The holidays are here and sometimes we wish we could just make something that looks really cute, suited to the season and really easy to do. Worry not, for you can create nice looking holiday graphics without much fuss. The key is to use simple elements, shapes and basic drawing skills and stick to these while finishing up the set. so here we go:

Start with simple lines and shapes: You would be surprised what simple shapes and lines can do. You don’t have to think complicated effects, gradients, patterns or stroke types to create cute looking graphics. All you need to do is use simple shapes, lines, pencils and basic colors to make some nice looking graphics. You can even use a pencil on paper, scan, set as background and draw with shapes and lines on it.

Make with simple brush strokes on paths: Don’t worry if you don’t have a tablet, in photoshop, you can just draw a path and run a brush stroke on that line. First, create a path in shape of a flowing Christmas tree, then choose stroke path with brush option on the path pane. Before this, make sure you have the right brush you want to use with the size already selected. Viola, you have your perfect tree!

Using shape fills: You can choose fill color or just outline weight set to 3-4 pixels or more and outline color or both in order to create nice and simple shapes and then assemble them together to create a simple icon or graphic. If you can do this in illustrator, you would be able to use add and subtract to create seamless shapes of your choice and export back into photoshop. If you have both, you can use bridge to transfer graphics with ease between both programs.

Using holiday brushes (commercial): Make sure the licence allows stock photo use. You can use such holiday brushes to just make cool looking graphics for the holidays without much effort. I used to like Jasc Paint shop picture tubes years ago and loved them for what they can do!

Adding details with styles: Double click an object layer to open styles and use strokes, outer shadow, inner shadow, bevels, gradients, pattern fills and other effects to add details if you like. There are a whole lot of variations you can make of an object and use it in the scene, like using Christmas orbs with different fills for example.

So go on, experiment with simple shapes, lines, fills, strokes and styles to create graphics for the holidays with ease. Maybe it can just be a personal greeting that you want to mail to your family or friends. Thanks for reading and happy holidays!

Photo credits: Gunay Aliyevs, Colorguru2020, Zoom-zoom.