So I’m back with yet another texture pack for you guys! Way back in July 0f 2009, only about a month after the Echo Enduring Blog actually launched, I released a Texture Pack 2, which contained five wood textures for you to download and use in your designs. Since then, I’ve been meaning to do a follow up with even more wood textures. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally done it, and brought you five more wood textures!

The previous pack consisted mostly of different wooden surfaces that I had come across when I was out on walks with my wife and daughter. As such, there was a certain weathered quality to the textures. This time, however, I focused my camera lens more on the polished, interior woods of floors and furniture. This gives the textures a much different feel.

Here are a couple samples:

a light coloured wood

medium coloured wood texture

There are another three awesome textures in the pack too, and all of them are saved as high resolution JPEGs with no compression, to help maximize overall quality. A couple of them are a bit more blurry than I would have liked, but they should still be useful at smaller resolutions. So go ahead and download the pack by clicking on the preview below. I’ll bet you can find some awesome uses for these textures!

Texture Pack 7 - More Wood (Downloaded 7719 times)

If you do decide to download and use these textures in some way, I’d love it if you shot me an email or quick tweet to let me know or to show me a sample of your work. I love seeing my freebies in action!

Anyhow, I have plans for a couple more freebies over the course of the year, so do keep an eye out! And feel free to leave your thoughts or comments below!

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Back around Christmas time, I released a pack of really bold, gungy textures that I had created specifically for Echo Enduring readers. One of the comments that I received suggested that it might be a good idea to provide a tutorial on the process I used. So, while each texture was actually a bit different, I have decided to write a generalized overview of some of the techniques that I used to create those textures.

Kicking it Grade School Style

I don’t know about you, but back when I was in grade school, I remember having a few different projects where I had to do something “creative”. One such project was to create the last will and testemant from some character from a novel set in the Renaissance or Victorian England. Honestly, I can’t remember all that much about it, except that I wanted to make it look old and weathered. So, with the help of my mom, I set about staining paper, tea bag style.

This is a really old and simple trick, but sometimes those can be the best! Basically, just boil up some water and make yourself a nice big pot of tea. Good old-fashioned English breakfast tea works really well. Once it’s brewed, follow these directions:

• If so inclined pour yourself a cup. Then, pour the remainder into a dish that would be would be wide enough to set a piece of paper in.
• Take a piece of paper (plain old printer paper works find) and crumple it up into a ball. Then, carefully uncrumple it again.
• Set the paper into the tea so that it is fully submerged.
• Wait. How long you wait is up to you, but the longer you wait, the more of stained the paper will become .
• Take the paper out of the tea and set it somewhere to dry

Once it’s dried, you will have a nice brown-stained sheet that will work well as the base for our texture. At this point, you can either scan it into computer or photograph it. I chose to photograph mine, because we will also be using the camera to capture a couple of other resources, so the image dimensions will all be identical.

Just a bit of tea and plain old paper were used to create this texture

Finding the Grunge

I like to think that my wife and I keep a fairly clean household, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few places where I can find some awesome, grungy surfaces. One of those places is the garage floor. Made from poured concrete, and victimized by all kinds of dirt, mud and other substances, it is a wonderfully stained, textured and even cracked surface that yields all kinds of grungy awesomeness. I’ve taken all kinds of shots of my garage floor for texture purposes. Here is the one we will be using today!

