I¡¯ve been playing with this thing for days now, and I can¡¯t make up my mind if it has any use. If I put it in a tutorial, maybe I can stop wasting so much time doodling with it.
     The wire mesh thingy is done with a custom brush that I made

To make the brush, start with a new white document. Magnify it to the maximum with either the zoom tool, or the Navigator palette slider. Using the rectangular marquee tool, drag a one pixel square selection. Watch the Info palette to make sure you have only one pixel selected.

With the selection active, choose Edit > Fill, and choose Black, or Foreground Color from the menu (if black is your foreground color). Make sure the Opacity is set to 100 %.
     Next, with the marquee tool still selected in the toolbox (you want to move the selection outline, not its contents) press the right arrow key three times. You want two white pixels between each colored pixel.
      With the selection outline moved to the right three pixels, again choose Edit > Fill and choose black. This time set the Opacity to 80 %.
     Press the right arrow key three times again. Fill the square with black with an Opacity of 60 %. And so on around the square. The sequence of opacities is shown below

You want to end up with a square, like that shown below (greatly magnified). If you don¡¯t want to do all this, I have a GIF of the brush at the end of the tutorial.
 

Once you have the nine by nine outline of little one pixel dots, make a tight selection of the square with the rectangular marquee tool. Remember, you can reposition a selection outline as you are dragging it by pressing the spacebar while still keeping the left mouse button pressed. ¡°Snap¡± also helps when selecting something this small. Your selection should look like this

With the selection drawn, choose Edit > Define Brush. Give it a name, if you like. I called mine 1x9x9 Gradient.
     In the toolbox, choose the paintbrush tool. In its options bar, click on the little down arrow next to the brush thumbnail to access the pop-up brushes palette. Your new brush should be the last one in the palette. Select it.
     After you¡¯ve chosen it, click on its thumbnail in the options bar (not in the palette¡ªthat will only get you the Name dialog). Clicking on the thumbnail of a brush in the options bar brings up the Spacing dialog. Set the brush¡¯s spacing to 10 %. This is very important. The brush doesn¡¯t look nearly as good at the default 25 % Spaciing setting.

After setting the spacing, click the little Save icon in the upper right corner of the box, see above. This will save your brush with the correct spacing. A second copy of the brush, this one with the correct, saved Spacing will appear in the brushes palette. You¡¯ll need to go back and delete the first instance of the brush which has the default spacing.
      Okay. You have your brush. Now, what to do with it? You can draw freehand with it, but other than having a ton of fun making slinkies, and snakes, I haven¡¯t found anything really useful to do with it that way.
     However, it looks fairly interesting if used along with text. Below are examples of handwriting and typed text.

Angular letters look better than curvy, tight ones. For example, the letter H looks interesting.

But the letter S is sort of convoluted.

You can¡¯t really make text any smaller than this. You can scale it some without entirely losing the wire effect. Since the dots making up the brush are one pixel in size, the brush itself can¡¯t be made any smaller. I tried it with fewer dots, and it wasn¡¯t nearly as nice.
     To add the wire mesh to text, I used the Stroke Path command in the Paths palette. I¡¯ll show you how, next.

Open a new document, or any existing document to which you¡¯d like to add this text. Choose the paintbrush in the toolbox, and make sure its options bar shows the new wire brush as selected. Check to be sure the Spacing setting is at 10 % (double click on the brush¡¯s thumbnail in the options bar to access the Spacing dialog box). It should be, if you clicked the Save button the last time you set Spacing.
      Make sure black is set as your foreground color in the toolbox. Click on the default colors icon, if necessary. The Stroke path command uses the current brush, and foreground color settings, so you need to get these set before you start.
     Choose the type tool in the toolbox. Set the type to a large size; I wouldn¡¯t recommend anything smaller that 72 point which is what I¡¯ve used on these pages. I also used a Strong anti aliasing setting.
      Type some or all of your text, and then select it by dragging over it with the type tool (we need to reset the Tracking setting, and you have to have some type selected to do this).
     Click the Palettes button on the options bar, or choose Window > Show Character. In the Character palette, set the Tracking value to 200. If you don¡¯t know which is the Tracking box, it¡¯s the one on the right side showing a 200 setting, below.

When you¡¯re done, accept your text by clicking the big check mark on the type tool¡¯s options bar. Remember to reset Tracking to zero next time you use the type tool.
     In the Layers palette, press Ctrl and click on the new type layer you just made. This will make a selection outline around the text. Click the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette. This creates a new layer, Layer 1 (unless you rename it), with the type selection outline active on it.
     Click on the Paths palette¡¯s tab to bring it to the front, or choose Window > Show Paths. At the bottom of the Paths palette, click on the Make Work Path button.

This turns your type outline selection into a path. Click on the little arrow in the upper right corner of the Paths palette to access the palette¡¯s options menu. Choose Stroke Path from that menu.

In the dialog box that appears, accept Paintbrush as the tool you want to stroke the path.

Click OK, and the path will be stroked with the new wire mesh brush using the current foreground color. Click any blank area in the Paths palette, or choose Turn Off Path from the palette¡¯s menu to deselect the path.
     The last step is to go back to the Layers palette, and drag Layer 1, which has the wire mesh stroked outline on it, below the Type layer. Do this by dragging Layer 1 until the line between the Type layer, and the Background highlights as a thick black line. Then release the mouse button. Layer 1 should now appear below the Type layer. You want the wire mesh to be behind the type. Your palette should look like this, when you¡¯re finished.

The freehand drawings made with this brush are interesting with a drop shadow. If you¡¯d like to skip making the brush yourself, try downloading the link below. It is a GIF file of the brush square.
      After you download it, open it in Photoshop, and save it in psd format. Then choose Image > Mode > RGB (GIFs use Indexed Color mode).
      You¡¯ll then need to to select the little dotted square (not the outer outline, added so you can see the image), and choose Edit > Define Brush. Be sure and set its Spacing to 10 %, and Save, before you use it.

I have a bunch of these weird brushes. You should see the neat things the 1x16x16 Gradient one does. But it¡¯s way to big to do anything useful.
[added] I¡¯ve put three bonus brushes at the bottom of this page, if you¡¯d like to try them.

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