Conquering the Pen Tool: You'll learn to love it

The pen tool:  if you learn to use it correctly, you'll love it.

Here's a few projects to practice your skills.
Pen Tool Cup:  learning the tool
Pen Tool Parrot, a short project using the pen tool.
Text Portrait: a major project in which you will be creating a work of art.

Introducing the Pen Tool

The Pen Tool is an exciting tool that will really enhance your Photoshop skills.  It is, however, probably the hardest tool to master.

Da Font is a great site for fonts.  It's a bit bulky to go through, but once you find a font you like, you are able to type out a word or phrase to see if you really want to use it before downloading it.  I've downloaded a few from this site, but I've also just used it for taking a screenshot of the word or phrase I'm going to use, if it's just a one-time thing.

Take a look at Pinterest

Showcase your own work on Pinterest!  Not only is it a place to look at the work of others, let others look at yours!  Here's just one of my own boards, where I collect works for inspiration:
http://pinterest.com/3CraftySisters/designing-with-ink/

Designing for Real Life

                                

Photoshop can be a great help when it comes to designing off-computer.  The second picture is a mosaic I created over the summer.  The first is the design I created to follow.  Of course, the design was created in Photoshop.