My garage floor offers all kinds of opportunities to find grunge

Another prime spot in my house is the wash basin downstairs. This old, battered plastic sink was in pretty rough shape when we moved in, and after having been the site of many different cleanups, it’s developed its own grungy character! So, I snapped this shot of that spot, and will be using this as the third and final resource for our process today:

Another grungy photograph from a surface in my basement

Blending And Adjusting

Start by opening up the paper texture in Photoshop. Then insert a new layer with the garage floor texture. You can either use open-copy-paste to insert it, or place it in as a Smart Object. Next, set the blending mode of the to top layer to multiply. This will essentially merge the two textures together:

Use the multiply blending mode to merge the two source images

By combining these two layers together, the entire thing is a little dull and drab, so let’s use some adjustment layers to bring a little vibrancy to the overall piece. We’ll start with by adding a Levels adjustment layer, with the following properties:

Use an adjustment layer to tweak the levels and make the image a bit brighter (values of 23, 1.04 and 192)

Next, we’ll also use a Brightness/Contrast layer to bring out even more of the texture:

Next, use a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer with a brightness of 18 and a contrast of 16

Now it looks much more interesting, with more contrast and lighting that allows you to really see all of the details. It also sets things up for the next step, where we will be bringing in even more grunge through our third resource.

First, though, let’s add a little more colour into the mix. Create a new empty layer, then set your foreground colour to a medium brown and your background colour to a sort of kiwi-ish green. Create a a linear gradient from one corner to the other

Create a layer with a coloured gradient

Then, set the blending mode to Hue.

Set the blending mode of the coloured gradient to Hue to give a slight colour treatment to the image

The effect is subtle, but it adds a bit of extra visual interest into the composition and brings a certain sense of atmosphere. For a different kind of feeling, you can try different combinations of colours. If you’ve never really used the Hue blending mode, I really suggest taking the time to play around with it a bit. It’s become one of my favorites.

Alright, now lets import our third photograph. Again, you can either paste it in or place it as a Smart Object. The first thing we’re going to do with this one is to use another adjustment layer to bring up the brightness and contrast a bit:

Slightly increase the brightness and contrast of the texture.

This will give the texture a slightly “overexpossed” look. We’ll loose some of the detail, but that’s okay, since what we really want the most out of this one is the big patches of rust stains. Once we’re satisfied with the contrast here, we’ll want to commit to our adjustment. You can either do a hard commit by merging the texture layer and the adjustment layer, or you can be less destructive and select them both and create a new Smart Object. It’s up to you.

Whatever choice you make, you are next going to want to set the blending mode of our adjusted texture to Linear Burn.

Altogether, the blending and adjustment layers combine to create this

Now that is a dirty, grungy and intense bit of grunge!

Finishing Filters

Once we’ve come this far, another thing that I like to do is mess around with some lighting filters, just to bring a little extra finish. Of course, we can’t apply a single filter to all the seperate layers, so the first thing that I always do is to select all the layers and convert them to a Smart Object, by right clicking on the selected layers in the Layers panel and selecting the Convert to Smart Object option.

With this done, we can actually use a Smart Filter, which is basically just a filter that is applied to a Smart Object. The key difference, however, is that Smart Filters can actually be edited later, which is an incredibly useful tool.

In this instance, we will use the Filters » Render » Lighting Effects filter, with the following settings:

Use these settings on the lighting filter

One key thing to note, is that we are using the Texture Channel option, with the green channel selected. In addition to adding some lighting, this will add a bit of extra bit of grainy texture.

The lighting filter also adds an extra bit of grainy texture

Lastly, we’ll use just one more Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to finish things off:

Use one last Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer with brightness 20 and contrast 10

Conclusion

And there you have it! One totally totally homemade texture, complete with all kinds of gritty, grungy and interesting details, which you can now use in any number of ways, such as incorporating it as the background for a poster.

Our final, homemade texture

And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I have a poster to do for a local youth event, and this will make an excellent start! Regardless of what you choose to do with the texture, though, the important thing about this exercise is to just have fun and experiment. Play with different blending modes and adjustment layers, maybe even a few filters. This kind of thing is a great way to familiarize yourself with features and behaviours and just start to learn your way around Photoshop. Plus, it can give you some really awesome textures to use in your designs.

So go ahead and have some fun! If you end up creating something awesome that you use in a design, feel free to drop the link for everyone to see!

