Scratch Design

Retro Design

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Illustrator Tutorials

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Cutaway Car Illustration Tutorial
In this lesson you’ll learn how to create a 3-Point Perspective-view drawing of a generic car, working from plan and elevation view reference only.

Spice up Pie Charts
For some charts you might only want to spice up the most important slice or the biggest one. Although most topics aren’t as fun as mutations, any sort of

added graphics make boring charts look a lot better.

Retro Car Tutorial
All you need is Illustrator, some inks and some brushes to turn a photograph of a car into a vector illustration.

Intricate Patterns In Illustrator Tutorial
This tutorial will show you how to create intricate patterns in Illustrator super quickly. Stuff that would take you hours to draw manually with the Pen Tool

takes just seconds when you use this technique. Video-version is also available.

Creating a Crazy Cool Logo
In this post I will show you how we created the logo. I will skip the drawing parts, yes

there were tons of drawings before going to the computer, because when they stole my

computer and backups in 2006 they took all my photos of the drawings.

Wolf Drawing Tutorial
Learn how to create an illustrated wolf from the hand-drawn paper sketch to final product

with Illustrator and Photoshop.

White Tiger Tutorial
A cartoony white tiger tutorial. A poster illustration.

How To Make 3D Vector Vintage Stars
I’m going to walk you through a technique to create vintage looking 3d stars in Illustrator.

You guessed it, 100% vector.

Complex Circular Design Techniques
Creating intricate circular designs and patterns may look difficult because the shapes can

be very complicated, but you will be surprised at just how easy making these shapes can be.

I will go over some neat tricks, tools, techniques, and settings that will have you pumping

out perfect circular designs in no time using Illustrator.

Comic Book Style Tutorial
Learn how to create illustrations and turn them into flyers or posters. The end product will

be a flyer which was created for an art show.

Creating Pins
Pins are popular these days, so I thought why not write a tutorial on how to create these in

Adobe Illustrator. If you’ve ever wondered how to simulate this realistic looking pin or

button effect, here’s your chance to learn.

Complicate Orb Icon
This tutorial will teach you doing more complicate button icon or Orb effect Icon using

Illustrator. This is quite a long tutorial.

Test Your Creativity
“Using a provided set of basic shapes I have to compile them to create my illustration. The

theme is up to me but there are some ground rules such as you cannot edit the shapes or

distort them, you however can subtract from them using any of the shapes in the provided

set.

Vintage T-Shirts
It’s easy to create authentic collegiate T-shirt designs using Illustrator, Photoshop and a

good old-fashioned iron. In this tutorial, illustrator Derek Lea reveals how combining both

applications can create stunning results.

Skull Tutorial
An alien skull tutorial. Editorial illustration.

Pirate cartoon tutorial
Learn how to create a vector pirate cartoon character from a hand-drawn sketch.

Illustrator Shapes Tutorial - This is an Adobe Illustrator Tutorial on How to Make Shapes

Design Float Circle Icon- This tutorial will teach you how to create a Designer float icon

using adobe Illustrator that will match with the awesome fasticon set.

Using Illustrator’s Mesh Tool as Nature Intended- How to use the Mesh tool to simulate

nature’s way of colorizing things—in this case, a fallen leaf.

Leather Stylin’ in Illustrator- How to create a quasi-realistic leather patch logo complete

with buttons and stitching.

Symmetrical Illustration: Thug Bunny!- This tutorial will go through the method of using

symmetry in your artwork. Learn how to do half the work but still get the full benefit from

your artwork.

Create a Disco Environment with Twirl Tool, Crystalize , and Envelope Tool- In this tutorial

you will see how to use envelope tool to create a Disco Ball , You will also utilize Twirl

and Crystallize tool to understand its options.

Create a Designer Font- How to break apart a font into vector bits that we can manipulate.

This is a great way to add your style to a font or to make your own!

Draw Your Self Portrait- Learn how to transform your photo into your vector self portrait.

You’ll review techniques for tracing photos.

Creating trees in Illustrator- Green is in vogue and clients everywhere want natural imagery in their promotional material. Ben the Illustrator shows you how to create a fresh-looking tree.

Illustrator Tutorial: Figure Shading-
Drawing the human body is never easy, but shading it and giving it depth as well can be a real headache. A nice tutorial on figure shading by Russell Tate.

