Category: freebies

David Mack on art, creativity and how long it takes

Speaking of David Mack (and don’t bother telling me you weren’t, because the point is that I’m speaking of him and you’re gonna love this), I made this thing a while back based on a fantastic piece of advice he’d given some art students.

david_mack_on_art_by_tathea-d76746v

If you’re an artist, a writer, any kind of creative, this is the kind of advice to take to heart. It’s all about showing up, doing the work, not caring what people think but showing them what you’ve got anyway. Not because your work is awesome but because it’s worth it and even if it doesn’t measure up to what you know it can be, the only path to that greatness is by doing the work of BEING the artist, the writer, the creative. Forever.

Yeah, so. Get right on that. ‘Cause I think you’d rock it.

P.S. You know who David Mack is, right? Author and artist of the Kabuki comics? Comic cover artist extraordinaire? 

Follow David Mack on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. Buy the Kabuki collection on Amazon.com. It’s a feast for your eyes.

free download: web 2.0 style website template

just a little something I’m sharing with the world

just for you, all my loyal readers, i’d like to share this free download: an elegant HTML/CSS website template.

if you have a regular HTML website (rather than a blog) and are looking for nice (and free!) website layouts, then you may appreciate this resource. the design is completely customizable, a simple yet robust web template.

Thea’s Web 2.0 Website Template home page screenshot
(click the image to see the live demo)

website template description and features:

  • two HTML pages: the home page and a sub-page template
  • centered fixed width content
  • full width horizontal bars of color (aka Web 2.0 style)
  • W3C validated XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • W3C validated CSS code
  • simple, clean code (HTML, CSS) with lots of comments to guide you
  • pleasant, neutral colors
  • elegant, understated design
  • colors are completely customizable via the CSS stylesheet

DOWNLOAD THE .ZIP FILE


Creative Commons License

This work by Thea Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.TempleAsylum.com/terms.html.

simple swirls brushes

free download of my photoshop brushes

yet another example of the subtleties and individuality of art.

i needed some simple swirls for an image this week. i’ve seen plenty of gorgeous swirl brushes for illustrator and/or photoshop in my web browsing this year.

“no prob,” i thought. “i’ll just use one of those.”

so i download a bunch of promising .abr files. a week or two ago, i posted about a few of the best brush artists i found in my search.

they’re lovely.
i install them.
and then, well…
after all that work (including researching the usage terms for each so i wouldn’t violate copyrights)…

they’re just not it.

for reasons unique to my artistic path, they just didn’t fit. *le sigh* (as a dear batty friend of mine sometimes says)

after all that, i had to make my own swirls. and (i feel silly admitting this) it was easier than i thought, went quicker than i guessed, and (of course) was exactly what i needed for that moment. go figure.

i suppose i might go straight to making my own the next time around.

besides, then i can offer more goodies to you when you visit! here’s a cute swirly fish i made in illustrator with the vector version of the brushes:

swirly vector fish

and here’s what the swirls look like by themselves:
simple vector swirls

they are high-res (2500px) brushes, and i included a smaller res version (~500px) for each brush in the photoshop library. just in case you’re like me and work a lot on the web with lower-res graphics.

go ahead!
download and freely use these,
per the terms of use ONLY, please:


Creative Commons License

This work by Thea Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.TempleAsylum.com/terms.html.