Believe it or not all of these images are 100% vector.

When we think of vector illustrations “photo-realistic” isn’t usually a word that comes to mind but these artist never let that stop them from creating some of the most realistic illustrations you will ever see. Some of the artist use the gradient mesh tool to create these amazing life like illustrations while some, like Pentoolart use nothing but the pen tool. These fantastic artist force us to reconsider what is possible in the world of vector art and inspire us to new heights of creativity.

I’ve rounded up 15 of the most unbelievable photo-realistic vector illustrations to inspire you. Click on the artist name below the images to see more of their amazing vector work.

Highside

Aaron Anderson

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Well, I figured it was about time for some more freebies so I whipped up a pack of ten free vectors for you to add to your toolbox. They are silhouettes of different types of transportation, ranging from a horse to a scooter. I hope you’ll find them useful. I have a lot planed for this month so go ahead and sign up for the RSS feed here to keep up on the latest post.

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This is the first installment of a new monthly “Best of the web” roundup. Once a month I’ll gather up some of the great things I’ve came across while surfing the web and share them with you here. A few of the subjects will be: inspiration, tutorials, freebies, design articles and just random cool stuff.

July was full of inspiration so grab a cold drink, kick back and enjoy.

Inspiration

Papercut art

Packing tape art

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Believe it or not, all of these photos are of real life-size locations or objects. The technique of tilt-shift miniature faking makes the life-sized look like a miniature scale model. The process involves using Photoshop to fake a shallow depth of field and punching up the color saturation. The results are truly amazing. I’ve rounded up 41 of the best tilt-shift miniature faking photos around to inspire you. Below each group of photos will be the link to the creators Flickr page where you can view more of their great work. Stop by and show your appreciation with a kind comment.

ZackDs

Baldherertic

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If your not already familiar with the new site vectortuts.com, then you’ll most definitely want to check it out. Vectortuts is a free vector tutorial site and like it’s sister site psdtuts.com, it has some of the best tutorials on the net.

I’m proud to say that my tutorial on how to create the traffic light pictured above will be published some time early next week at vectortuts, so be on the lookout for it. I gave this traffic light vector away as part of the road signs vector pack in my first post. Everyone’s favorite was the traffic light so I thought it would make a good tutorial.

If you have any suggestions or request for future post here at digital-artist-toolbox please let me know in the comments below. Also, join the digital-artist-toolbox Flickr group to showcase your designs. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best forms of inspiration is a peek into the life of artists and designers who we admire, a drawing back of the curtain to reveal the inner workings. An interview is one way to do this as it gives us insights into how that person got where they are, what their inspirations are and what their process of creativity looks like. In order to fuel your inspiration I will be posting interviews with artists here from time to time. First up is Patrick Carter. Read the rest of this entry »

Wouldn’t it be great if you could create your very own book and have it printed?  How cool would it be to have your portfolio printed onto a nice hardcover book.  With blurb you can do just that!  Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes we all need a little inspiration. Maybe you’ve hit a creative block, or things are just starting to get a little stale and you want to try something new. Well, in any case I will be posting some artists and designers here from time to time to inspire and refresh us all. First up is Nik Ainley. Read the rest of this entry »

In my first post I gave away a free pack of vector road signs that a lot of people seemed to like so I thought I would make a tutorial on how to create a glossy web 2.0 style interstate sign. Let’s get started.

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I figured it was time for some more free textures so I took a trip down to a local stone yard and snapped a few pics of granite and marble slabs. The range of colors and patterns in this natural stone is truly amazing. Some of them look like aerial photographs and others look like distant planets. These will make great textures for many projects.

This texture pack contains 24 – 2592 x 1944 pixel JPEGs in a .zip file. The pic above is just a sample of a few of them. I hope you find these useful and as always I’d really love to see what you create with them so please consider adding a pic of your work to the digital artist toolbox Flickr group so we can all see it on the photo stream here.

Thanks,

D.A.T. Read the rest of this entry »