Stock From Stock-An Illustrated View

I've been wanting to make a tutorial on composites that rely on blending of shapes and colors since those are my favorite sort of texture to make, but my arm isn't cooperating.  So I decided to do this post instead, and if there's enough interest, I will go back and do a full tutorial another time.

I have no problem with other artists creating stock and resources out of mine, as long as anyone who does so is willing to share what they make freely under the same terms.  I see more and more resource providers who don't allow stock to be made from theirs--which is absolutely their right.  The problem is, a lot of them also seem to spend as much time worrying about "stolen" stock or being credited for their work as they do having fun with their art.  It seems awfully counterproductive to me, and I set up this post as an illustration of why.

The full sized versions of the textures below are 2500x2500 px
and 1414x2100.  A zip file is in this post.

Computer Troubles

I've had some computer trouble this week.  It is functional for the moment, and I am hoping that it will stay that way for another few months.  Among other things, I had to get a new monitor.  This one is a different resolution than my old one, so you'll probably start seeing textures more in 1920x1080 and not  so many in 1680x1050.

Impressions: Corel Paint Shop Pro X5 After 3 Weeks

I was going to wait a month, but I realized a month would be right at Christmas, and that's probably not going to be a time when I'm interested in blogging.  I was previously using version 8 (yes, I know.) because I didn't really like PSPX and didn't find that there was enough in it to warrant buying.  So some of my impressions are probably going to mention "new" features that have been in several of the Corel versions since then.

Disclaimer: The following is my opinion.  It's a bunch of impressions, not a full review of the program.

Marched Bravely Into a New Decade Tonight

Purchased myself PSP X5 as a belated birthday present for myself. (There's a Black Friday sale, good buy.) I really disliked the earlier Corel versions and I'm not retiring my old PSP 8 yet.  Reviews I've read of this version seem solid and I checked out a trial before I purchased it.

I'll be posting more about my impressions in the upcoming weeks, but for now:

The Internet, Sharing, and Graphic Design

People often ask me why I allow my designs and resources to be used without credit.  Since I changed my terms of use to include different usage categories, I wanted to explain.

The short version is:


I like to share.

Most of my resources are things I made for my own practice, so I have more than I can use.

But, I'm trying to keep this site ad free and the best way I know of to do that is to have some levels of paid content.

If I had my way, everything on Encompass Rose would be for free, but if I did that, the site would have ads or it wouldn't last very long.

I would like it if people who made resources out of mine respected the "share alike" license, (Read: it didn't cost you anything, and you didn't make it all yourself, so don't use it to bribe people into joining your site and don't tell them they can't use it to make stock with.) but I'm not going to follow people around the net to make sure.


The long version is:

Go To Galleries

I remember a time when it was almost impossible to find quality stock and resources without having to pay for them.  Digital designers spent small fortunes on CD libraries full of images and brush tips etc.  Now the opposite is true.  With the advent of high speed internet, anyone and everyone can start sharing their resources--and that's great! Especially when the people are kind enough to share them for free.

I like resources.  I find them every bit as fun to make as the designs we use them for.  The difficult part is that I make more than I can ever use (or post) and I download a lot more than I can realistically sort through when I'm looking for something specific.

Sometimes I just browse through what I've got to find something that sparks inspiration.  When I'm looking for something specific, though, there are relatively few places I go.  (Usually even when I'm just looking for random inspiration, I start with the same places first.)

So, I decided to compile a list of places I go a lot. This isn't a "credit and resources list."  Credits are listed in my individual posts wherever possible.

 -Quick tip- I've learned the hard way that it's a good idea to save all downloaded resources and stock images in a subfolder with the maker's name attached.  I have folders for each resource type, then a subfolder by style.  Inside that, there are subfolders with each resource maker's name, so (hopefully) I don't lose track of who made what.  I started doing this about 3 years ago, but I've been doing digital art for a lot longer than that.  Some of the older resources that have survived my computer disasters don't have a maker's name on them and sadly I have no idea who made them anymore.

So, without further ado.  Listed in order of use:

Celestial-star.net-Most of the brushes I use if I didn't make them come from this website.
Hybrid-genesis.com-A majority of textures I use  (except for mine) come from here.  It's the first place I go when I'm looking.

Intellecta Design-This is the publisher of the ornament fonts I use in some of my designs.  Really cool fonts.

Billy Alexander- My favorite stock artist, rgbstock gallery.  (RGB stock is a cool site because the licensing terms directly allow derivative use with credit to the stock provider.)

Nemo -Huge gallery of cool high quality clipart in public domain.

Hans Braxmeier-A new stock photographer I've found this month on pixabay, but considering how much I have been drooling over his gallery in the past few nights, I think it's safe to include him on the go-to list. (Pixabay is awesome for high quality public domain images.)

Elandria @ Deviantart-Wonderful stock photography and gorgeous costumes for the fantasy-lovers out there.  Also a Labyrinth fan, which is an extra win in my book.  Another newer gallery I've discovered, but as I've used 3 of her stocks in the past 2 weeks, she deserves to be on the list too.

Fuzzimo.com-This is where I got the Compass Rose Design In my headers and logos.

Apophysis Tutorial-Not a gallery, but a tutorial that I think exemplifies what a tutorial should do.  It explains, clearly, what the program is doing and why the user's actions work the way they do.  It's simple, straightforward, and easy to follow along.  (Note: I'm not much of a fractal artist right now, mainly because I feel like I spend most of my time in fractal explorers going "No...no...no...no...ooh, that's promising...DAMN, what did I do to it?" This tutorial helps with that.)

---Some new sites I found this week: 12/6/12--


Thinkdesignblog.com-Just found this site earlier in the week, but I love it.  I've downloaded a bunch of freebies.  Definitely worth checking out.

Obsidiandawn.com-I haven't looked much at the other stuff, but there are some really cute sketch brushes I've been playing with.  I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time here.

Texturemate.com-Nice high res photo textures to play with.

WebtreatsETC-Lots of high res textures and patterns here (with imagepacks for non PS users, yay!)


And that's it.  I'll update the list as I find any other go-to folks.