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If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Yesterday we visited Miami Metro Zoo. We walked for more than 6 hours and yet we were not able to check everything out. It was hot but manageable, I did burn my shoulders again even though I used a sun screen. I have more than 600 photos from the visit and here are a couple of them.  We’ve been in Florida one week already and I have not suffered from the heat that much. When it’s too hot you can always get inside and cool down. The only time the heat affected me was the afternoon we spent at the beach. I burned my neck and my shoulder, but the baby didn’t seem to be affected by the sun at all… and he just loved to dip his feet in the water. In this tutorial we’re going to create custom pattern brushes and create retro flowers like the ones on the picture below.  Retro flowers I’ve used colors from the Colourlovers.com site. The palette can be found here: Open the palette in Illustrator. Create the pattern brushes as shown in the instructions provided on the flash presentation. You can find the tutorial as a flash presentation here (Opens in a new window). This is just a quick post to tell you that I’m leaving for Florida in a couple of hours. I’ve packed everything else except the computer. I should try to sleep, but I’m not able to. Having to get up early in the morning has never really been my thing. Next time I blog I’m in Florida and hopefully I will have some new photos soon. 4:45 am It’s 4:45 in the morning and we will be leaving for the airport in an hour. It’s been light outside already for almost an hour and I can see the sun rising. This night is actually the shortest night of the year. These short summer nights are something we scandinavians look forward to during winter. When it’s dark when you leave for worka and dark when you get home, all you really can do is dream of light summer nights. It’s even easier to create a seamless background in Gimp than in Photoshop. There’s a plug-in called Make Seamless you can use or you can download the Texturize plug-in. I used the Make Seamless plug-in in this tutorial. I used the Photoshop brushes from my previous post, Photoshop – Grunge Seamless Background. Photoshop brushes can be used in the newer versions of Gimp. Download the palette from Colourlovers.com. You can download palettes for Gimp from there too. Check where your palette folder is in Gimp preferences and put the downloaded palette there. Either refresh your palettes or restart Gimp.  Gimp palettes folder  Step 1 Create a new document with the settings above.  Step 2 Paint your grunge background with the brushes provided. More detailed instructions can be found in the linked flash presentation. Click here for detailed instructions.  Step 3 Select the Make Seamless plugin and you’re done. You can find a more details and step by step instructions of the above steps here. The flash presentation provided will open up in a new window.  Repeated pattern made in Gimp This is a tutorial on how to create a grunge seamless background pattern in Photoshop. I’m not going to use photos as a base for the tutorial, I’m going to use grunge brushes I’ve created myself. You can download the brushes here:  My own grunge brush set You can download and use th brushes as long as you follow the rules in the Artistic License 2.0. The license can be found here. I created the colors for the background on the Colourlovers site, and if you want to you can download the colorswatches here.  Step 1 Start out by creating a new 2500px*2500px image in Photoshop. The reason I create such a large image is because I sell my backgrounds at mickrostock sites and some of them require a larger sized image. The buyer can also choose whether to purchase a large image or a smaller one.  Step 2 Select a grunge brush and a color and paint in the image.  Step 3 Select the Offset filter.  Step 4 Use these settings.  Step 5 Continue painting with different brushes and colors and switch between offsets once in a while to avoid sharp edges.  Step 6 When you have added enough colors and patterns, zoom in ad check the edges. Paint over any sharp edges with a smaller brush. Repeat once for the other edge.  Ready repeated pattern The tutorial as a flash presentation. Quite large, might take a while to load. Click here (Opens in a new window) I wasn’t sure about which brushes came with Gimp and which I’ve downloaded later. I used a watercolor type of brush in my tutorial and thought I’ve post a couple of links to resources for Gimp. Noupe’s got a really good post with more than 1000 brushes. Atomicmonstergirls have a nice set of art brushes. Check in the preferences in Gimp where your brushes are supposed to go and copy them there.
 I’m not sure where I want to go with my blog, starting blogging again kind of gave a writers block. My blog’s always been a mix of a lot of different things, so I guess I’ll start out by posting some tutorials. For this tutorial you need to have GIMP installed on your computer. I used a photo of my grandson. I cropped the photo and corrected the colors and the exposure before I started. My version of the Watercolor Effect is based on this tutorial for Photoshop: Transform Photo into Watercolor Painting Step 1First you have to duplicate the layer and blur the image on the top layer. Instructions in the flash presentation below. Step 1 (Opens in new window) Step 2Duplicate the Blurred layer and create the sketch. Step 2 (Opens in new window) Step 3Create the painting layer and a color effect on the sketch layer. Step 3 (Opens in new window) I’ve updated Wordpress to version 2.8 and also redesigned my blog. It didn’t take me that long to update the look thanks to a really versatile template. The header images are all my photos and I will add more later. I’m going to try to update my blog more often and also add photos from my trips to Florida and to Cambridge… and of course photos from Finland. I have also planned to add more tutorials, I now know how to use Illustrator and Inkscape. And since I need to update some of my courses for school, I will share some new Photoshop and GIMP tutorials too. I decided to redesign my blog. I will be working on the blog theme for the next couple of days, so if something looks funny or is not working you know why. |
 
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