Always learning!

I am currently designing a greetings card for someone. I can't put the design in progress up on here until after the card has been given to its recipient, obviously but I can chat a little about it here.

Last night, I sat up far too late. I wanted to get the card finished, or as near to finished as I could last night and mostly achieved that.

The image on the card is set in space and I had been putting off doing the background because I thought it would be massively time-consuming and hard going. So I cast about on the interwebs to see what I could see regarding spacey backgrounds that don't need a photo.

The result allowed me to do this, which I am very happy withs:

The gaps in the starfield are mostly covered by picture elements in the finished piece.

Now this is where I get twitchy about Photoshop. I always used to draw and paint the old-fashioned way where if there was a mark on the paper, it was because I'd physically put it there. With a drawing tablet and photoshop, when I'm using plain brushes, I feel that's ok. It's not "cheating". Using textures was something it took me a while to feel comfortable with using. The effects you can get off them are brilliant though so I have started using them. I try to use my own photos as a texture where possible, rather than download textures/photo references.

The starfield above was mostly done by applying a "noise" filter to a black background, then manipulating it in various ways. I didn't physically place any of those stars so is that ok?

I drew a circle for the planet, then used a bit of basic brush and erase, applied a texture and Photoshop's spherising effects, embossing, glow effects and various other things to create the planet. Is that ok?

I've not really experimented with different brushes and custom brushes much, but I know you can get great effects form them. Is that cheating?

What do you think?

Please do leave me a comment with your thoughts on whether this is cheating.