Thanks for the heads up on the fields....I'm not very good at making brushes. I just used a scatter on my brush to twist 'em around but yeah I do need to come up with a way to feather out the edges and create something more random looking. The houses just have a drop shadow which makes 'em float so maybe I'll use the same technique as I did for the steeple, tower, and mills. The dark feel comes from my monitor's gamma, white point, and color settings...I change this all the time so it's sorta like Cher...I have no idea where I started and no idea how to get back to the original settings. Anywho...thanks all.