Oct 30 2011 15 Comments By JC Parmley

In this first Design Instruct "Show Us Your:" showcase, we gathered a few office snapshots from our staff, authors and friends to give you a candid look at their workspace. May it be inspiration from arts hanging on the walls, information from books and magazines scattered on the floor, or simply the need to be organized for functionality; these photos portray the working environment behind real graphic design and digital art professionals. Share your own workspace photos in the comments!

Oct 28 2011 5 Comments By JC Parmley

This free download consists of five textures/photos of pebbles. Use them as textures and backgrounds in your commercial and personal design and digital art projects. Enjoy!

Oct 26 2011 14 Comments By Isaac Gube

I received an email from one of our readers a long time ago. For some reason, I started thinking about it again more recently. I thought I’d share bits of the conversation with you because I believe that it’s valuable to start a discussion on the topic.

Oct 19 2011 20 Comments By Hyungho Tim Lee

This tutorial will give you a general workflow overview of how to create traditional illustrations on paper and then refining it further in Photoshop. We will use Indian ink, paintbrushes and a brush pen to ink our pencil sketch, and then watercolor to fill in the illustration. Then we will place the illustration into Photoshop to perform some fine-tuning and image corrections.

Oct 14 2011 16 Comments By Isaac Gube

Illustrations can be an excellent source of inspiration. An illustration communicates a story to its viewers through creatively artistic means. This is a collection of 40 beautiful and inspiring pieces by 19 talented illustrators. Make sure to click through the illustrators’ names to see their portfolio and more of their work.

Oct 12 2011 8 Comments By Jacob Gube

Using repeating, tiled patterns as a background in a web page layout is a popular design technique. When done well, using background patterns can make a web design look sophisticated, intricate and memorable. In this visual inspiration collection, you’ll see 30 websites that use a variety of beautiful background patterns (e.g. diagonal stripes, cross-hatching, dots and so on).

Oct 10 2011 8 Comments By Ionut Ciursa

In this photo manipulation tutorial, we will create a surreal desert scene with everything turning into sand. We will start with simple techniques, such as replacing the sky and adding a focus effect to the landscape. Then I will show you how to mask areas of the model’s hands, dress and other elements of the scene and replace those areas with sand using a custom particles brush. Let’s get started!