Deke’s Techniques

Your weekly quick-fix of Deke, with ideas you may inspire or inform your own projects.

Customizing a New Document in Illustrator

Deke helps you customize the New Document settings in Adobe Illustrator so you can start where you want to start.

Tinted Custom Arrowheads in Adobe Illustrator

Deke takes the custom arrowheads he created last week in Illustrator and adds some tinted variations.

Creating Custom Arrowheads in Adobe Illustrator

Deke shows you how to dig into Illustrator and create custom arrowheads.

Symbols and Spaces in Adobe Illustrator CC 2017

Deke demonstrates the new symbols and special character features in Adobe Illustrator CC 2017

Spray-painted Stencil Type in Photoshop

Deke uses Photoshop to create the effect of spray-paint through a stencil.

Quick and Chalky Chalkboard Type

Deke turns regular text into a chalkboard effect thanks to some filters, blend modes, and an adjustment layer.

Constructing a Two-Way Portrait in Photoshop

Deke uses a profile shot to constrain a full face photo for a forward-looking new year portrait.

Create Cheerful Synthetic Holiday Trees in Photoshop CC

Deke uses Photoshop's Trees filter to create a synthetic but scintillating holday scene.

Creating Embroidered Type in Photoshop

Deke applies a series of layer and brush effects to turn ordinary type into extraordinary embroidery.

Make Wildly Purple Supervillain Eyes in Photoshop

Deke turns a model into a purple-eyed villain inspired by Doctor Strange.

Creating a Doctor Strange-Like Mirror World in Photoshop

Deke goes to the movies then recreates his experience in Photoshop, devising a mirror world like those that Doctor Strange encounters.

An MC Escher-esque Hex Pattern in Illustrator

Deke takes his hexagon-based tile and turns it into a repeating pattern in the style of MC Escher.