cook with empty hands and you get an empty stomach

↝ sources

heyoo welcome back! i figured i should update, even though it's nearing seven pm soon and i'm hungrier than the female protagonist in bad boy stories.

alright so basically i'll be listing my favourite and most useful sources (or shall i say sauces c;) basically apps/websites where you can get everything you need and more

before we start, let me start off saying, please check that you are not 100mb away from your storage maximum bc trust, that 100mb is gonna vanish faster than my future.

+ wattpad

app or website ; both

price ; free

rating ; 91%

notes ; yeah, you heard that right. right here, right now, is a good place to hoard up some resauces (ayyyye c; i should probably stop lmaoo). where, you may ask? where in all the millions of random stories can you find worthwhile resources and not a bunch of lemons?

in books like these *points to self* which are cover/graphic tips and tutorials can also include textures, filters, pngs and loads more of cool stuff! if you guys want, i can also post some of my favourite stuff here c; if you ask nicely and say pleasey XD (jk just say the word and i'll look through my shelves)

+ picsart

app or website ; app

price ; free

rating ; 72%

notes ; you may remember that picsart was also an editing app which was featured in the last chapter (or you may not, bc i'm hella slow at updating and bc you may or may not have the memory of a goldfish *fishy high five*) but there are loads of fun contests you can take part in there and some or most of them will give you prompts such as 'y'all have to edit *insert tumblr picture*' so bonus you get high-res images and they also have some neat (but often not free ;-;) stickers and also light beams oh my god i'll end this now since this is getting too long (like yer carrots) but HOWEVER, last thing but not all of them are very ideal and most of them are stuff you can not use multiple times.

+ polarr

app or website ; app

price ; free

rating ; 89.99% (#marketinghacks)

notes ; have you dozed off already? if you have, don't worry i have too and i'm gonna keep these 'notes' short as i can. you might know that you can make and load custom filters into polarr bUT there are plenty of default, pre-installed filters are pretty neat as well. they got good range too, but most of them are pretty light so they do help your graphics blend in more but not very noticeably.

+ pinterest

app or website ; both

price ; free

rating ; 86%

notes ; famously known for a place to share (or pin) ideas which you can click on a post and it will link you to a separate website of god knows what but let's hope it's a site for you to download pretty brushes and not a gordon ramsay roast site. you can also get plenty of aesthetic/tumblr/*insert cool kid word* pictures and images as well which are good for aesthetics (otherwise known as moodboards) and profile themes.

+ deviantart

app or website ; both

price ; free

rating ; 94%

notes ; can i just say this is one of my all-time favourites and also the reason why i'm running out of storage (and fast). this is a very resourceful site and you can find plenty of (sometimes disturbing) art and also resources. you can get PNGs, textures (and in packs to you know take up even more storage than expected), brushes, stock images, filters and waaay more. also the site i use to post my unwatermarked graphics.

+ instagram

app or website ; both

price ; free

rating ; 68%

notes ; i know, i know, it's teeming full of selfies, drama and recently a LOT OF SLIME videos. but there are also loads of accounts which are dedicated to posting pretty images to use in edits, textures, filters (most often VSCO or polarr) and a bunch of other stuff i can't be bothered to look up. however, the downside is you either have to download a separate app to download the resources directly onto your device, screenshot or time-travel to the future when instagram hq might include a download feature. personally though, i don't use it anymore since i got sick of having to screenshot all the time #lazyproblems

+ weheartit

app or website ; both

price ; free

rating ; 73%

notes ; well this website/app has tonnes of aesthetic images which are good for profile themes and there's a good portion of inspiration for like characters (basically images of sometimes diverse people to download and use in your stories). if you're asking about how much i like it, i deleted the app on my phone since in my opinion, it's pretty useless and i converted to deviantart (sorryyy weheartit :c). i still can access the website but rarely do.

+ dafont.com

app or website ; website

price ; free

rating ; 98%

notes ; yey we finally got to my favourite, all-time font downloader site. absolutely amazing and absolute-must. the only reason for that measly missing 2% is the fact that downloading it is sometimes a bit tricky (for my laptop, i had to install twice for all 200+ fonts bc for some reason, it doesn't work) and also for some pretty random and weird fonts that i'm not quite sure what the purpose is. however, there are also (big word incoming) miscellaneous fonts which can be like pretty swirls which you can add as a general aesthetic.

+ graphicsfuel.com

app or website ; website

price ; free

rating ; 88%

notes ; this is a great place to download loads of pretty brushes, PSD filters and also PSD mockups (gaspp might do a chapter on that later if you want c;). the downside however is that the vast majority (if not all) of these resources are exclusive only to photoshop and basically are damn useless on other software/apps.

+ iStock.com

app or website ; website

price ; free(ish)

rating ; 61%

notes ; you'll get what i mean by 'freeish' soon enough. this is a good site to locate stock photos (as implied in the name) HOWEVER if you want to download the images for free, there's this really bloody annoying watermark that is like "iStock iStock iStock *repeat*" watermark on there. to get the watermark-free image, you gotta pay for the image which is around the $10+ (AUD) price range which sucks. they're really high quality though and good base images to practice vectors on (you're drawing over it so the watermarks don't really matter).

+ pexels.com

app or website ; website

price ; free

rating ; 84%

notes ; wait stop for a minute and appreciate that right now there are *pauses* 1116 words and counting in this chapter lmaoo i should apologise for your attention span

anyways, pexels is an amazing FREE *glares at iStock* and UNWATERMARKED stock image source. they're high quality as well and good for you if you're getting into designing professionally as these are completely free licensed so you don't have to worry about copyright issues and other adult responsible stuff.

+ designinspiration.net

app or website ; website

price ; free

rating ; 82%

notes ; it's great in the terms of finding amazing design inspiration (name reference) and cool graphics to get you out of designer block. not very versatile since it's just chock full of random but pretty designs and not very useful actual resources. they have a cool colour palette bar though at the bottom of every design. ( update ; i just tried to get onto the website and it isn't loading which is weird since some other sites are loading much faster. try accessing it and see if it's down for you too idk )

+ unsplash.com

app or website ; website

price ; free

rating ; 86%

notes ; this is another pretty good source for free stock images and these are really, REALLY high-res. most of it's photography content which are to be expected high quality and unwatermarked but not ideal for multiple types of graphics. also not too sure about the free license photos though, you gotta check with someone who has a better brain.

+ google images

app or website ; website (but is possible to access from a mobile)

price ; free

rating ; 77%

notes ; my trust in this one is pretty unstable and wobbly. they have the hugest range of content ever but most of it is pretty low-res. however, with a few tips and secrets to effective google-searching, you can find pretty useful stuff c;

a/n ; YAY (woah pause right here, there are exactly 1414 words in this chapter whoop whoop) AREN'T YOU GLAD IT'S OVER THOUGH? hopefully some of the stuff here is helpful to you and suggestions for more updates is always welcome c: see you (hopefully) soon in a (hopefully) shorter chapter!