Originally Posted by Mutt

i did read a tut on DeviantArt before I tried it - but if I did what the person who wrote the tutorial did it would be days of endlessly making paths, his was much more realistic looking with more detail and shading.

there are Photoshop tutorials that are quick dirty ways using filters to do vector style art that aren't bad - plus there's VectorMagic which is an amazing tool for converting bitmap artwork and photos into vector format.