Last week I posted the UPrinting.com 5,000 Business Cards Contest and today I’m happy to announce the winners! There was tons of great comments, but only five were chosen. Look below to see if you are one of the winners! If you are I will be contacting you shortly. Even if you did not win, check out the business cards printing services of UPrinting.com.
UPrinting, one of the leaders of online printing, is giving five Vectips readers 1000 business cards! It is easy to participate and the business cards are great for all you designers, developers, and illustrators. Moreover, you can customize your cards with various sizes and paper stocks. Head on over to UPrinting Business Cards Printing to find out more about their business card printing services.
When creating the previous Create Sketchy-Style Vectors tutorial, I created a number of brushes. I started playing around with the brushes and was happy with the results. I ended up create more of the brushes so I can distribute them. These brushes are great for creating sketchy or grungy vectors. Just apply the brushes to any path or object!
Illustrator is great for creating clean and precise illustrations, but some of the time you don’t want clean and precise. There are many illustrations that call for a sketchy or hand-drawn feel. Creating these effects are relatively easy with Illustrator’s Live Trace, Live Paint, Brushes and the ability to create you own brushes. Check out some of my sketchy illustrations on iStock for more inspiration.
This post is an extension of my Watercolor Vector Flower Illustration tutorial that appears on VectorTuts.com. If you haven’t checked out the post, you should now! In the following tutorial I will explain how to create a couple watercolor brushes, adding to the VectorTuts tutorial, and at the end of the tutorial you can download some Free Vectips Watercolor Brushes!
Illustrator has the ability to add raster effects to elements like outer glows, inner glows, and drop shadows. Vector art is great because you can scale them to any size. That is why I try not to use the raster effects in final output. One area this creates a problem, is drop shadows, but there are a couple of easy ways to add drop shadows using blends and gradients rather than raster effects.
The second texture up for Vectips Texture Week is brushed metal. Like the previous Water Texture Tutorial, this brushed metal technique also utilizes Illustrator’s Effects. Again this tutorial is pretty simplistic when you break it down, and easy to replicate numerous times. You can use the brushed metal texture in almost anything, but I find myself using it in icons, logos, and interfaces quite a bit.
