This week’s set is made up of all kinds of distressed images. I went all over the place looking for cracking paint, rust, drainage stains, etc. If it looked distressed, I took a picture of it! Was fun, but got me quite a few odd looks! This set is what came of it!

These work great for adding that distressed look to a wall or floor, and also work great for grunge textures.

Includes things like: rust, scratches, rusty holes, drainage stains, dirty and grungy textures, canvas holes, cracking and peeling paint, etc.

Sizes vary from about 600 (some of the smaller “rust holes”) to 2300 pixels.

Go Now to the Downloads Page!

I’ve also updated my “Terms of Use” page to be a bit more clear about what is an acceptable use and what is not an acceptable use of my brushes. I’m pretty understanding and giving, but taking one of my brushes and slapping it down onto a plain page all by itself and then selling it on iStockPhoto.com is NOT an acceptable use of my brushes! That’s basically the same as redistributing the brushes/images themselves. Now, if you were to use the brush(es) to make your own design, that’s just fine! Basically, your gut will tell you if it’s YOUR creation or MY creation… follow that, and you’ll be just fine.

Most of you have been great, by the way. It’s just a select few that have made me clarify.

I’ve also added the capability to purchase a commercial license to use my brushes.  If you do that, you will NOT need to credit me - you will have full rights to use the set(s) that you purchase licenses for.  To find out more about commercial licenses, feel free to contact me!

Well, now that things are up and running again, it’s time for another brush set! I’m still looking into the various different hosts that everyone suggested to me, as I DO intend to switch… thank you all so much for your suggestions!

First, a little announcement, though. I’ve had a few requests for a compilation CD, that has every one of my brush sets available on it. Well, I’ve decided to go ahead and do it. You can now order an Obsidian Dawn Brushes CD, which will have every single brush set that I’ve ever made on it (including some of those made exclusively for other websites!). They’re $10, which covers the price of shipping, gas to drive to the USPS, and a bit extra for my time. A very reasonable price, I thought, though! (That $10 is ONLY for US addresses, btw… but I have a link to my email, where you can send me your address if you live overseas and I’ll get you a quote for how much it’ll be, as well.)

You can order your own Obsidian Dawn Brushes Compilation CD here.

Now on to this week’s brush set! This one was a request from a donation, and it was kind of made to go together with my Swirls Parts brush set. This set contains swirls, too… but you can make your own swirl designs if you use the swirls parts brush set! This week’s set is made up of various vector foliage, but specifically made to be able to use in a swirl-like design. They work just great on their own too, don’t get me wrong! It’s very similar to the Vector Foliage brush set (which would also work well with the Swirls Parts, in all likelihood). You can get an idea for the kinds of designs I intended by checking out the preview image. Enjoy!

Go Now to the Downloads Page!

No brush tips this week. I’m still exhausted from my two weeks away from home! But check out last week’s tip for some very useful tips in using these brushes! You’ll need to be able to rotate them to get them at just the right angle, and last week’s brush tip explains how!

Yes, I do realize that www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com is down.

And I apologize for any inconvenience this is causing. I am in contact with my hosting provider, and have been having to wait 2-4 hours for a response all day long. They keep telling me things that are wrong, and I keep telling them that I’ll fix them but that I can’t do so until they give me permissions to my brushes folder back… and so on and so forth.

It’s driving me nuts.

I feel like, with 6000+ visitors a day, I have a responsibility to keep this website up. And so I feel awful when it’s down like this, since it apparently has been since yesterday (I didn’t receive an email when they took it down, either - I had to find out via email from all of you!)

I may be having to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server, or something else that will allow for the kind of usage that this site has.

Most of the problem seems to have come from one single IP, which I have since blocked. The cause for this problem was 250+ simultaneous Apache connections, and many/most of them seem to have come from this one IP. I’m not even sure what would cause that kind of a thing. I’m going to be looking for some kind of a script that limits the number of simultaneous Apache requests that come from a single IP (I know that some blogs have plugins that do it, so it must be possible), so that this doesn’t happen again.

In the meantime, please sit back and have some patience while I bang my head on the table about a bajillion times whilst waiting for a response to my ticket (no phone support on the weekends = teh suckage). Anybody know of a great web host that has 24/7 technical support via PHONE? And that has VPS and/or dedicated servers?

If I can’t get this resolved over the weekend because of how slow the ticket system is, I will DEFINITELY have it back up on Monday. This’ll be the longest my website’s ever been down.

Thanks for your patience, guys!

 In the meantime, there is another place that you can download my brushes!

http://www.redheadstock.deviantart.com

Okay, so I thought it was about time I released these. I’ve been using these little babies to make a lot of my swirl designs, including those in the most recent “St. Patrick’s Day” brush set. They are basically a bunch of parts or sections of what would make up a swirly design… so that you can put them all together to make your OWN swirl designs.

Never thought you would be able to make your own swirls? Well, now you should be able to! The most important thing about being able to use these proficiently is to know how to rotate your brush. So that you can add the swirl part exactly where you want it, at exactly the right angle that you want it. I can’t make each swirl part available in 180 degrees worth of angles, that’s just not realistic for me to do… or for you to have to download! So, please be sure to check out the “Brushes Tip” below, if you’re not sure how to rotate your brush before or as you’re using it!

Go Now to the Downloads Page!

Brushes Tip:

To make the most of these brushes, you need to be able to rotate them and flip them to be used at the EXACT angle/orientation that you want to. You can change the angle of your brush before you even use it! Here’s how:

Have your brush tool selected, with the brush you’re wanting to use loaded. Click on the “Brushes” tab in the upper right area of your Photoshop window (F5 will also open it). Click on “Brush Tip Shape.”

Now, you’ll see an area where there’s a circle with a crosshair through it, with an arrow on one side of the crosshair. Say that you want to rotate your brush about 40 degrees to the right. You can either type in “-40″ into the “Angle” area, or you can click on the arrow part of that crosshair, then drag your mouse to rotate it around to where you want it to be. You can check how your brush looks in the preview area beneath!

In more recent versions of PS, there’s also the options for Flip X and Y, which… well, basically flip the brush horizontally or vertically. That’s handy for adding borders to something, like if you have a corner brush that’s made for the upper right corner and you want to also use it in the upper left… just Flip X, and voila!

Interestingly, St. Patrick’s Day has been moved from its usual March 17th spot this year to March 15th. “Uh… wha?”, right? Well, the Vatican approved it last year, and it was done to avoid conflict with “Holy Week” this year. This marks the first time the date has been changed since 1940. The next conflict with Holy Week is not expected until 2160.

But, it’s looking like many (maybe even most) people are still going to be celebrating it on the 17th, regardless. The St. Patrick’s Festival Committee in Dublin confirmed that the parade would remain on the 17th, as per usual. And people that live in Ireland will still be given the 17th off of work, as a national holiday. So, it appears that only the religious events surrounding St. Patrick’s Day will be changing dates.

Just thought I’d share that little bit of interesting info with you all, in preparation for this week’s set of Photoshop brushes!

This set is mostly made up of shamrocks and clovers, including both three and four leaf clovers (for luck!). Some are scattered, some are textured, some glittery, others are sporting some pretty Celtic designs, and there’s even a few swirls with shamrock designs thrown in! Also included are a leprechaun, a pot of gold, and the letters “St. Patrick’s Day” spelled in clovers.

These are fairly high resolution, with the average brush size being about 1900 pixels. Most are vectors.

Hope that everyone has a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day, regardless of which day you “celebrate” it.

Go Now to the Downloads Page!