Veerle's blog

My recent tutorial about creating pattern backgrounds sparked some questions from readers if I could do the same for something that is referred to as “grunge”. The pattern tool is ok for repeating items but the grunge look gets it effectiveness just from the randomness I think. So I think it would be better if I show you how to make a grunge brush instead. I know several of those are available for download but there is nothing more rewarding then creating your own :)

Not sure about you, but when I create buttons for a web site, I always use shapes, especially if the button has rounded corners. These vector shapes have the advantage that they are easy to scale or resize. Combine them with effects and you have the most flexible button ever. Not sure what I mean? I hope I can share something useful with you here…

Not sure if this is a cool tip, but this is something I always do when I start on a full bleed design in Photoshop (I mean a design for print, obviously). I thought I share this one with you…

The last couple of days brought me a lot of inspiration, because of the places I’ve visited. No stress, well expect to catch a train at 6.30 a.m. for Paris after 3 hours of sleep coming back from London. In fact, that was a bit crazy. A little too much in a short time (London, Paris and then driving to Normandy Honfleur). And so, I felt the urge sketch and draw this weekend and so I came up with some ideas, like using art brushes on text in Illustrator ...

On a regular basis I receive requests on how to create those Mac OS X backgrounds, so this weekend I played around in Illustrator trying to create a nice looking desktop using gradient mesh. This all goes well as long as I stick with 1 simple shape, some organic looking bow. As soon as I try to add other bows by adding gradient mesh points things fall apart. Using separate layers each using transparency seems to be the solution, but still this ain’t no walk in the park if you want to achieve the complexity as those real Mac OS X desktops. I congratulate and bow for the designer who made those. I gave up and resorted to Photoshop CS2 and hoped for a better result…