Texture- When working in Illustrator it’s nice to add textures that weren’t computer generated (like gradients or pattern fills). This is a step-by-step instructions on how you can create your own hand-made texture effects using a Chinagraph Pencil on simple Watercolor Paper.

3D Logo Tutorial- In this Tutorial you will start with the making of a logo shape, going to rough 3D, and finishing it in Photoshop.

How To Create Your Own Vector Cartoon Character- Follow this tutorial to create your own vector character; Freddy the Fish.

ILLUSTRATE IMAGE INTO VECTOR- Basically, it is quite simple to illustrate an animate rather than a real object. Its color tone is simple and easy to apply. Yhis tutorial will teach you how to illustrate an image into vector.

Free Watercolor Brushes and Tutorial- How to create a couple watercolor brushes, and at the end of the tutorial you can download some Free Vectips Watercolor Brushes!

Simple organic shapes the Illustrator way- Here is a nice way to create wood grain effect using the warp tools in illustrator.

Realistic Curtain- How to create a realistic curtain using the gradient mesh.

Swirl Mania in Illustrator and Photoshop- There are lots of ways to create swirls in Illustrator, in this tutorial you will learn 4 ways to create swirls, and by mixing them you will learn some very powerful techniques that will allow you to easily make tons of different styles of swirls and crazy sperm vectors.

Kacper Spala

Maciej Mizer

Cris Vector

Eendar

Andrey Gordeev

Playstation 3

The Swallowers of Pretty Things

Communion by Cristiano Siqueira

Dior Vector

Naketano

Fruit Tree

Overgrown

Drug Free Zone

Midnight Terror by Matheus Castro

Madam Eninette

Bulgarian Jazz Festival 2008

illustrator Pucker and Bloat Effect How to use the Pucker & Bloat Effect.

Save Time With Save Selection- Selecting multiple objects in Illustrator is essential to productivity. One of the best selection features in Illustrator is Save Selection.

Vector Effects How to mix a photo with vector elements using Photoshop and Illustrator.

Sandwich Board Whitey & Wheaty

Colorful Illustration Very beautiful dream like illustration in vector .eps format

The Butterfly Patch A Sample Patch from one of the Tool Boxes available at aivault.

Free Vector Art Spring Flowers

From Sketch to Vector Illustration- A technique of vector illustrating that takes a little bit more skill is starting with a hand drawn sketches.This tutorial will focus on that technique of vector illustrating.

Craft a Dramatic Vector Landscape Environment- This tutorial will show the intermediate Adobe Illustrator artist how to make a dramatic landscape environment.

He aint showing up hun

Bently Stamp

Lolly Zombification

Vector Polishing Techniques- This tutorial includes 9 Photoshop techniques that will show you how to add more depth, color, contrast, and texture into your vector art.

Create advance background with photoshop

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1. Select a nice photo, in my case an amazingly girl.

2. Duplicate layer to open the Layer Style box. Select Outer Glow and go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Use 43º for the Angle and 155 for distance. Make sure that the blurry layer is behind the normal layer.

3. Create another layer, behind the clouds’ layer. Now go to Filter>Render>Fibers... Use 13 for the variance and 4 for the Strength. After lets add another filter, this time Motion Blur, go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur.

4. First rotate the layer. Then one more time go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. After that double click the layer to open the Layer Style box. In the Layer Style’s first screen set the Fill Opacity to 60%, then add a Gradient Overlay, use the rainbow colors.

5. See the final result

Bonus view :

Create beatiful ice effect with photoshop

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First I pick the photo. This quick tutorial will show how to add a beautiful ice effect to your photos.

1. First step we can change the level, go to image>Adjusments>levels (Ctrl+L).

2. Now we set the foreground color to white and background color to black. Create neon glow effect go to filter>Artistict>Neon Glow. We can play with photoshop effect.

3. Next step we can create duplicate layer and now we have 2 layer. Now we work at top layer give an effect Filter>Pixelate>Crystallize also change blending into Soft Light

4. Create new layer and give cloud name. We can pick lasso tool, set feather into 20 pixel, then go to filter>Render>Cloud. Change also blending into Screen.