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I hope everyone had a really awesome Christmas. I had a great day, with the exception of the fact that my little girl wasn’t feeling just the best. My wife bought be a book full of website inspiration, which was pretty darned cool, and when we checked the mail today, my copy of 8 Faces had arrived, which was just awesome. I now have some awesome design-related reading material to peruse.

On the blog front, I’ve released snow textures, my WhatsThis jQuery plugin and a pack of candy cane seamless vector patterns over the past few days! I hope you’ve taken the opportunity to download the resources. I am also continuing the string of freebies again today with yet another set of textures.

If you liked the snow textures, I think you are going to like these too. In fact, I think this is probably the best set of textures that I have ever released, with the possible exception of the watercolour set from about a year ago. For this set, I specifically stained and distressed different types of paper and took some grungy photographs. I then took these and processed them with blending modes and filters in Photoshop to create some really cool looking textures!

Here are two of my favorites:

A nicy, grungy texture with a assortment of levels of luminoisity

I really like the colour, balance and such of this one

There are another three awesome textures in the pack too, and all of them are saved as high resolution JPEGs with no compression, to help maximize overall quality. So go ahead and download the back by clicking on the preview below. I’ll bet you can find some awesome uses for these textures!

Texture Pack 6 - Grunge (Downloaded 4577 times)

If you do decide to download and use these textures in some way, I’d love it if you shot me an email or quick tweet to let me know or to show me a sample of your work. I love seeing my freebies in action!

Regardless, I hope you enjoy the pack. It was a whole lot of fun creating and experimenting with these as I put them together, and I’ll probably be making some more in the future. Do let me know if there’s anything specific that you think I should try and tackle or offer up. It would be fun to work on something like that!

Anyhow, I have plans for a couple more freebies for you before the end of the year, so do keep an eye out! And feel free to leave your thoughts or comments below!

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In the Spirit of the holidays and Christmas season—one of my very favorite times of the year, I’m going to be giving away a few different design freebies over the next few days. I have some textures, icons, patterns and even a bit of jQuery goodness that I’ve whipped up (some cool stuff). All told, it should make for a pretty wicked collection of resources.

To kick it all of, I journeyed out into the blustry cold of winter in Ontario and put together Texture Pack 5, containing 7 high quality photographic textures of the snow around my house. It may not seem like much, but in the past I’ve had a few occassions where I needed a snow texture – usually in the summer or fall when the stuff isn’t readily available in mounds and drifts everywhere you turn!

Well, now you don’t need to go hunting. They’re right here, so let it snow in your designs!

Texture Pack 5 - Let It Snow (Downloaded 5084 times)

In terms of the textures themselves, I tried to include a bit of variety. There are a couple top view shots of plain, flat snow, along with a number of angled shots where you can see more mounds and undulations, and even a few little imperfections. All in all, I think that the variations make for a pretty useful and versatile pack.

Or, at least as versatile as snow textures can be!

Anyhow, I hope you find some awesome uses for these textures. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out. If you use them, please do let me know. I always love to see my work in action.

Also, don’t forget to stay tuned for more free stuff over the next few days. It’s going to be good.

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So here we are with the second installment of my First Friday Giveaway series. Last month’s giveaway went pretty well, and I’m excited to be back with another great prize for all my readers. As many of you probably already know, I do some work creating design resources for MediaLoot, a new resource base for designers that totally rocks.

MediaLoot - Premium Graphic Design Resources

Well, this month’s giveaway brings my work for MediaLoot and you, my readers, together. I have three design “grab bags” that I will be giving away to three lucky winners. These packages include 10 vector characters (5 male and 5 female), 10 book cool cover textures, 10 hand painted watercolour textures and a collection of watercolour brushes for Photoshop. All of these resources have been designed by yours truly and are currently part of the general MediaLoot library.

