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!

This latest set of Photoshop brushes is made up of various “urban” vector designs. Some of the items are very recognizable as urban, or something that you’d find in a city. Others are designs, like various circles and such, that tend to go along with urban-based designs. If you check out my preview image, you’ll see what I mean! I’m sure you’ve seen these designs before.

All of these are very high resolution, with the average brush size being about 1600 pixels (some smaller ones are 1200 or so, the larger ones are 2100 or so).

Includes: barbed wire, buildings, chain link fence, various circles, street lamps, miscellaneous vector designs, razor wire, smoke, a smokestack, vector splatters, telephone poles, and more!

Go Now to the Downloads Page!

Just a quick plug… some of you may have visited the Obsidian Dawn homepage and seen that I changed it into a portal for my various websites (and parts of Obsidian Dawn).  There is a link to here, my older artwork that was originally on Obsidian Dawn’s homepage, my graphic design info, my scrapbooking stuff (which is also now free, btw), AND a new website where I’ll be displaying all of my new artwork.   Most of it will be fantasy and nature related, and it’s going to be my professional portfolio.  I’m starting to get to a point where I think I’m decent enough to work as an artist professionally, so once I get a few more pieces in there I’m going to try to get some work at various companies (perhaps some fantasy trading card games, etc).  There’s just two paintings up there so far, but please feel free to check it out at Rainne.com!

Random Brushes Tip:

In the upper right hand corner of your Photoshop window is the “Brushes” tab (if you can’t find it, hit F5 to open it). You can drag that tab outside of that small docking area if you’re going to be doing a lot of work with your brush settings. Just click and drag it outside of the docking area, and where you drop it, a Brushes window will be created.

You can, in fact, drag all of your different tabs around like that. If you want your layers and channels tabs in separate windows, you can drag and drop one of them outside of the other to separate them.

Don’t worry, you can put them back where they were, too. If you drag and drop a tab next to another one, you will merge them into the same window… including that small docking area up at the top where the “Brushes” tab started out.

This can make it much easier if you’re planning on working in a particular tab a good deal. It’s also a great way to get rid of some stuff when you’re not using it much!

(If you want to change the order of the tabs, drag them outside of the window temporarily and then drag them back into the window in the REVERSE order from how you’d like them to appear from left to right. In other words, the most recent tab that you dragged into any particular area will always appear on the right side.)

This tutorial will walk you through how to create a seamless texture in Photoshop. I created the tutorial using Photoshop CS2, but it should work almost exactly the same for most versions of Photoshop from 7 and up. (It may work for 6 and under, too, but I’ve never used those so I have no idea.)

Please keep in mind that this tutorial is for TEXTURES…. NOT PATTERNS. A texture is something like granite, dirt, or bark, while a pattern is something like lace, or anything with a design on it. I do plan on creating a tutorial for how to create a seamless pattern somewhere down the line, but the technique used is completely different from that I’ll be giving in this tutorial.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions!

Go Now to the Tutorial Page!

This newest set is just the result of some playing around. Some of the more popular brushes in my glitter brush set were the glittery swirls, so I took that and ran with it. Some of these are glittery, some aren’t… but all should look like they’re glowing. Kind of like various light special effects! (Hence the name, right?)

Go Now to the Downloads Page!

Next week, a tutorial on making seamless patterns! I’ve had several requests for this, and keep forgetting to do it. But no longer!

Brushes Tip: To get these to look like my preview image…

• start with a dark background
• make a new layer (SHIFT + CTRL + N for PC) (SHIFT + CMD + N for Mac)
• select the brush in this set that you’d like to use
• making sure white is your foreground color, click somewhere on the canvas to use the brush
• click on the “Add a Layer Style” button at the bottom left of your layers palette (or choose Layer > Layer Style from the main menu) and then choose Outer Glow
• set the blend mode to “Normal” and choose a strong, saturated color (bright red would work well, light pink would not)
• play with the “Size” slider until it looks how you want it, and then hit OK
• that’s it!

This brush set is a themed set for helping you wish that special someone a very happy Valentine’s Day!

It is made up of 30 brushes, fairly high resolution (about 1500 pixels or so on average). It includes:

• various Valentine’s Day sayings (Be Mine, Be My Valentine, Happy Valentine’s Day, etc)
• several single candy hearts (with and without messages)
• 2 groupings of candy hearts
• 2 cupids
• 4 heart-themed corner brushes (2 different types)
• heart of flames
• gel heart
• heart of glows (like my “dangling glows” brushes)
• heart of light rays
• heart with an outline design
• 2 hearts made of painted brush strokes
• paisley heart
• heart made of rose petals
• heart scatter brush (must be painted with, and the hearts will scatter about)
• circle of hearts
• scattered hearts
• two hearts overlapping, texturized
• heart made of splattered blood (so romantic, eh?)

This set was made as an exclusive brush set for Photoshop Support, so you’ll have to download it from their website (the link is just below)! On their page, you’ll also be able to check out previews of all the brushes.

Go Now to Photoshop Support and the Valentine’s Day Brushes!

As a special bonus gift (Happy Valentine’s from me to you!), I’m also making available a transparent, colored image of some candy hearts (in PNG format). You can download the candy hearts image here.