If you have ever tried to create arrows in Illustrator you probably know that there are a lot of ways it can be done.  If you've ever explored some of the menus in Illustrator you probably have noticed quite a few options that allow you to create arrows rather quickly.  The problem is that each option has some pros and cons.  For instance, if you need a quick arrow, you can create one from scratch using basic shapes.  This is pretty easy to do but if you need a lot of them it can become rather inefficient.  Another way to do it is to do so by adding effects to paths. You can do this by going to Effects > Stylize > Add Arrowheads. This is a fairly decent way of adding arrowheads to lines but this too can be time-consuming and cumbersome if you are adding arrowheads to lots of lines in an illustration.

You may also have noticed a couple of art brush sets that ship with Illustrator.  These work great unless you need your arrows to have corners tiles.  As you may have noticed, art brushes don't do corners that well.  Pattern brushes however can.  That's why I decided to create a set of 10 arrowhead pattern brushes for Illustrator. These brushes will enable you to quickly draw arrows in Illustrator with very few draw backs.  I hope you enjoy them and can use them in your designs.

I just wanted to let you guys know about another exclusive set of Illustrator brushes that I designed for VECTORTUTS. For the last couple of months, VECTORTUTS has been releasing exclusive vector freebies on their site. I was lucky enough to design the first set of freebies that they released and am once again happy to have designed this set of 50 Snowflake Scatter brushes. So browse on over to VECTORTUTS and check out this set of snowflakes. They are perfect for your holiday designs!

It's that time of year again. With just a few short weeks until Christmas and Chanukah it's time to start working on your holiday designs. Originally, I had put together a set of 25 scribbled snowflakes but I had trouble saving them and had to scale this set back to 10. I will be coincidentally asking Santa for a new computer this year. I hope you enjoy this set of vector freebies, they are great for creating Illustrator brushes, seamless repeating backgrounds and more.

The first graphic design software I ever learned was Macromedia Fireworks. For those of you familiar with the software you may be aware of the many tileable vertical, horizontal, diagonal and crosshatch patterns that ship with the software. These patterns were great; they allowed me to quickly create graphical mockups without having to spend a lot of time trying to get background tiles to line up properly. When I began branching out to other design programs such as Illustrator or Photoshop however, I quickly noticed how those patterns were missing. I spent a lot time frustrated in those early days trying to figure out how to create repeating backgrounds. Most of the time, I simply gave up and went with a design without those elements.

That's why today I am releasing a set of 55 seamless lines & crosshatch swatches for Adobe Illustrator.  Just because it took me a little while to figure out how to design these elements, doesn't mean that you guys should go without them as well.  So feel free to use these patterns in both your personal and professional work.  They are perfect for just about any type of design and I tried to include a variety of patterns with lines of varying width and direction.

This week I have another cool set of vector freebies for you. Lately, I have been doing a lot of experimentation with seamless patterns. I have found that pattern design is both fun and challenging so this week I put together a set of 25 seamless polka dot pattern swatches for you guys.

Feel free to use these patterns in any number of ways including invitations for baby showers, birthdays, package design, website design or any other project that you are working on.

Click on the following link for a quick tutorial on how to install and work with pattern swatches in Illustrator.

If you've looked at my gallery, you may have noticed my fascination with kaleidoscopes. I think they're amazing to look at and I've been experimenting for some time in Illustrator trying to come up with the best way to replicate that effect. Lately, I've had some success with this so I decided to post the resulting vectors on my site and of course give them away for free.

Included in this set are 50 high quality vector kaleidoscope shapes.  You can use these shapes in any way you like either as a logo, as part of a design you're using, as a brush or pattern; maybe even as part of a tattoo.  I hope you guys enjoy this set and find a place for them in your work.

When I released my set of 50 Astonishing Illustrator Swatches last week I was really happy with how they turned out and really excited about the response that I received but as I was doing some shopping last weekend, I realized that there was something missing in that set.

As I was browsing the shop I was in I noticed that many of the argyle sweaters in the shop weren't completely covered in argyle. In fact, some had just one argyle stripe across the chest. This got me thinking; why not design a set of argyle brushes? That would certainly allow you guys to easily create argyle strips.

To make a long story short, I created this set loosely from the swatch palette that I created last week. I used the basic patterns and the color schemes to set up the brushes but I had to make a considerable amount of modifications in order to get the vectors to repeat horizontally. I hope you guys enjoy this set of brushes. You can use them in any number of ways including fashion design, textiles, package design and of course, graphic and web design.

In the first of an upcoming series of free vector downloads, Vectortuts released a set of exclusive water color Illustrator brushes on their site today. This is very exciting for a number of reasons. First, Vectortuts is one of the best vector design websites on the net; it is very cool that they are offering free high quality vectors for us to use. Secondly, out of all the designers out there, they chose to partner with me to release their first set.

So browse on over to Vectortuts and try out these free brushes for yourself, they similar to the water color brushes that I have made in the past. The main difference is that in this set, I used one color per brush stroke instead of many colors like the previous sets. This should give you some more flexibility in your designs.