Here are some previews:

Cartoony Vector Characters - Guy

Cartoony Vector Characters - Girl

Great Hand-Painted Watercolor Textures

Book Cover Textures

Hand-Made Watercolor PS Brushes

All of the resources are of the highest possible quality, and I’m sure that you will be able to find some sort of use for them in your various design work!

So here’s how to enter:

1. Follow me on Twitter. Trust me, I won’t clog your feed and I always try to tweet interesting articles and resources!
2. Follow MediaLoot on Twitter.
3. Mosey on back here and comment. Include your Twitter handle (eg. @echoenduring), your email address (so I can contact you if you win) and a note about why you want to win one of these sweet prizes!
4. Spread the word! Tell everyone you know! Tweet this post, stumble it, blog it or post it to your favorite social network of choice! We’d really appreciate it! (optional)

A few basic contest rules:

1. Only enter once.
2. Contest closes after midnight (Standard Eastern Time) on April 16.
3. I will be tabulating entries, and selecting and contacting the winners within several days of the contest closing.
4. We will then make arrangements for you to claim your prize!

So there you go. That should be all the details you need. So go on, enter this contest! Oh, and don’t forget to head over to MediaLoot and take a closer look at the full range of design resources that they to offer! You can expect some more resources from me soon!

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It’s time for another freebie from the Echo Enduring Blog. Today I am bringing you my first ever Mega Texture Pack, featuring 25 high resolution textures for you to use in your designs. The mega pack contains five subsets of textures, each with a different theme. These themes include, grunge, fabrics, carpets, weathered woods and miscellaneous coloured textures.

This is an exclusive pack, which is made available to RSS subscribers of the Echo Enduring Blog. However, I am also releasing another pack called the Mega Texture Pack Sampler, which contains one texture from each subset in the larger pack. These textures are available for download to anyone. Just click on the following preview to grab them and get a taste for what’s in the larger pack!

Mega Texture Pack - Sampler (Downloaded 5071 times)

If you like them, be sure to come back and grab the mega pack too, and get yourself another 20 textures for free! Better yet, why not just grab it right away? Not convinced yet? Here are some more samples of the textures you will find the mega pack!

A Sample Grunge Texture from the Mega Pack

A Sample Fabric Texture from the Mega Pack

A Sample Coloured Texture from the Mega Pack

Accessing the pack is easy. Just check your feed reader for my most recent post, and look for freebie code at the bottom of the entry. Then, click the download link below, which will take you to the Mega Textures Pack download page. Enter the freebie code for immediate access to the entire mega texture pack.

If you’re not currently subscribing to my blog, it’s not too late! Just add my feed to your RSS reader of choice! Not only will you get access to this awesome pattern pack, you’ll also get all sorts of other awesome content delivered right to your reader!

» Grab the RSS Feed

» Download the Mega Texture Pack

If you enjoy these textures, please let me know by dropping a comment or promoting this post on your favorite social media site! And thanks for subscribing to my feed! Keep an eye out for more exclusive freebies coming your way in the future (like a full set of icons perhaps?).

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Hey guys. To help kick off the year, I am releasing my fourth freebie texture pack! This one contains five unique watercolour textures that I created myself. Now, I want to be up front with all my readers. These textures were originally created as part of a project that I am working on for a new site called MediaLoot (see below for more details on the site).

I was hired to create a set of 10 watercolour textures (along with some other resources). So I decided to create 15 – 10 to complete the project and 5 to give away as a freebie here on the Echo Enduring Blog. The guys at MediaLoot selected 10 of the textures. The remaining 5 are now available to you all as a free download.

Texture Pack 4 - Watercolours (Downloaded 10921 times)

Now, I want to stress that these textures are not rejects. They simply were not selected for one reason or another. I still put a lot of work into these, and they are scanned at a very high resolution. I actually like a couple of these better than some of the ones that were chosen! I’m sure they will prove valuable too you.

In previous posts for non-exclusive freebies released before today, I usually sent you to a specific section of my site. However, in anticipation of a redesign and reorganization coming down the pipe, I will now be releasing all of my freebies directly on the blog itself. I will also be updating the previous freebies to reflect this change.

