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September 2020

  • Challenge: Pixel Art in Procreate
    Illustration

    Challenge: Pixel Art in Procreate

    Illustrator Samuel Rodriguez takes on the Domestika Challenge Through his work, illustrator Samuel Rodriguez (@samrodriguezart) offers a new perspective in today's cultural landscape, creating striking portraits that incorporate graphic design and unusual visual elements. With clients that range from public art commissioners and non-profit organizations to brands and corporations, his pieces are both playful and powerful. In this Domestika Challenge, for the first time ever, Rodriguez tries to recreate one of his portrait illustrations in a pixel art style. How will it turn out? Find out in the video below:

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  • Dot Lung's Favorite Social Media Tools
    Web & App Design

    Dot Lung's Favorite Social Media Tools

    Discover the apps and services that will make your social media strategy stand out It goes without saying: having a social media strategy is essential for any creative. It's the best way to showcase your talent and interact with your community. But, with so much content going around, getting your own creations to stand out can be a challenge.

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  • Hard Light and Diffused Light in Photography
    Photography

    Hard Light and Diffused Light in Photography

    Learn to use light in your photos to achieve the desired effect every time In photography, natural light is the most unpredictable element when we set up for a shoot. Until we are behind the camera, we cannot be sure what type of lighting we’ll be working with, so we need to know how light affects the scene. Zony Maya is a master of this skill. He explains the difference between a hard and a diffused light, and how to use these lighting conditions to achieve incredible pictures.

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  • What is a Fashion Stylist and How to Become One
    Photography

    What is a Fashion Stylist and How to Become One

    Learn about one of the most desirable and important jobs in fashion today and how to make it your own Clothes are the building blocks of fashion. How we put an outfit together is as important as each individual piece. Whether it’s on the runway, in a magazine, or in our day-to-day life, styling can transform how a person is seen, for better or for worse.

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  • 6 Best Portfolio Hosting Platforms
    Design

    6 Best Portfolio Hosting Platforms

    From professional social networks to specialized website builders, these five platforms will get your work seen the way you want it to be Every visual creative wants to be seen. A wonderful creation isn’t going to change the world nor pay the rent if it doesn’t get in front of the right people. Knowing where to share your work online to make sure you’re turning the right heads can be instrumental in getting paid. With so many places to choose from, it can be hard to know where to begin, and different sites can work better for different people and different professions. While Instagram and LinkedIn might seem the best places to catch people's eye and find clients, they're not always the best sites for the job. One of the biggest problems, acccording to Laura Varsky, illustrator and designer who teaches the Domestika course Professional Illustration: Turn Your Passion into a Career is that, "They don't last. If you put all your energy into making a good profile for a particular social network, you can end up investing all that energy in something that has a short life." Here is a list of our five favorite platforms for online portfolios, including professional networking platforms and specialized website hosting and design services, so you can get the best return on your investment and see long lasting success.

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  • Adobe Premiere Pro Tutorial: Introduction to the Toolbar
    Teacher Film & Video

    Adobe Premiere Pro Tutorial: Introduction to the Toolbar

    Learn how to use the Adobe Premiere toolbar and its main keyboard shortcuts for faster editing from scratch, with Juanmi Cristóbal In order to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our professional audiovisual projects, the first thing we have to do is become familiar with its interface and basic tools. In this tutorial, the director of photography, editor, and colorist, Juanmi Cristóbal (@jmicristobal) gives us a quick and easy introduction to the Adobe Premiere toolbar. You can see it in the following video:

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  • 5 Free Classes to Explore New Watercolor Techniques: From Beginner to Advanced
    Teacher Illustration

    5 Free Classes to Explore New Watercolor Techniques: From Beginner to Advanced

    Practice with simple exercises to perfect your watercolor painting and illustration techniques Watercolor painting is one of the best ways to get into both illustration and painting, due to the nobility of the material. Unlike other methods, learning to expect unexpected results will mitigate your fear of making mistakes and encourage you to practice more and more. Learn from these 5 expert watercolor illustrators and painters with exercises that will improve your technique right away. To watch each lesson, just click on its title in red. Enjoy!