Last weekend I went to the pumpkin patch with my family. While I was there, I decided to snap a couple shots of some pumpkins so I could give them away on my site, just in time for Halloween. Hope you guys enjoy them!

Last week I was working on a design project for a website I was working on and created a nice set of water color Photoshop brushes in the process. I've been swamped with freelance projects lately so I decided to give this set of brushes away because I haven't had as much time to work on freebies as I usually do.

After I created the set of Photoshop brushes, I decided to go ahead and create another identical set of brushes for Illustrator as well.  Anyhow, I hope you enjoy these sets and I look forward to seeing what you guys make with them!

Earlier this week I posted a set of 50 Plaid Pattern Swatches. As I explained in that post, plaid patterns have countless uses for fashion design or textiles, graphic or web design, package design and more. What makes this set different from the last set however is the simulated twill texture that I applied to it. Applying that texture took a little extra time so instead of creating 50 swatches like I did last time, this time, I only created 25. What makes swatches so great is the flexibility that they provide. You can perform a number of transformations on them including scale and rotate without affecting the shape of the object they are applied to. You can find a detailed tutorial on how to install and work with pattern swatches here.

I have always been fascinated with plaid patterns, so last week I decided to create a set of 50 plaid pattern swatches to give away on my site. Plaid patterns have countless uses for fashion design or textiles, graphic or web design, package design and more. What makes this set so great is that each seamless vector pattern has been converted to a swatch. Swatches are great because of the flexibility that they provide. You can perform a number of transformations on them including scale and rotate without affecting the shape of the object they are applied to. You can find a detailed tutorial on how to install and work with pattern swatches here.

Today, I am showcasing just a few premium textures from the Colorburned Shop and am offering them to my readers for free. The Colorburned Shop hosts over 300 high resolution, premium textures for a very reasonable price. For a limited time you can purchase all 300 textures for 50% off their original price. That means you'll receive all 300 images for just over $35 USD.

There's nothing funnier for an artist than watching a business man trying to emphasize his point by scribbling a stick man or graph on a whiteboard during a meeting. These drawings are famous for being bad and as artists, we usually cringe when we see them.  Whiteboard drawings, however, have a certain style and texture that can be tough to create digitally.  It was with that in mind that I decided to put together a set of 104 Dry Erase Marker-style Illustrator brushes.

Last week I released 106 delicious water color Illustrator brushes.  Today, I am releasing part two of that set.  Part Two includes an additional 105 amazingly realistic-looking water color Illustrator brushes.

In my opinion Part Two looks even better that Part One.  You should definitely download this set and try it out for yourself.  Like Set One, this set is perfect for creating multi-colored brush strokes and could easily be used to create an artsy, hand-painted design or a children's illustration.

Yes, I did say Illustrator brushes. This set of brushes is a real treat! 106 awesome and completely vector water color Illustrator brushes. You guys have no idea how excited I've been over the last couple of weeks waiting to release this set of brushes to you guys for free.

I had a lot of fun putting this set of brushes together for you guys and I was blown away as to how well they turned out.  This set is perfect for creating really great multi-colored brush strokes and could easily be used to create an artsy, hand-painted design or a children's illustration.

I've been waiting to post this set of brushes for a little over a week. I had originally planned on posting this last Monday but my posting schedule was thrown out the window after that freak wind storm blew out my electricity for over a week. Then I flew up to New York only to have my laptop crash on me. Needless to say I was a bit annoyed. For now, however, it seems that I've fixed my laptop and I'm finally able to post this brush set.

If you're wondering if these brushes look familiar, you are correct. These brushes are exactly the same as the set of 105 Stunning Retro Tech-Shaped Illustrator Brushes that I released earlier this month. The primary difference is that these brushes are rotated 90 degrees. This means that when you apply them to a circle or oval that it will produce an awesome starburst effect. I used this set of brushes to create the Retro Tech Starburst design I released earlier this month. Download this brush and test it for yourself!

This set of brushes was inspired by artist James White. James is one of my favorite designers and I've always been fascinated with how he uses basic geometric shapes, colors and patterns in his work and I wanted to create a set of brushes that interacted in a similar way.  After some experimentation, I was able to create a stunning set of 105 retro tech-shaped Illustrator brushes that literally blew me away!  Each brush is completely configurable; giving you total control over the brush's width and color.  After spending some time playing with this set of brushes, I realized that this set had uses that I had not previously thought of.  I hope that you enjoy these brushes and I look forward to seeing what you guys can do with them.

If you have already downloaded my broken line brushes, these brushes may look somewhat familiar to you. If they do, it's because they are nearly identical. There are two fundamental differences however. In this set, the corner tiles have been removed and the patterns have been rotated 90 degrees. I did this so that these brushes will produce radial patterns when you apply them to a circular shape.