So, to download Texture Pack 4, just click on the preview above.

I hope you find some awesome uses for these textures. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out. If you use them, please do let me know. I always love to see my work in action.

About MediaLoot

Okay, now more about this MediaLoot site. Basically, it is an awesome new resource base created by Jon Phillips and Mason Hipp. You can read their own descriptions of it over at SpyreStudios and Freelance Folder. Basically, though, MediaLoot is envisioned as being the ultimate designer’s toolbox.

MediaLoot

The site will be subscription based, and will allow users access to an entire collection of different design resources, all for one modest monthly fee. There will be textures, brushes, vectors and icons, just to name a few of the types of resources. If you haven’t checked it out yet, head on over. And while you’re there, don’t forget to sign up for the email updates. Thanks guys!

I’m looking forward to releasing more awesome freebies throughout 2010. Have an idea or something you’d like to see me tackle? This is your chance to speak up. Drop a comment and let me know what kind of freebies will rock your world this year. You never know, I just might take your suggestion.

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Textures are one element that I really enjoy using in my designs. They can be extraordinarily effective at taking a dull and plain looking design and adding just that extra bit of visual flair that is needed to take the piece to the next level. Just recently, I was working on a design which, though it had a solid general composition, still felt flat and dull. However, by adding just a little bit of texture, I was able to give the design a richer and more luxuriant feel, which was right in line with that I was trying to accomplish.

In today’s post, I’ve collected 21 beautiful poster designs that make use of texture to some degree or other. Some are really strongly textured, while others are a bit more subtle. All of them are extremely cool and inspiring. I hope you enjoy these!

Break the Grid

Retro Hippy Van

Made in Japan

Creating a Retro Grunge Poster

Ice Ice Baby

Blackout Poster

Some People Refuse to Be Default

I Love You Sometimes

Beggars Fortune

Signal December

The Amazing Design Race

Emptry Headed Expressions

We Love the Scene

Every Child is an Artist

Global Warming

Typography Poster

The Crucible Poster

Creatures of the Deep

Immerse Your Soul In Love

The Upbeats

What is Graphic Design?

That’s it – 21 wicked, tactile and textured posters designs, collected to inspire you and your designs. I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at these designs as much as I enjoyed collecting them!

I’d love to hear your view on these, too. Which ones are your favorites? How do textures fit into your own design style an/or methodology? Please feel free to leave a comment!

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Here’s another first on this blog – my first Featured Artist post! As you may be able to tell from some of my other posts, I’m a big fan of art, and even try my own hand at it from time to time. So, in an effort to support some of the many talented, up and coming artists, I will be featuring a new artist every 4 weeks or so!

So, let me introduce you to our first Featured Artist: Miss Lois van Baarle, aka loish.

Steel Turquoise

Lois has a really unique style that fuses elements of comic art (with a subtle anime influence), with beautiful brushstrokes, detailed rendering and wonderful use of texture. Her work has an earthy feel, while much of her subject matter is either filled with or lightly touched by whimsical fantasy.

I had the chance to conduct an email based interview with Lois. I think her answers will shed some interesting light on who she is as an artist, and about some of the inspiration and techniques behind her work.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started into the world of art.

I have been drawing ever since I was small and always considered it a passion of mine. Drawing remained a hobby until I realized in high school that pursuing art as a career might be a good decision, so I went to study animation, figuring it would help me to develop the aspects of my art which were lacking at the time (story, dynamism, personality). So I studied animation for 5 years (1 year in Gent, 4 years in Utrecht) and now I am ready to start my career.

Angey

You have a very unique style. Can you tell us a bit about that? Do you draw upon any particular source of influence or inspiration?

