BrushThis

I’ve been playing around with photoshop brush effects. I love the feel of this, and I made four brushes that work rather well together - they are part decorative and part grunge.

Download

Downloading brushes for Photoshop is easy to do, but managing an enormous amount of them on your computer can be more difficult. The Brushes Palette in Photoshop can not handle a huge amount of brushes at once, meaning that we need to refresh our palettes every so often by deleting some brushes and uploading others. This post gives you 3 different options that will make your life a whole lot easier.

BrushViewQL

This is a nifty tool, it shows a preview of the brushes by selecting the brush file in the Finder and hitting the space bar once (Mac/Leopard OS). The brush set pops out with the all its contents clearly visible. You can also drag the box to enlarge the preview window, increasing the size of the preview.

Brush Pilot

Brush Pilot for Mac OS X is designed to save you time by allowing you to instantly preview your brushes without having to load them into Photoshop. It costs $15 and it features automatic locationof every brush file on your system, fast preview, and installs brushes with one click.

Abr Viewer

Abr Viewer was created by Luigi Bellanca from Italy. It generates images for single brushes and also the general image from thumbnail palette. You can adjust thumbnail size and have the preview of the actual size of the brush. Download is free.

Today, 3 years ago, Gilad Shalit was abducted from Israel by terrorists and is still being held captive in Gaza. I do not usually post subjects with political statements, but this is a special case which needs as much coverage as it can get.

I made this Jewish New Year card last September, in the hope that Gilad would be released. My thoughts and prayers go out to Gilad and his family, who are waiting for his return.

When Gilad was 11 years old, he wrote a story about a shark and a fish, and how they overcame their enmity and became friends. It’s now a beautifully illustrated book, which my children read often at bedtime. Watch this moving clip.

Please show your support for Gilad by visiting the website dedicated to him.

Here are two transparent gif “Doves of Peace” images which you can download FREE.

Also, I’ve made a set of FREE dynamic photoshop brushes in honor of Gilad. The set includes 4 brushes: one a static/stamp brush, and the other three are at different sizes, angles and color settings.

Click to Download

This week’s topic for Illustration Friday is “unfold”. My take on this one is very literal, I folded and unfolded a scrap of paper and made a small sketch of it with a black pen on paper. In photoshop, I colored the squares and added punched hole effects, stars and other decorative elements. To enlarge, click here.

I made this set of brushes specially for this illustration. They are dynamic brushes, so the colors, size, angles etc. vary as you paint. I’m giving this set of 4 brushes away FREE to the first ten people who leave a comment on this post!!!