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  • Exercise: How to Add Realistic Lighting to Your Illustrations
    Illustration

    Exercise: How to Add Realistic Lighting to Your Illustrations

    Learn how to add realism and volume to your illustrations with this simple exercise by Óscar Lloréns Light is, without a doubt, one of the most essential elements of any illustration. Understanding how it behaves in nature will make your creations look more realistic and professional. Illustrator Óscar Lloréns (@ollorens) shares some tips that you can use to play with the different light sources in your illustrations, so you can give the desired volume and depth to the objects you draw.

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  • Logocentric vs. Flexible: Two Approaches to Branding
    Design

    Logocentric vs. Flexible: Two Approaches to Branding

    Heavy design studio explains the characteristics, advantages, and risks of each approach As you probably already know, a brand's design and identity does not end with a logo. A logo is just the door to a world of branding elements that give each company its own character, voice, and personality. The Heavy (@heavy), a design studio that specializes in branding and corporate identity strategies, explains that when creating a brand identity, the logo is only the tip of the iceberg. Below, they share two branding approaches that explain the differences between brands that focus on their logo versus those that take a more versatile approach. Get to know these two approaches to find out which one is best for your next design project.

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  • 12 Great Free Resources for YouTubers
    Web & App Design

    12 Great Free Resources for YouTubers

    These sites and tools will help you perfect and promote your channel We all know that videos are an excellent way to connect. Users prefer video content, and creativity channels are becoming more popular every day. Whether you already have a YouTube channel or are considering starting one soon, the following tools will help you reach its full potential. YouTube Studio This is the dashboard where you can start your channel and create content by uploading videos or streaming live. In this official YouTube tool, you will find helpful tips and all the relevant tools for creators to add audio, review your channels’ statistics,manage monetization, and more.

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  • Domestika Diary: Mike Sandoval
    Illustration

    Domestika Diary: Mike Sandoval

    Art director and illustrator Mike Sandoval opens the doors of his studio and explains his creative routine during the confinement A creative workspace is always important, no more so than during a situation like confinement. Art director and illustrator Mike Sandoval (@mike_sandoval_) has made sure to create an environment that helps him in his work and allows him to continue to express his creativity in his professional and personal projects. This visual artist opens the doors of his home and studio in Mexico and explains how he works day to day as a freelance illustrator in the current situation and how he has created a space and a routine that encourages his productivity. Discover it below:

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  • Creating a Digital Pen for Lettering Projects
    PLUS Teacher Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    Creating a Digital Pen for Lettering Projects

    Sindy Ethel explains how to create a digital pen to work on Photoshop as you would with regular pens Using an ordinary Photoshop brush for your lettering projects can be the right tool to create neon, monoline, or other effects with few variations in the stroke. However, Sindy Ethel (@sindyethel) explains how to create a digital pen for lettering projects on Adobe Photoshop, that much more suitable for those occasions when we are looking for a more organic and similar effect to the one we could achieve with drawing and writing tools such as fountain pens or bird feathers.

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  • Illustration Tutorial: How to Promote Your Work
    Teacher Marketing

    Illustration Tutorial: How to Promote Your Work

    Basic tips to get your work seen and turn your passion into a profession, with Laura Varsky As a freelance illustrator, it is not enough just to have a unique style, or to master the technique to perfection: we also need to know how to promote our work in conventional and unconventional ways. We'll only get orders when our potential clients see our art. In the following video tutorial, designer and illustrator Laura Varsky (@lau_varsky) gives some professional tips to promote our work creatively. Discover them below:

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  • What is a Scale Model and How Do You Create One?
    Craft

    What is a Scale Model and How Do You Create One?

    The scale model is used to represent an object in a different size to the original object, taking into account the proportions When we talk about models, tiny or huge representations of spaces or objects faithful to reality, the concept of scale is basic. Understanding this system is essential to achieve good results and ensure all elements, whether they are drawn or built with any type of material, are in harmony with the real measurements. Scale, when we talk about models, architectural projects, or representations of spaces or objects in different sizes, is the relationship of proportion between the real dimension and the drawing that represents it.