I have a lot of different inspirations. As a child and also today, Disney has played a huge role. One of my main inspirations is Alfonse Mucha, an art nouveau artist. I’m also hugely inspired by a lot of french comic styles, particularly that of Aurore Black Cat. Via Deviantart, an online art community, I come into contact with a lot of artists that inspire me as well.

Pinup Ariel

Most of your art seems to use textures. Can you tell us a bit about how you approach textures?

I started using textures as a way to make my digital painting look more organic and stylish. I also really enjoyed the ways in which textures can influence the color of the piece, changing the tint slightly and bringing it all together a bit more. Soon enough I became addicted and now I always use them. I definitely prefer more organic styles to slick digital painting, and I feel that textures help achieve this effect. Lately, I apply many different textures at an early phase and paint over them, integrating them into the piece more.

Cinderella Coloring Page

What about colour? Your art all feels very rich and earthy. Somehow, even your blues feel earthy. Why do you think you might be drawn to a particular colour palette?

I have definitely always loved the color blue. I find it refreshing and beautiful. So I’ve always used this color in my work. I started painting with more browns at a certain point, enjoying the organic effect it gave to my work, and with the added effect of textures, my work tends to have a very earthy feel. I like this effect so I stick to it.

I’ve noticed that several of your characters have at least partial dreadlocks. Is there any significance to this?

No, I just find dreadlocks extremely fun to draw. Also, it gives characters a more edgy look.

Smoking Fish

What can you tell us about you are currently working on?

Well, I just graduated (about 2 weeks ago) and will be receiving my bachelor and master’s degree in a few days. After that I figure it’s time to get to work! I’m not sure what I’ll be doing just yet. I want to work with comics as well as animation projects and freelance concept art, but we’ll see, I guess!

Peacock

Any future plans you can talk about?

Not really… Except for the Trichrome Project, which is the project I began with my graduation work. It is a fictional company for which three animated shrots must be made. The first one, Trichrome Blue, is my graduation animation, but the other two have yet to be made. I’m very excited about creating them!

Evening Glow

Finally, do you have any advice for young/aspiring artists?

Always aim to be the best! It’s amazing how far you can get with practice and determination. Never give up :)

Bubblegum

Thanks Lois, for taking the time to answer these questions, and for agreeing to be my first Featured Artist. I hope all you readers enjoyed this post, and that you will check out Lois’ website and her presence on deviantArt.  You can also check out her sketchblog, catch some of her animation on YouTube and follow her on Twitter.

As an added bonus, I’ve also included Lois’ Trichrome Blue short animation here. Be sure to watch this when you get a moment. It’s really beautifully done, and I’m excited to see the next two installments!

So that’s it for this featured artist post. I hope that you’ve enjoyed looking at Lois’ art as much as I do! If so, leave a comment and let us know which one is your favorite!

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A few weeks ago, I posted Texture Pack 2 – Wood, my last texture freebie. In that post, I noted that I had some other texture packs in the works. Well, I’ve released another one, and I have to say – this one was a lot of fun to create.

Introducing Texture Pack 3 – Colours. I created this pack over the course of several months, by taking my camera on walks through my hometown and taking high-resolution pictures of any interesting coloured texture that I came across. In fact, some of these textures had been planned months before I actually got around to photographing them!

Texture Pack 3 - Colours (Downloaded 856 times)

I actually did a bit more post-production work on these images than I have for previous packs, because I really wanted to bring the colours out. On one of the nights I went shooting, it was getting a bit late and the lighting wasn’t as good as I might have liked. As a result, some of the colours came out a bit dull. Fortunately, I was able to use Photoshop to make some adjustments and really get the texture I was looking for.

You can download these textures by clicking on the preview image above. Feel free to use the textures in your designs. If you do, shoot me an email or leave a comment. As always, I’d love to see these textures in action.

Also, I definitely took more than just these 5 pictures. I just chose these because of the variations in texture and colour. I have many more sitting in a folder on my Mac, so you can expect to see another colour texture pack at some point! Keep an eye out.

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