It pays, it really does.  You can have fun making things, and make a bit of money off them also! There are a few good microstock sites out there, Shutterstock being my favorite for a couple reasons. The site is easy to use for submitters, and the review team is super fast at getting my images approved and on the site. Check out StockXpert and BigStockPhoto too, if you’re looking into selling some of your creations.

Honestly, I can’t think of a tool I use more often other than Photoshop, to make graphics.  Filter Forge is an awesome tool that I would hate to have to do without.  Check it out, you can take a super simple graphic and make it into something awesome:

Love Machine Valentine Heart

Pretty cool hunh?  And the graphic I started with?

Plain Heart

This was done with the Cut It Out!! filter.

There are literally thousands of filters to choose from, you can do just about anything you can imagine with them and it’s fun

I’ve been busy with Christmas and New Years, but being sick of the cold weather I was looking forward to Spring and made these.

These should work in all versions of Illustrator.

Hope you enjoy them

Rainbow Brushes (3)

If you’re working with vectors, leaving open paths in your work is a big no no (I discovered the hard way). Unfortunately, Illustrator doesn’t come with a built in way of finding and closing open paths, so you’re left to eyeball it which in a complex vector doesn’t always work so well.

For older versions of Illustrator (10/CS/CS2), Rick Johnson has some great plugins including one to automatically close paths. Alas, his plugin doesn’t work in CS4. (more…)

Christmas Vector Banner

I love the holidays :)  The .zip file contains a CS4 .ai file, a legacy .ai file and a .png.

Christmas Banner (9)

Holiday Vector Tree Scene

Christmas Tree Scene (9)

No time to play today!

Pixel in Vector Graphic

second life pottery textures

Textures are 1024 x 734.  I’ve added a sculpted creamer (the base of the cup you see to the right in the picture) for you to test the textures on.  (more…)

I’ve been working a bit with some pictures I had on file, just having fun over the holiday weekend

One issue I have with digital cameras is the automatic focus, it seems that the camera never focuses on what I want it to and I end up with a lovely close up of a weed when what I really wanted were the flowers behind it.  Luckily we can fix some of these problems with software touch-ups.  Here I’ve put the focus on the kitten and put the background where it belongs, in the background.  If I get adventurous I’ll fix that pesky grass in the foreground.