Illustration – drawing and painting techniques

For a Moms-and-Dads photo editing app, Adobe Photoshop Elements continues to amaze by what it can offer in terms of its processes, functions, and toolset. When using it, you'll find a staggering array of graphic elements that can be downloaded and installed directly from the Adobe servers, plus an impressive range of photo editing, design, and illustrative tools that go together to make it an all-in-one creative powerhouse.

Before I learned how to use Adobe InDesign, an industry-standard page layout application, I used Photoshop Elements to design, assemble, and produce my first 100-page magazine. It was quite hard work because Elements is basically designed for small tasks, snippets of text, and home projects, not commercial magazine production. Even so, the result was excellent, though I say so myself.

The following is a graphic illustration that was created using nothing but vector clip art picture frames and a background, downloaded...