the result:

Materials by Sausan. Blended papers from her Dream On and Rose's Passion kits. Torn paper and wings from Dream On. Wordart from Stitched Words, and button from Lil' Jake.

Fun Friday Freebies: Textures

I'm that crazy lady you see at the park taking pictures of tree bark, or lying on the driveway taking pictures of asphalt. I love texture.  When I go shopping, I have to touch everything I see (shades of Monk here). If I love a sweater, but hate the texture, I won't buy it. Conversely, I've actually bought things that don't look all that hot just because of the way they feel.

I guess that's why I got so excited when I discovered all the cool places on the Internet that offer free textures to use in digital design. Some of these textures, I'll use just as they are. Other times, I'll desaturate a texture photo, and use Photoshop's blending tools to add a more tactile feel to  a piece of art.

One of my favorite sites is devoted strictly to textures. Mayang's Free Texture Library has more than 3,400 free-to-download, free-to-use textures.  You can download up to 20 textures a day at no charge, or purchase a DVD with every single texture for $50.

TextureKing is a project created and maintained by REH3design. Throughout the site you will find a growing repository of high quality texture photos that are free for personal and professional use. This site is so well-designed that it's just fun to go there and look through the photos. (Yes, I'm a nerd.)

 

Rock photo from Texture King.

And, don't forget to check out some of the free stock photo sites for textures. I particularly like Pixel Perfect Digital (1,748 textures) and stock.xchng (1.000 textures).

If all of this motivates you to photograph your own texture shots, Tyler Wanlass has a great PDF tutorial with all kinds of wonderful tips. Or, if you'd like to create your own textures without ever leaving Photoshop, check out Vered's Fake Real Texture tutorial. 

Country Roads

I wrote yesterday that I was missing the river where I grew up. I decided to do a little experimenting with technique to see if I could get that Paul Sawyier look. (You can see the inspiration piece in the post below.)

Here's the road I walked each day to catch the school bus. I modified the painting effect that I used on the photo of lemons last week, using watercolor brushes. I also used Photoshop's color matching tool to get the tones right.

Going Home, 2007 copyright, Donna B. Miller

Finding the Muse: In My Own Backyard

I admit it. I was very self-indulgent when I chose this week's inspiration pieces for Scrapbookgraphics' Frameworthy Challenge.

I'm a little homesick this week. I grew up on the Kentucky River, and when the fall leaves start changing, I want to head to the river. For me, the next best thing to being on the river is looking at the work of Impressionist painter Paul Sawyier, 1865-1917. Sawyier was a prolific painter best known for his landscape paintings featuring central Kentucky.

The painting below was the view outside my bedroom window when I was a young girl. It has changed very little since Sawyier lived in his houseboat along the shore. To see more of his work, you can check out Paul Sawyier Art Gallery online.

So how does this painting inspire you? Does it make you want to scrap a place that you're fond of? Maybe you'd like to duplicate the technique Sawyier used. Or perhaps you like his subdued color palette. If you'd like to join us in the challenge, please post your layouts in the SBG Frameworthy Gallery and link to the forum. I look forward to seeing everyone's different interpretations.

Fun Friday Freebies: Photoshop Tutorials

Poor Photoshop users! Let's face it, the manual that comes with the program just isn't that good. And, the help interface built into Photoshop is often clumsy and hard-to-use. Oh, they covers the basics, but what's a user to do when they're ready to move beyond fixing a photo and positioning it on a page?

That's where free Photoshop tutorials come in. There are lots of them out there, but here are a few of my favorite sites.

I am so lucky that I got to attend a session of Burt Monroy's recent Photoshop Creativity Tour. Wow! Talk about a Photoshop guru. He's done everything -- huge murals, advertisements, even Hollywood work. And, he's very generous with his knowledge. His site, Burt Monroy: digital photo-realist artist is fun to explore, but be sure to check out the tutorials in the middle column of the first page: both the Podcasts and Tech TV tutorials are awesome.

Burt Monroy's Damen, created entirely in Photoshop.

EScrappers is another great site to find both basic and advanced Photoshop Techniques. Hosted by Denis Germain, the site covers everything from filters to puppy portraits.

I love O'Reilly's Photoshop Cookbook series. I think I own most of them. To find out if they're for you, be sure to check out the free sample tutorials here. (If you can only buy one book in the series, my favorite is the Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook.)

Have you ever picked up a copy of Layers magazine at the newstand? If you have, you know that Layers, targeted to graphic designers, is informative and oh-so-cool. They've recently put tons of video tutorials on line, and you don't have to be a subscriber to enjoy them. You can check them out here.

Did I miss one of your favorite tutorial sites? If I did, please leave us a link so that we can all learn and expore together.

She Put the Lime in the Coconut

"She put the lime in the coconut. She drank it all up..." I have this silly song bouncing around in my head as a resut of working on my entry for the Frameworthy Challenge at Scrapbookgraphics. You may remember that the challenge was to be inspired by the work of artist Duane Keiser. I love his fruit paintings, so I tried to replicate the look of them with this photo of limes that I found on StockXChng. I used a tutorial from the "Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook," and I've got to admit that I'm pleased with the result. I may have to do a whole series of these for my kitchen.

Getting Artsy: Digital Collage

My absolute favorite thing to do in Photoshop is digital collage. Applying filters, blending papers, adding cutouts -- it's the next best thing to crayons. For collage work, it's hard to beat Kathryn Balint's Ultimate Altered Art series. The digital papers and elements are pretty, and funky, and very versatile.

I used several of her kits while creating this piece, The Little Prince. The model is my grandson.

Background paper is from Kathryn Balint's Artisan Papers; bird and nest from Kathryn's Bird Sanctuary; and crown from her Make a Fairy kit. Everything has been colorized and blended. The glitter leaves are Ztampf's Sparkle Sprays overlays.

Finding the Muse: Some New Challenges

This week's Quirkle challenge at Digital Art Quirks is to create a 6x6 layout with the following restrictions: It should be a page about your past; include a quote; use the color purple; and use at least two circles.

I know that I've got to do something focusing on my sixth-grade crush on Donny Osmond. Somewhere I have a picture of the purple jumpsuit I bought because purple was his favorite color. Now if I can just figure out how to quirk that up.

And over at Scrapbookgraphics, Kim Gabriel has selected Duane Keiser for our Frameworthy art inspiration. Keiser auctions off a painting a day, and most of the paintings focus on food. Check out today's PB&J No. 7.  Doesn't it look yummy?

And, last, but not least, the September digital/hybrid challenge is still going on at KB&Friends. The challenge is to design an ATC featuring a Thankfulness fairy. Participants will receive this great little ATC kit by Karen Aicken just for playing.

Here's my Count Your Blessings fairy that I did for the challenge.

Fairy, hat and wings from Kathryn Balint's Make a Fairy kit; background papers (blended) are from KB's Fun and Games, and Attic Treasures. Buttons are KB's Shabby Buttons. Font is Bernard MT.

Quirkshop Week Two

I just posted the second week's lesson for Quirkshop 101 at Scrapbookgraphics. Quirkshop 101 is a free six-week class designed to show traditional digital scrappers how to incorporate quirky artistic techniques into their layouts.

The subject for this week is extractions -- how to do them and how to use them. There are lots of links and examples, so be sure to check it out.

If you didn't get to participate last week, it's not too late to play catch up. Folks completing all six weekly assignments will receive a goody bag filled with quirky goodness from the designers and crew at SBG.