The 80s were far more fun. The UK market was flooded with competing systems, from Commodore, Atari, Amstrad, Acorn and Sinclair. PCs had effectively no sound support and the only people I knew with a Mac were the rich Americans next door.

With another month in the books comes the roundup of the best content on the net for June. The tutorials featured this month explain basic and advanced techniques for Photo-Manipulation, as well as two types of digital painting tutorials – that each have very different

results.

There were also some very interesting and informative articles featured this month, for example who knew that Twitter could make you a better designer? Read along and find out how. Finally, we have a set of freebies that will keep you busy downloading all day!

Tutorial Wrap

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  Super Cool Water Color Effects

  Our first tutorial of the month focuses on using watercolor brushes as well as textures to create a nice looking design that gives off the effect that it is being painted with watercolor brushes. The effect is very easy to achieve and the author of the tutorial also gives us the brushes he used as well as the texture. This was inspired by more complicated and intricate versions of this type of style, but if you are into it this, then it’s a great start to mastering this type of design.

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  Digitally Painting Portraits in Photoshop

  This tutorial focuses on digital painting techniques that would be associated with comics. The final product is a cross of

  realism and comic book art, so this if you have a tablet and are willing to sit down and paint, then you should check this tutorial out. It is very detailed, 6 pages worth of information. Everything that you would need to do this is included in the tutorial, so this is really something every aspiring digital painter should check out.

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  Self Initiated Abstract Art Tutorial

  This tutorial focuses on something called Self Initiated art. This type of art comes about from low time and budget situations. And the author of this tutorial will show you how to take advantage of a bad situation and make something abstract and new. The author also promises that by the end of the tutorial you’ll have two new libraries of elements to use in your future art. A very interesting tutorial with a creative and abstract result that is worth checking out.

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  Creating an Abstract Floral Explosion

  This is another fairly simple Photoshop tutorial that focuses on the use of stocks. Eight different elements are used in this tutorial to create a nice visual effect of an abstract floral explosion. The techniques used here aren’t very advanced, so this tutorial is geared for more of the novices to Photoshop. None the less every step is explained in good detail, so check this one out.

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  You Will Stand Alone Photo manipulation

  Like our last tutorial this one also doesn’t boast an amazing final product. What is does do is show the newcomers to Photoshop how to

  properly blend stocks together. The use of filters is also a big part of this tutorial, showing how filters can bring all the different stocks you have

  together. There is also a good attention to detail which makes this tutorial a good read for the

  beginners.

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  Design a Space Dancer Scene with Nebula Textures

  This tutorial is a little more advanced then the last two. In this tutorial you will learn how to use textures to bring an immense

  amount of color to your artwork, in this case a Nebula texture is used. And after reading the tutorial you will see why they are great to use. On top of all of that the author focuses on explaining the importance of layer masks and filters.

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  Drawing Fairy Tale Characters in Photoshop

  This tutorial will teach you how to draw and paint a character in Photoshop. You can say this would be the novice version to the Digital Painting tutorial we just featured. The author will teach you how to use the Dodge and Burn tools to color your character. This tutorial gets very detailed by explaining how to color different types of fabric on the character as well as facial features.

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