I'm collecting inspiration and material for Art BY The Inch. If you've any suggestions for sources for brushes, filters, fonts, stock images, or the like, let me know.

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I'm going to be doing a lot of wallpapers for ABTI, and I seem to be coming up with a set of guidelines I follow. First is that there's a point of focus slightly to the right of the centre of the screen which must be either fully empty, or with a definite strong element there.

Horizontal and vertical lines - not necessarily borders, just lines - seem to lend a "finished" feel to a wallpaper, a difference between sticking an image on your desktop, and having a designed wallpaper there. I'm going to experiment with less clear lines, and lines composed of other elements. Avoiding the Matrix Feel while doing that with alphanumeric elements could be difficult. Interrupted lines could also be interesting.

White-background wallpapers are far harder to do well than black-background. I'm expecting to see more white appearing, and I intend to experiment with full textures, like parchment or bark, and colours other than black and white. I've used blue before, to some success.

I like wallpapers that leave room for my icons much better. There were some lovely Apple wallpapers a few years ago which had literal niches in the image for each icon, but they were very fiddly to line up, not cooperating with the Windows desktop grid. So expect to see blank space along one edge of most of my designs.

I have great difficulty in getting an image from my mind onto the screen. Attempts to do so always end up being faintly lack-lustre, while the ones I just mind-surf into work out far better.

I should have some similar thoughts on icons soon, too. All comments - and indeed outright disagreements - welcome.