Step-by-Step - Make a Custom Pin for your blog!

Remember this post here? I said I was using PicMonkey to make Pins for one of my mom's blogs. Well, before you get all excited, no this is not me saying you can order these from me. This is a step-by-step post. A post that will show you how to make these pins for your own blog!

So Step One; Make sure you have a PicMonkey account, the site requires an account for usage, and Step Two; make sure you have Flash enabled on whatever Internet browser you are going to be using.
Step Three, pic a color pallet. My mom uses a bright green, and a bright pink.

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Ain't that pretty?

You can use whatever colors you want, but remember to stick to them, and if you change them, to change all your previous ones, that way people recognize them later on, and say  "Hey, I know that blog!" and click on the links, thus getting your posts read quickly, and by more people, because the people that clicked on the pintrest pins are likely to re-pin, and then their followers will read it and well, you get the idea.

PicMonkey offers a ton of editing options, so I'm going to have to stop the step by step here, as I can't tell you how to customize. Will you use hearts? Stars, maybe a checkerboard patter?
It's all up to you!

What design did you choose for your pins?

How to Create a Style

When you look at images other people have drawn, you can sometimes recognize a picture by their style.
Look at this image.

Can you tell me who it is? I sure hope you can. In case you can't, this is younger Simba, from the movie Lion King. Note the style of the art. Study it really closely, and then look at this picture of younger Kovu, from the second movie

See the similarities? If not, take a real close look at the ears, eyebrows, jaws, and eyes.
Now do you see them?
Even if you couldn't, you could recognize these as Disney characters from the movie Lion King. Unless of course you've never seen any of the movies, in which case I suggest you go do right away, as it is an amazing movie.

The artists for Lion King developed a style, a pattern for their characters. That's what the topic of this post is today.
When you draw, do you do something specific to mark it as your drawing?? And I don't mean signing it. I mean drawing hands a certain way, or maybe doing the face in a certain design. If you are having trouble coming up with your own way of drawing, draw up a quick picture in the same design as the original, then look at the places you feel could use some improvement. Maybe you didn't draw the eyes just so, or maybe the hands, paws, talons, or wings turned out horribly. Draw the picture again, but leave out the parts where you messed up. Unless of course the entire image was ruined by some accident, in which case simply just re-draw it completely before doing this step.

Now, in the parts you left out, take a new piece of paper, and experiment drawing them in different ways until you come up with a way you like. When you are positive you can draw the way repetitively, draw it onto your image.  Repeat this step, until your picture is once again complete. And hey...what do you know? You've created a style for those parts!

I once had issues drawing feet, they were just super hard for me! Then I started drawing them a more cartoon-like way, shorter and more round, and suddenly they looked....right.

So keep experimenting with your images, until they feel right to you.

In what ways have you improved your art?
Do you have a specific style you can show off?
I'd love to see it!

Stock Image Websites

Now, sometimes graphic design means drawing a custom image. But sometimes your going to need to edit pictures taken by other people, or edit a picture you've taken yourself. While the second option is a good idea, sometimes your just going to want a professional picture.

So far, I know of three sites you can use to get free, do whatever you want, images with.
First off...Kaboompics.
Kaboompics has pictures for just about every topic, and allows you to sign up via email to receive updates on their latest pictures. It's pictures are filed in a blog-like manner.

Next up, we've got Pixabay
Pixabay is much like Kaboompics, and offers Twitter and Google+ following options, as well as a Facebook Like option. So far its gotten 364K thumbs up, which I believe is a good thing. It's search engine closely resembles google, so if you use that then Pixabay will probably be very easy for you to use.

And finally,  the third one I've found is called Unsplash
Unsplash is very basic, you go to the site, and type in your keywords. Though it has a lot of images, there are some spots where it could use some more. You need to be very specific in your typing, otherwise you might not get what you are searching for.

Do you know of any other stock image sites?
Could you link them in a comment?