Illustrator Tutorial: How to make an Ace of Spades

In this tutorial I will show you the process I use to make an Ace of Spades and decorate it.

© Copyright Terry Mahy 2012

This tutorial is pretty easy and probably more aimed at a beginner to intermediate user. Click video below to watch.

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Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make a Reapting Texture Pattern

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a simple texture pattern in Photoshop for the Pattern Stamp Tool. I will also show you how to extract the pattern for use in a website background.

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Photoshop tutorial: How to make a Pattern

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a simple pattern pre-set for the Pattern Stamp Tool in Photoshop. This tutorial is aimed at beginners and is very easy to do.

The Starter image for this tutorial is located below, is has a transparent background as well :)

click for full size

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Digital Painting - Monolith

Had a go at some digital painting yesterday. It occurred to me that you can get some pretty spacey look clouds using the smudge tool in photoshop. This picture took me about 5-6hrs to complete.

© Copyright Terry Mahy 2012

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Illustrator Tutorial: How to make a Post Ink Stamp

In this tutorial I show you how to make a post ink stamp like you would see stamped over the payment stamp on your received letters. This tutorial is really easy and aimed at beginners. It covers things like typing on a path, pen tool and using the transparency/opacity mask.

Finished Product

Click Video Below to View Tutorial

Below is the Texture I use in this tutorial, Click for full size

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Illustrator tutorial: Lines with Rounded corners, Metro/subway map

In this tutorial I'm going to show you a really easy way to make lines with rounded corners like in a subway map. The process Is simple as anything and really easy to do.

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Illustrator Tutorial: Pathfinder

The pathfinder is a very handy set of tools which allows you to merge, cut out or subtract shapes from another. The following tutorials go over the more common uses for pathfinder and serve as a simple introduction into using them.

Part 1 Merging Objects

Part 2 Subtracting Objects

Part 3 Excluding Overlapping Objects

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Illustrator Tutorial - Vote Badge

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make a simple vote badge. The process is really easy and is a great introduction for beginners into making stuff in Adobe Illustrator.
Watch the video below:

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Illustrator Tutorial - Dotted Lines

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make dotted lines in Illustrator. The effect is very easy and customisable.

I'm also going to do something different today and offer this tutorial as both a video cast and a written tutorial. So click the video below to watch or continue reading.

So the first step is to obviously open a new document of any size and draw out a line using the line tool. Make sure the line has a stoke so you can see it.

Now we want to bring up our Stroke dialogue window. This can be done by going to windows > stroke or by pressing Ctrl + F10

Your Stroke box should look like the image below, if you're missing options click the little dialogue menu on the top right of the box and tick "Show options".

Now we want to click the round cap option shown below

Then we want to tick the dashed line and enter the following values: dash: 0 pt and Gap: 16pt

And there you have it, a dotted line.

You can also customise the values to get different sizes, to increase the size of the dot, simply increase the size of the stroke. To increase the gap between the dots, increase the gap value. As long as the dash value is 0pt the dot will remain round.

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Photoshop Tutorial - Simple Photoshop Brush

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a simple brush pre-set in Photoshop.
These brushes are more ideally used as a stamp rather than a drawing brush, but are really useful none the less. I really like using brushes like this for adding details to retro/vintage designs to add a worn-torn look to things. To find out how to make them, just watch the video below, it's really easy.

Below is a file you can use as a resource.

Click image for full size.

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In this tutorial I am going to show you how to add vectorised textures to a vector object to make it look worn/vintage. It is a very easy process and the finial product will be able to resized freely without loosing quality.

 Below is the final product

Here's some free textures available for use:
Commercial use
Personal use:

you could also make your own from a black and white photo using the trace option in Illustrator.

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Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make a Simple Web Button

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a basic button like the one below and export it for web in Photoshop.

I will cover things like layer styles - drop shadows, gradient overlays, strokes and I will cover using the Save for web and devices export option.

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Illustrator Tutorial - How to Make a Rising Sun or Sun Rays

In this Tutorial I will be showing you how to make a rising sun graphic in adobe Illustrator. This is also a good insight into making sun rays really quick.

You can watch how to make this in the following YouTube clip.
It is very easy and a time saver when confronted with drawing each of the rays individually....pft who would do that when you could just do them all in 4-6 clicks

Again if you have any questions just ask :)

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Tutorial - Beginners Guide to Colouring Line art in Photoshop

In this tutorial I go over the fundamentals of how I colour my pencil and ink drawings in Photoshop. I'll go through things like scanning your image, adjusting levels to darking your lines and get rid of pencil smudges quickly, and colour your image without destroying your pencils.

It's half an hour long so sit back and enjoy. Who knows you might pick up some new tricks :)

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Retro Bottle Cap Badge - Part 2 - Photoshop Tutorial

Here's part two to my previous tutorial, in this one you'll be shown how to add effects to your bottle cap in Photoshop to make it look more realistic.

 I'll cover things like adding layer styles, adding a texture overlay and using vector masks.

In this video I use a texture to which I have provided below. Feel free to use it in anything you want, there's no copyright restrictions on it.

As per usual if you have any questions please ask.

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Retro Bottle Cap Badge - Illustrator Tutorial

Hi all!
Thought I'd try out a tutorial video to show you how to make a retro styled badge in Adobe Illustrator.
The final outcome should look like this:

To get the above just watch the clip below :)

So yeah this puts down the basic construction. You can then take it into Adobe Photoshop and make it look fancy like this:

The process is pretty easy so I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions please ask.

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Giraffe

A quick animation I made up the couple of days. I'm going to try and roll out a few more short animations in the next coming weeks and see if I can make this a regular thing. I'm Also thinking of making a few how videos mostly on the way I draw and colour in Photoshop and maybe some animation info.

 In the mean time Enjoy!

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