stroke of a paint brush/ripped semi-transparent paper

How do I make an image that looks like the stroke of a real paint brush?

Also, how can I make an image that looks like a ripped piece of paper that is semi-transparent?

Here is an idea of what I am looking for in both cases (it has both the paper and paint brush strokes that I would like to emulate somewhat):

http://www.francesruffelle.com/

I am going to create something completely different than that, but would like to use those objects within my project.

Thanks.

One of the default photoshop brushes can make the realistic looking brush stroke.

For the transparent paper, you can use one of the default brushes to create the dirty tracing paper look. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to rip the edges. Here's a sample of what I did.

http://phex.net/tape.gif

Very cool. Thing is, I'm new at Photoshop. Could you possibly direct me to the exact brushes that you used? Step-by-step would be great if possible.

TIA

http://phex.net/tps/paintbrush.gif - This is the brush I used for the red strokes.

Here's what I did for the ripped tracing paper..

1) Create a rectangular selection using the marquee tool and fill it with a light brown/greyish color (RGB : 232, 227, 221).

2) Use the brush marked 59 from the above screenshot with a slighly darker color and click on the area to fill in and create the dirty look.

3) After which, make a selection of the rectangular area again and gaussian blur it by 1.5. This should create the look you want.

4) Adjust the transparency to your needs.

5) Use the polygonal lasso tool and create selections for the ripped edges.

Hope this is helpful, cause I suck @ giving directions ;) Btw, this isn't necessarily the only way to create it, there's probably a few other ways. Experiment around and you'll get the effect you want.

Very cool. Thanks!

Btw, I'm not receiving email notifications, even though I have it set to receive them in my cp. And I think when you post, it should set it up that way by default, right? Is this forum having an issue with that, or is it me?

Actually, I just noticed that there are two "Submit Reply" buttons. I clicked on the first one. Maybe clicking on the second one that is under "Additional Options" might help.

I'm not sure how the notifications work though. I'm using quick reply most of the time so it might because of that.

Weird. I didn't get notified for this one either, even though I hit the submit button under the "Additional Options" section, which includes the "additional option" of "instant email notification," and I replied with the regular reply function. I'm using quick reply for this one. Whatever.

Anyway, thanks again.