5. Create new layer again give it name glow. I first use Outer Glow and then because I want a second glow, I change the Drop Shadow settings so that it becomes a glow.

6. Fix it again and create more glow stuff. Like the final result.

Create beautiful sunset with photoshop

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This quick tutorial will show how to add a really cool sunset to your photos. This tutorial works best with nature related images.

1. Begin by choosing a photo, I choose this:

2. Go to image>adjustments>levels (CTRL+L) and brighten the image a bit. You may also go to image>adjustments>brightness/contrast. This is what I came up with:

3. Hit ‘D’ on your keyboard to reset your foreground and background colors. Then switch foreground color to white. Next, Go to filter>distort>diffuse glow and apply similar settings to this:

And see the result :

4. In the same layer, enter quick mask mode by pressing ‘Q’. Go to filter>render>difference clouds and then hit ‘Q’ again. Your picture should now have random selection.

5. Do not deselect yet. Select any decently large brush size, change the opacity to 10% and leave the flow at 100%. Brush all, it should then look something like this and deselect them ctrl+D

6. Duplicate the layer (CTRL+J). Select the top layer simply by clicking it in the layers palette. Go to filter>blur>gaussian blur. Apply these settings:

7. Still working with the top layer, on the top left of the layers palette change the blending mode form normal to soft light and merge it.

Bonus view :

How to choose a typefaces

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Most designer use some form of type everyday. Type is powerful communication tool and by choosing the right body text and display faces, a designer can suggest certain moods, emotions or tones.

Typefaces or fonts as they called are probably the most important ingredient available to graphic designer. For this reason it’s worth spending time putting together a list of fonts that you feel are first and foremost well designed, but also appropriate for the various type of project that you generally work on.
Types of Font

1. Sans serif fonts
Sans serif fonts lack of the counterstrokes of serif fonts, and are visually much cleaner and modern in feel. The punchier look of sans serif fonts means they are good for large headlines or for short runs of printed text, such as in table or over well spaced paragraphs of limited length. They are also easier to read on low resolution screen than serif fonts because fewer pixel are required to display them, so often appear on websites that specify the display font.

2. Serif fonts
There are identified because of the short serifs or counterstrokes at the end of ancenders, descenders,stems and so on. Serif fonts also tend to be easier to read for long period so are the most popular coice for novel or newpapers.

3. Script fonts
Script fonts are closely related to calligraphic type forms, and are generally not suitable for body text due to their complex letterforms. They have their uses, however, and are normally used for ornamentation.

4. Decorative or display fonts
Display fonts are rarely suitable f ours as body text as, by their nature, they are easy not so easy to read at small point sizes. They can work well when used for headlines, but must obviously complement the font chosen for the body text that follow. If you want to make a typhographic statement, on a poster or a cover for example, a display font maybe a suitable choice.

Some Design rules for choosing and using font :
1. Always think carefully about who your design is aimed at when choosing a font. The demographic of the assumed readership is very important, not just in terms of the styling, but also in terms of how suitable the font will be for reasons of clarity.
2. Think carefully about font size. Keep the relation between headlines, text headings, body text, and captions distinct.
3. Never use dozens of font when two or three font or font weight will do job.
4. Take care of the when combining sans serif and serif and test combination of differing fonts to find which work on you.
5. Make sure that any font families that you choose have sufficient weight and styles for your project.
6. When designing with more than one font family, compare the physical characteristic of each to make sure they combine well.

Simple retouching with photoshop

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When you mention retouching, people often think about the impossibly flawless high fashion models and cover girls in magazines. There is no real attempt to be realistic.
In this example, we will work with the shot of an attractive girl (model : Melissa).

1. Create the surface blur.
Choose Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Surface Blur is a new Photoshop CS2 filter that is especially useful in this application. This blur maintains the major edge transitions, but it also manages to create a very smooth blur. You’ll want to adjust the sliders so that you can completely smooth the wrinkles and skin texture while leaving major features intact.

2. Create clipping mask dodge layer.
Now we want to create a Dodge And Burn layer and dodge out any unattractive wrinkles that are left—this is very similar to what we did before. Option/Alt+click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.
This will bring up the New Layer dialog. Change the Mode to Soft Light, and then check the Fill With Soft-Light-Neutral Color box. Make sure you check Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask.
This will fill the New Layer with 50 percent gray. You want to keep using the mask you created with the Blur layer.