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  • How to Create Shapes using the Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator
    Illustration

    How to Create Shapes using the Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator

    Learn to use the Shape Builder tool in Adobe Illustrator and make your workflow easier While it might not be the most well-known tool that you Adobe Illustrator has to offer, it is very useful for working with vectors. The Shape Builder tool allows you to create complex figures using basic geometric shapes and work quickly with different design types. This tool is very straight-forward and easy to use. Once you get to grips with how it works, you’ll be able to work out how to create perfect shapes very quickly using the tools offered by Adobe Illustrator. Here we explain how to use the Shape Builder tool to create shapes in Adobe Illustrator:

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  • 5 Contemporary Chinese Artists You Should Know
    Art

    5 Contemporary Chinese Artists You Should Know

    Get to know the work of five artists that are reviving thousand-year-old traditions China is the birthplace of ink–one of the oldest known drawing tools. While artists worldwide have adopted painting with soot, it was first used by one of the oldest empires. Given the historic importance and diverse nature of Chinese art, we have selected five contemporary artists who continue to develop its thousand-year-old traditions and give them a modern twist.

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  • A Brief History of Botanical Printing
    Craft

    A Brief History of Botanical Printing

    Discover the history of this naturalistic printing technique with Anabel Torres For any textile design enthusiast or anyone who loves DIY artisan techniques, botanical printing offers a world of possibilities. With it, you can decorate items of clothing, paper, fashion accessories, wall hangings, jewelry, decorative items for your home, and much more. Fashion designer and textile artist Anabel Torres (@anabeltorres) talks us through the origins of this artisanal technique, which can be used to dye any type of fabric with natural pigments.

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  • Blue Note: Where Jazz and Design Met
    Design

    Blue Note: Where Jazz and Design Met

    Learn the history of the jazz record label that has been defining jazz’s aesthetic and sound since 1939 Imagine a classic jazz record sleeve. Chances are you’re imagining a smartly cropped photo of a sharply dressed black man with his instrument. The photography gives off a sense of action; maybe there is more than one image from the same moment, giving a sense of illusion. The cover isn’t a black and white photo but two-tone, the darker parts of the image contrasting with a blue, green, or orange maybe. A compact and creatively placed typography tells you who the artists are. The final touch: the simple and elegant logo of Blue Note records, the finest in jazz since 1939. Blue Note was founded by two Jewish German immigrants who came over to America, saw this new movement that African Americans were pioneering, and realized they needed to document it. Those two men were photographer Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion. The record label would set the tone for jazz, specifically hard bop, it’s aesthetic, and it’s development, for what is now approaching eight decades. The label was one of a flurry of others, including HRS the year before and Commodore the year before that. Those behind the companies were initially hobbyists but the labels that stuck were the work of people who quickly got wise to the challenges of the record industry.

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  • Character Design Tutorial: How to Draw Comic-Style Female Hair
    Teacher Illustration

    Character Design Tutorial: How to Draw Comic-Style Female Hair

    Learn how to draw different types of hair to add movement and personality to your characters, with Marcio Takara Hair is notoriously difficult to draw, and because it’s such an important element of any character, that can make it seem even more daunting. But as with everything, a little practice makes perfect, and professional comic book artist Marcio Takara (@marciotakara) has a few simple tips for conquering this drawing challenge. With experience working with major publishers like Marvel and DC, in this video Takara shows the process he uses to draw hair and explains how it can be used as a powerful storytelling tool to convey your character’s personality and movement.

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  • A Brief History of Fashion Photography
    Photography

    A Brief History of Fashion Photography

    Join Park Studio’s Carola Rafowicz on a tour of the key moments in fashion photography As a creative discipline, fashion photography has evolved along with photography itself. Changes in the perception of the aesthetic and social functions of photography, as well as technical advances and social changes, have given this discipline its versatile character. Creative director Carola Rafowicz from Park (@parkcreative), an expert in the execution of projects and strategies for brands, production and fashion, gives us a brief account of the most emblematic moments in the history of fashion photography.

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  • How to Create a Great Email Marketing Campaign
    Marketing

    How to Create a Great Email Marketing Campaign

    Learn how email marketing works and how to create an effective newsletter, with strategy and marketing director Nestor Tejero A decade ago, you might have thought that emails were going out of fashion: everyone has a phone with WhatsApp or Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or any one of the many messaging applications designed to suit your needs and tastes. However, emails have managed to grow with the cellphone. In 2017, 55% of all emails were read on a mobile device, up from 29% in 2012. Email’s ability to get your message directly into the pockets of your customers is unparalleled and, with the number of people with email addresses set to rise to 4.3 billion by 2023, there aren’t many people who you won’t be able to reach. Today, emails are bigger than ever and strategy and marketing director at the email marketing agency Agencia Reinicia, Nestor Tejero, who teaches the Domestika course, Introduction to E-Mail Marketing With Mailchimp, has shared these simple tips and tricks to creating your own email marketing campaign.

