I just finished creating a set of seven textural brushes for use in Photoshop, and they're available as a free download. They're created from various rolled ink textures.

Download Texture Set 1

If you use these brushes in your artwork and don't mind sharing, please put a link in the comments. I'd love to see what you do with them. Enjoy!

My very elaborate photo studio.

An outtake taken with a plastic bag over the lens. An interesting effect, but not what I was going for.

Another outtake.

For the necklace, I photographed each stone separately, rotating it a few degrees between each shot. This aided me in the composite because I could position each stone exactly how I wanted and maintain the light sources.

My first step is to tape my reference type underneath the plate. In this case I'm using glass for my plate, but I recommend using plexiglass instead. I've since taped all the edges of my glass plate for safety. (After noticing I had shaved a few hairs off my arm by brushing up against the edges). I apply frisket, a transparent stencil material, to the topside of my plate and cut out the areas I want to print with an x-acto knife. At this point, it's not essential to be super precise with the cutting, since I'm going for a distressed look anyway.

Step two is to ink up my plate with woodblock printing ink using a brayer. I use the water-based stuff because it makes the clean-up so much easier. One other important note, I leave my frisket stencil on the plate after inking. If I wanted just the type in my final print, I would remove the frisket, but I leave it on so I can pull multiple prints from the same plate, re-inking each time. The type can always be separated from the background in Photoshop later.

The plate after the first pull.

Several prints using differents techniques: wiping the plate; spraying water on the plate; less ink; more ink; scraping the plate with a knife. I also tried pressing ink to paper with a baren intead of a brayer.

The glass plate after inking and removing the frisket. Removing the stencil gives me just the type, with no other areas inked.

One of the resulting prints.

To achieve the pockmarked effect, I sprayed water onto the inked plate before pulling the print.

 The 'L' and 'E' actually didn't fit on the plate at the size I printed, so I had to print them separately. For this print I scraped the inked plate—which produced some really interesting results.

Some random scrapes and smears of ink.