3. Create clipping mask texture layer.

Once again, create a new Gray Overlay layer. Option/Alt+click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to bring up the New Layer dialog. Check the Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask box, select Overlay from the Mode dropdown, and check the Fill With Overlay Neutral Color (50% gray) box.

Now we can see we have 3 layer.

4. Retouching photo with filter effect.
Select the Overlay Texture layer and run the Noise filter on it (Filter > Noise >
Add Noise).

Many photographers would stop here, but this noise is too sharp for our purposes. With the Gray Overlay Texture still selected, run a Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur), use just enough Blur to soften the edges of the noise without completely smoothing it.

See the final result :

Bonus view :

Hand Drawing with Photoshop

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The hand draw style is one of the pure design trends. There are several ways to create hand drawn. You can create it from scratch in Photoshop or you can scan an actual hand drawn sketch. Here is a quick tutorial to show you how to create a hand drawn design in Photoshop using the blending mode and alpha channel.

1 Create brush in Photoshop.
If you have a tablet, you can simply draw the sketch by using the brush tool.

Don’t Have a Tablet?
If you don’t have a tablet, you can create the artwork in Adobe Illustrator and then give a hand drawing effect in Photoshop.
First draw a vector illustration. Then import it in Photoshop. Use the Blur tool to create the smug effect.

2. Invert Color.
If you want to have a white color stroke instead of black — go to menu Image > Adjustments > Invert (or press shortcut Cmd+i) and then select Screen blending mode.

3. Create Color Gradients
What if you want more than just a black or white stroke (ie. colors gradients)? Then you will have to extract the drawing from the white background. A simple way to do this is by using alpha channel.
• Copy (Cmd+C) the drawing.
• In the Channels, create a new channel. Then paste the drawing in the new channel.
• Invert (Cmd+i) the channel layer.

Go back to the Layers, create a new layer. Go to menu Select > Load Selection. In the Load Selection prompt box, select Channel: "Alpha 1" (which is the name of the alpha channel I created earlier).

4. Fill Selection.
With the channel selection loaded, you can fill it with any color.

Using It In The Design
For the purpose of this tutorial, I’m going to show you how your hand drawing on a female model (Model : Melissa).

1. First, cut out the model.

2. Fill the background with some sort of light glowing gradients.

3. Paste the drawing on top of the model.
Lock the layer transparency. Play around with the color gradients.

4. Duplicate the drawing in the background to add more details to the image.

Create cool smiley with adobe illustration

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You have probably already seen this tutorial somewhere before or know how to make cool smiley with Photoshop. But I’m going to show you here is done with Illustrator.

1. Create the circle paths.
First create a circle path and fill it with radial gradient (Ctrl+F9), FFFE81 yellow color and FD9D00 orange color. Select stroke (Ctrl+F10) weight : 0.25 pt.

2. Create the eyes.
Create the outside eyes with pen tool (P) and fill it with gradient with radial gradient FFFFFF white color and E6E6E6 grey color. Create inside eyes with circle path same like step 1. Now you can see and repeat this step to create another part.

3. Create light reflection.

Make an path and fill it with black & white Gradient and place it on top of the circles. Note if your color setting is CMYK, make sure the black for the gradient is full black(C=100, M=100, Y=100, K=100). With the path selected, go to Transparency, select Screen Blend Mode. If your Transparency is not showing, go to Window > Transparency or press Ctrl+Shift+F10.

Now you can give light reflection around the mouth. And see the result.

Advantages
There are several advantages to create this glassy button with Illustrator than Photoshop:
1. It is vector, which mean it is scalable.
2. It is easier and faster to make this with Illustrator (less steps).
3. Easier to change colors, just need to fill the circles with different color

Draw japan comic stlye

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This tutorial will show you how to draw japan comic style outline strokes with Adobe Illustrator Art Brush.

1. Create an Art Brush.
Use the Pen Tool and create a path like the image on the left. Drag it to the Brushes Library pallate. If your Brushes is not showing, go to Window > Brushes of press F5.

New Art Brush
When the New Brush options window popup, select New Art Brush.

Art Brush Options
Then the New Art Brush Options will pop out, leave everything as default, but select Tints for Colorization Method. Click Ok.

