Epic Beard Man!

I can't believe I never heard of this guy till now.
these clips just made my day.





See the fan club here.

The Best of National Geographic 2009

Art of Phil Hale

Phil Hale is an American figurative painter currently residing in London, England. He apprenticed under American painter Rick Berry. Prior to turning to fine arts he worked as an illustrator, mainly doing figurative illustration. His current catalog of work is centered around the figure set in a slightly surrealistic scenes.

His most recent exhibition was the Urge Ourselves Under, at Five Hundred Dollars. The exhibition featured the work of Hale under various pseudonyms. This allowed him to the freedom to explore new subject matter, without the preconceived restrictions of the Hale name.

Behind The Scenes of Nightmare

Cake Boss visits Sesame Street 40th Anniversary

Photoshop Stuff

You could be a matte painter, animation background designer, concept artist, or digital illustrator... either way, having the right resources to arm your Photoshop software with an abundance of weapons is always a good thing.


A list of the best download sites for Photoshop Brushes:

PS Brushes - Your Number one source for Photoshop Brushes


Deviant Art - A large assortment of Photoshop Brushes


QBrushes - Free Quality Photoshop Brushes


NaldzGraphics - Photoshop Resources & Tutorials


GetBrushes - 150+ High Quality Free Photoshop Brushes



Miss M - Photoshop Brushes & Graphic Resources


In Obscuro - Free Adobe Photoshop Brushes


BittBox - Photoshop Brushes


Design Reviver - 350+ Brushes, Textures, and Fonts


Brusheezy - Free Photoshop Brushes


My Photoshop Brushes - Free Photoshop Brushes




How to install Custom Photoshop Brushes:

Working from your PC:

STEP 1 - Put the .abr file you've downloaded onto the DESKTOP. If they are in a ZIP file, open the zip file and drag the .abr files on to your DESKTOP.


STEP 2 - Then open your Adobe Photoshop, select the Brush tool, go to option palette and click on to open the brush preset picker.


Then click on little triangle in the right upper corner.
Next on the list you choose 'Load Brushes'




In the dialog box, click on DESKTOP, and choose the .abr file you want to load and your new brushes appear in the Brush palette and are just ready to go. If there's mulitple Brush files to choose from, you may have to repeat the process to load them all one at a time.

Working from your home computer, you can organize your brushes too:

[On a Mac] Put the .abr file you've downloaded into this folder: Users/{username}/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Presets/Brushes
[on Windows] C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop\Presets\Brushes.

Then follow STEP 2 shown above.


Creating your own Photoshop brushes is a very simple and valuable skill to learn, here's a quick tutorial.


We will start off with this image found it on the internet, the more high resolution the image is, the better. Find your own graphic or photo online (Google Images Search is a good place to start), find an image of something with a white background similar to this.

Now the aim here is to create a black and white image, with the correct contrast to make a successful brush. First, goto Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. This will remove all color from the image:

Next, goto Image > Adjustments > Levels, and adjust the slider to get rid of the colored background. We can still leave all the small details like the small cracks.

Next, press Ctrl+A or goto Select > All, then goto Edit > Define Brush Preset. This will bring up a box for us to name the brush:

Give it a name and PhotoShop will add the brush to the currently selected brush set. So if you choose the brush tool, and then goto the different brushes by clicking on the drop-down menu at the top, you should see the brush we just added at the bottom of the list.

We will have to make sure we save this brush set if we want to keep our custom brush, because if we do not, our custom brush will be lost when we change brush sets.

To save the brush set, we click on the small arrow () at the top-right of the brushes drop-down, and then choose Save Brushes. We will then be prompted for a filename. Once saved, you can load the brush set in the same way as you would any other - from this menu.

Now to use our brush we simply select it from the list and paint on our canvas !

Now as an alternative:

DOWNLOAD this tutorial - it shows another way of using the magic wand tool to select specific areas of a photo texture in order to create a custom textured brush.

Find free textures at locations like these:

http://textures.forrest.cz

http://www.texturewarehouse.com

http://www.noctua-graphics.de/english/freetex_e.htm

Having trouble choosing nice color combinations?

Go here:

Color Scheme Designer

Kuler Color Themes

Aviary Color Editor

The Art of William Whitaker

William Whitaker grew up in the special world of the working artist. He had access to the finest art materials and was painting in watercolor and oil at the age of six. His fondest early memories are of the sights sounds and smells of the art studio.

The art world of his childhood and youth was the brave new world of abstract expressionism and until he was well out of college his natural inclination to draw accurately and his love for traditional realism was a source of inner conflict. Nevertheless he was fortunate, starting at age 17, to receive a thorough grounding in academic figure drawing and painting from the portrait painter Alvin Gittins at the University of Utah, and after exploring other styles he followed his heart into traditional art.He believes the value of painting is to be found in its spiritual power. Having been told all his life that the kind of painting he enjoys is dead, he takes quiet comfort in lovingly attempting to capture something the camera cannot see.

He is also delighted that there are so many wonderfully talented young artists who are not bound or inhibited by contemporary art world conventions and who are out to paint beautifully crafted pictures without apology.He has been a professional artist since 1965, during which time he has conducted workshops and been a university art professor. He continues to work with one or two advanced student artists for fun. He paints about three or four hours every day and spends the rest of the time trying not to ruin any good work he’s done

You can find additional works by William Whitaker at the following sites:

William Whitaker@Williamwhitaker.com

William Whitaker@Conceptart.org

William Whitaker@galleriasilecchia

William Whitaker@artgraphica.net