If you’re an Illustrator, you’ll appreciate how critical it is to have a great website where potential clients can easily view your work. This week we’ve been searching for some of the best themes for Illustrators on our sister site ThemeForest to give you a peek at the range of excellent folio themes for creatives. If you’re in need of a house for your immaculate graphic work, then go ahead and check ‘em out!
Art Folio | Portfolio Template
Clean, contemporary portfolio template ready and waiting for your art work, designs, illustrations or photos! This template features four complete, different pages! Every page is W3C compliant which means that it works across all browsers and both XHTML and CSS validate 100%!
Samurai Website
This Samurai PSD template utilises the old Japanese style of art. It’s great for portfolio websites and the sidebar could be used in a blog template. This template also supports easy color change.
FolioFlip
FolioFlip by foliothemes.com is a Portfolio Blog with an Image Flip / slider for ALL portfolio categories. Display your portfolio in a very cool way. It was created to be VERY easy to maintain and has numerous php and jquery enhancements. You can Use it as a portfolio and blog or just a portfolio only.
Creative Juice
The same beautiful theme with a complex and customizable WP framework on top of it. Taking aside the unique, massive back end CMS , that gives you almost unending possibilities of making changes for your needs we’ve added something that no one on Theme Forest has so far: One click auto install.
uFlexfolio
A simple, clean and easy to customize portfolio theme for WordPress with 4 color schemes which can be easily extended.
OPEN by Cudazi
This clean, powerful WordPress template is loaded with options and designed to make you look good! Explore the live demo to see the different layouts and options available.
Clean Studio
Clean Studio WordPress theme is a full website for every web design studio, photographer, fashion company or even for a corporate website.
The PaperCore
The PaperCore” is an unique, elegant and minimal WordPress theme and it is here to present your work in the best way.
Studio Box Premium WordPress
Studio Box Premium WordPress Theme is about simplifying building of your online portfolio. It is packed with useful showcases to have your creative work displayed for customers and clients.
Cream Folio
Cream Folio is a wordpress template targeted towards designers who also like to blog. It has a sleek light design and layout that focuses on your content and gives users a insight into your work through the use of a nice custom coded jQuery slider at the top of the homepage.
Loarse WordPress
Loarse is a WordPress theme suited to personal portfolios, blogs and business use.
WP Portfolius v.9
The elegant WordPress theme has sexy showcase and menu with a flash hover effect. Your visitors will love compact showcase with animated thumbnails and multiple ways of viewing gallery.
Clean Creative Portfolio
WhiteyClean is a creative portfolio and clean WordPress theme, you can use it for your company, show your portfolio, design agency and anything you want. This template available in white color and also many features available.
Wordfolio
WordPress + Portfolio = Wordfolio, a wordpress theme which is suitable for graphic & web designers. Special
Easyfolio
EASYFOLIO is a simple but very flexible wordpress theme which is best suited for portfolio and personal websites. The theme comes in 5 different styles: wood, blackstone, bluesky, circles and orange.
Anatomyinc
AnatomyInc is a wordpress theme suitable for corporate, portfolio showcase and personal blog with rich features.
SilverSlide
SilverSlide is a modern, sleek theme best suitable for personal portfolio website – aimed towards designers, photographers, musicians and any kind of artist who wish to achieve ‘personal’ touch to their online presentation.
Folio Showcase
FolioShowcase theme that features a portfolio and blog. It’s built for WP 2 .7+ and doesn’t require any plugins or custom files to run and is easy to maintain.
Easy Portfolio Template with 6 Skins
This is a template that can be used by designers, artists and any other creatives. It can of course be used as a company or product mini-site page as well with the right content.
Simplicity – One-Page Portfolio
One-page portfolios have been proven to be the most effective forms of marketing when it comes to portfolios. Simplicity is just that, a one-page portfolio with everything right there and easy to find.
Got something to sell? Become an Author!
Authors on the Envato Marketplaces earn literally thousands of dollars a month. The absolute highest selling author makes over $25,000 every month. Of course he’s got more talent in his left thumb than most of us can dream of, but even so regular authors can still earn a good income on the side. Best of all it just keeps trickling in, no matter what you are doing, no matter where you are. So if you think you have the skills and know-how to make files like the ones showcased here, head over and become an author!
Step 6
Convert the color mode to Grayscale.
Step 7a
Next, go to Image > Mode > Bitmap
Step 7b
Depending on the resolution for the final artwork, decide the pixel per inch output.
Step 7c
Save as a .tiff. I like to label the file ‘Bitmap’, to keep things organized.
Step 8
Do this to each texture. The ‘extras’ file needs to be split into separate .tiff files. Crop and save each ’section’ as a separate .tiff file. Here is what I have, the 3 specific .tiff files and 3 additional ‘extras’ ready to go into Illustrator.
Step 9a
Next, open the original Illustrator file and go to File > Place and select the bitmap texture .tiff’s.
Step 9b
From here it’s easy, simply select the .tiff and choose a color from the swatch palette.
Step 10a
Using a simple clipping mask, integrate the textures into the illustration.
Step 10b
The beauty of tiffs, besides the file size being a fraction of what it would be if the textures were vector, is that you can work with .tiff exactly the same way you would if they were vector. Simply choose a swatch to change the color.
Step 10c
Just to make your illustration extra special, you could use additional textures to bring the entire illustration to life. I’ve used small textures as shadows on the ground and clouds in the sky.
Conclusion
I realize this is a Photoshop heavy ‘Vector’ tut, but with the main use of the tiff textures in Ai, it shows how to get the most out of Illustrators capability to use both raster images and vector shapes. While this is a simple process, it really helps to keep the file size down, and it looks delicious.