2. Apply your strokes.
Now you can apply this Art Brush to any stroke by clicking the Art Brush in the Brushes library.

Result
You can change your stroke color and weight to get various stroke effect.

Fractal Art: Complex and Beautiful Color Inspiration

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A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,”[1] a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning “broken” or “fractured.”
-Wikipedia

Fractal by mailart-org

Fractal by mailart-org

Fractal by Lynn (Gracie’s mom)

Fractal by mailart-org

Fractal by mailart-org

Fractal by mailart-org

Fractal by mick y

Fractal by Lynn (Gracie’s mom)

Fractal by Lynn (Gracie’s mom)

Fractal by exper

Fractal by exper

Fractal by mick y

Fractal by carlitosway85

Fractal by barabeke

Fractal by exper

Fractal by longan drink

Fractal by longan drink

http://flickr.com/photos/_belial/2198025629/

Fractal by jared

Fractals in Nature

Approximate fractals are easily found in nature. These objects display self-similar structure over an extended, but

finite, scale range. Examples include clouds, snow flakes, crystals, mountain ranges, lightning, river networks,

cauliflower or broccoli, and systems of blood vessels and pulmonary vessels. Coastlines may be loosely considered fractal

in nature.
-Wikipedia

Fractal by tin.G

Fractal by Samuel Judge

Fractal by Benjamin Pender

Fractal by Today is a good day

Fractal by Today is a good day

Fractal by Today is a good day

Fractal by jurvetson

10 Website To Help You Learn and Master CSS

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CSS can be both a tricky and easy to learn. The syntax itself is easy, but some concepts can be difficult to understand.

1. CSS Help Pile

CSS Help Pile is an aggregate of CSS resources, tips, and how-to’s. The site is well-organized and a wonderful resource
for any level of expertise. There’s a category for beginners, browser bugs, and short reviews of CSS books.

2. CSS Basics

CSS Basics is formatted like a book with 18 chapters dedicated to educating readers about fundamental CSS concepts. The
writing is clear and succinct - making it a great resource for those just starting out

3. SitePoint CSS Reference

SitePoint has a CSS reference section that discusses introductory level CSS topics. You can get a crash course on general
CSS syntax and nomenclature onto slightly more advanced topics such as CSS hacks and filters.
Positioning elements using CSS can be a tricky concept at first. If you’re having a hard time understanding the
fundamentals of CSS positioning, check out this 10-step tutorial to get you positioning stuff in no time!

4. Andy Budd CSS/Web Standards Links

Andy Budd (directory of Clearleft, CSS guru, and author of one of my favorite books – CSS Mastery) has a set of CSS/web
standards links to help you find reliable, useful information about CSS.

5. W3CSchools CSS Tutorial

W3CSchools has a CSS section that covers the very basics of CSS up to more advanced topics.

6. CSS at MaxDesign

At MaxDesign, you can find Russ Weakley’s brilliant set of CSS-related tutorials. Some things to expect here are:
Listmatic – which shows you a variety of ways you can use CSS to style lists, and Floatutorial – which goes through the
fundamentals of floating elements.

7. CSSeasy.com

CSSEasy.com’s slogan is "learn CSS the modern way". The site promotes learning by experience, with the idea that if you
inspect the source code and see how things fit together as a whole, you’ll gain a better understanding of CSS. The Web
Developer Tool will also come in handy on this website.

8. Web Design from Scratch: CSS

Ben Hunt’s Web Design from Scratch has an excellent section on CSS that covers basic concepts about CSS. I highly
recommend beginners start off with Introduction to CSS, a quick but very informative starting point to getting your hands
dirty with CSS.

9. CSS-Tricks

CSS-Tricks is a blog dedicated to the topic of CSS. You’ll find helpful posts such as what CSS Sprites are (in a nut
shell), techniques for image replacements, and even screencasts on topics like conditional stylesheets.

10. CSSDog

CSSDog has a section for both beginners and more advanced developers. Aside from CSS lessons, their CSS Reference section.
-which lists quick guides and color references - are very helpful.

32 Dark Designs You Should’ve Seen Design

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Dark designs can be really stunning. I mean, really. In Web 2.0 designers try to do their best to impress their visitors and in many cases they definitely succeed in doing so.