* Note: Free Blackberry/iPhone wallpapers included.
I don't know about you guys but I don't have an iPhone. I think that they are really cool devices, but they are just not for me. I used to have one of those old HP Pocket PCs, it was then when I learned to seriously despise a touch screen device. Try texting with one hand with one of those things, it's not an easy task. I want buttons! I don't like having to look each time I press a key to make sure I've pressed the right one. That makes a Blackberry the most obvious choice for me, not an iPhone.

I have wanted to design a set of brushes like this for a long time but I've been putting it off because I knew how time consuming they would be to create. The other day however, I decided to buckle down and do it, and now, I am very happy that I did. Today, I am releasing 50 retro-style Illustrator brushes for free to my readers. Each brush is a series of randomly spaced out lines, in varied widths, lengths and colors, complete with corner objects. The corner objects are awesome because they will allow you to apply these brushes to practically any shape. The possibilities are literally endless for these brushes, have fun with them and don't forget to post your designs in the Colorburned Flickr Showcase!

After designing last week's HUGE set of Retro Line Brushes I went right to work on a new set of retro-style Illustrator brushes. At first I wasn't exactly sure how they would turn out but the more I started to play with them, the more I realized how incredibly awesome they actually were. Today's set of retro-style pixelated brushes includes 104 Illustrator pattern brushes, complete with corner pieces and a swatch palette for you to use in your commercial or personal work for free. Like the last set of retro line brushes that I released, each brush in this set is completely unique and should come in handy for a number of tasks. I've never seen any Illustrator brushes like these online so I am hoping that they go over well.

I am really not joking here! This is probably the biggest set of retro line Illustrator brushes you've ever seen online. I went a little crazy and put together a HUGE collection of Illustrator brushes for you guys to download and use in your work for free! What's even crazier is that I plan to release even more in the coming weeks! In this set you will find 160 retro line Illustrator brushes. Each brush has a unique color scheme and should come in handy when you need to create a quick set of retro lines. The hardest part will be deciding which ones to use.

It's Tuesday and I've got another great set of freebies to give away.  Today, I am releasing yet another set of high quality Illustrator brushes.  This set is really great and contains 19 high quality Illustrator brushes in varying widths and shapes.

Today, I am releasing yet another set of high quality Illustrator Paint brushes. There aren't many brushes included in this set but what this set lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. Set 2 contains 7 high quality Illustrator paint brushes in varying widths. What I like about this set is how fat some of the brush strokes are. A lot of brushes I've seen are a little too scrawny to be used in large point sizes. The larger you make the stroke, the more the stroke distorts. Since these are a little fatter than normal you'll be able to make them a little fatter than you can with some other brushes. Don't get too crazy with them and use a 30 pt stroke. These brushes aren't that big. You will, however have a little more room to work with.

When I take my camera out to grab some shots of textures I usually come home with literally hundreds of images. The really amazing ones, I release in the Colorburned Shop. The good ones get released as freebies and the others get held over just in case. The other day I was looking through some of my old sand images and I realized that some of them, while not technically textures, were good enough to be released as freebies on my site. When I go through my images I try to distinguish between what's a texture and what's a photo. In my mind a texture is any kind of image that you can skin a 3D model with. A photo is just about everything else.

Included in this set are 21 high resolution textures of the sand and ocean from a trip I recently took to the beach.

Today, I am releasing Set 1 of the Illustrator brushes that I first began posting last week.  Set 1 includes 18 high quality Illustrator brushes in Adobe Illustrator CS format.  Enjoy!

I was working on a project not too long ago where I needed to replicate the look of a signature for a logo that I was working on. I spent a lot of time going through my collection of Illustrator brushes trying to find one that I liked but none of the brushes I had really excited me. So instead of using a brush I was only mildly satisfied with I decided to make my own. I ended up creating quite a few sets of brushes and I was pleased with how they all turned out; so pleased in fact that I decided to release them all to my readers for free.

To view the 300 + textures available in the Abduzeedo giveaway visit http://colorburned.myshopify.com.

I've been meaning to add some more free textures to the site for quite some time. Lately, I've been a little busy with other projects and just haven't had much time to put a set of textures together. Today, I am releasing 8 high resolution images of bark.

Today, I am releasing Part 2 of the Waterfalls texture set.  Waterfalls Part 2 includes 19 free high resolution images of waterfalls.  I apologize for the delay in the release of this set but with the launch of the Colorburned Shop last week I had to adjust my posting schedule a bit.

Today, I am releasing the newest addition to my texture sets.  Waterfalls Part 1 includes 17 free high resolution images of waterfalls.  I've always been fascinated with water flowing over rocks.  When I saw this waterfall I knew that I had to snap some photos of it.  These images would make a great background for any graphic that you may be working on where you need a thin layer of water flowing over stone.  I hope you enjoy them.

Over the last month I've added over 300 free high resolution beach related textures to the website.  Fortunately, I still have considerably more textures to post but in the meantime I wanted to round them all up and put them into one place so you guys could download them all easily.