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  • 3 Essential Books for Learning to Create
    Teacher Design

    3 Essential Books for Learning to Create

    Illustrator Alfonso de Anda entrusts us with the titles of some of the books that have most inspired him Inspiration is everywhere, and although it may be waiting for you around the corner, in a café, at a meeting with friends, or in your own home, there are some books that can help you exercise your creativity and help good ideas flourish. Over the years, illustrator Alfonso de Anda (@deandaalfonso) has become a specialist in capturing good ideas and awakening creativity. These are some of his favorite books about the habit of creating: Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind, by 99u and Jocelyn K. Glei Taking as a premise the saturation of information and the long list of things to do that we all face every day, this book tries to give us an idea of how to organize our lives. It is about ensuring that our routine does not end up destroying our creativity, something we must keep on top of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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  • 5 Free Tutorials on Digital Marketing to Succeed on Social Media
    Teacher Marketing

    5 Free Tutorials on Digital Marketing to Succeed on Social Media

    Learn the experts' secrets to highlight your personal brand by upgrading your social media strategy For many creatives it can be frustrating to see that their audience on their social media channels is not growing as expected. Knowing how to take advantage of the possibilities of social networks will help you reach a global market, make your work known and position yourself in your sector. Learn with these 5 experts on digital marketing practical and effective tutorials so that your social networks reach their full potential. Just click on each video to check out their tips!

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  • Draw Yourself: Mauro Martins
    Illustration

    Draw Yourself: Mauro Martins

    How did illustrator Mauro Martins start drawing? Did you know he lives in Brasilia? In this Draw Yourself, Martins recalls moments from his childhood, explains the concept of Brasilia, and defines the essential ingredients of a perfect city.

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  • Download a Free Adobe Photoshop Lighting Action
    Photography

    Download a Free Adobe Photoshop Lighting Action

    Use this Photoshop action to easily and quickly edit your photos Lighting is a very important factor in the work of Carles Marsal (@carlesmarsal). The images he creates are made up of bits and pieces of other imagery, therefore taking into account light and the direction of shadows is vital to the final results. No matter how fanciful and unrealistic the subject may be, the lighting must be realistic. After perfecting his process and working with countless photos, Marsal has automated parts of his techniques and encapsulated them into a Photoshop action that helps him organize layers of light and shadow and create magical photos.

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  • 8 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Live Stream
    Marketing

    8 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Live Stream

    Learn how to plan and generate more engagement with your live streams In the past year, Lives have only continued to grow in importance and popularity. Besides serving as an alternative to in-person events, Lives offer a unique opportunity for content producers to engage in real-time with a global audience. A great addition to any social media calendar, Lives are an excellent way to build closeness with your audience, create content catered to their interests, and increase your engagement. Here are a few simple ways you can better prepare for and execute your next Live:

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  • Top 10 Graphic Novels of the Domestika Community
    Illustration

    Top 10 Graphic Novels of the Domestika Community

    These are the graphic novels most liked by the Domestika community on Instagram When you mix illustration with extraordinary narratives, you get one of the creative world's most beloved products. Graphic novels can tell complex stories, which is why they have not only achieved worldwide popularity among all kinds of audiences but also serve as an inspiration to new artists. We asked the Domestika community on Instagram what their favorite graphic novels are, and these were the 10 most voted: Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O'Malley (Canada, 2004-2010) This romantic comedy was first published in a six-volume black and white series and later republished in color. It tells the story of a young musician who falls in love while searching for his own identity. It has won the Doug Wright (Best New Artist), Joe Shuster (Best Canadian Cartoonist), Harvey (twice for Best Original Script), and Eisner (Best Comedy) awards.

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  • Why is the Peace Symbol Three Lines and a Circle?
    Design

    Why is the Peace Symbol Three Lines and a Circle?

    Discover the true history and meaning of the peace symbol You have seen it on banners, in demonstrations, on T-shirts, and on necklaces. It’s just three lines and a circle but there’s no doubt you know what it means: peace. Today, the peace symbol is a part of global culture. It is used to stand up for all kinds of causes, and we perfectly understand its meaning regardless of where we come from. However, did you know that it is only six decades old? Its original meaning was much more specific but why did it end up being used universally to represent peace? Find out in the following video:

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