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January 2021

  • 5 Female Watercolor Artists Who Will Inspire Your Next Creation
    Illustration

    5 Female Watercolor Artists Who Will Inspire Your Next Creation

    Be inspired by the work of these female watercolor artists who have just launched courses on Domestika Watercolor painting is an ancient art form that can be traced back to the prehistoric days of cave painting. Mastering this skill requires great patience and embracing its unpredictable nature–some of the best results are the most unexpected! The following five female artists have developed their own unique skills and techniques for incorporating this highly versatile medium into their work. Their different approaches and styles are testament to the wide range of possibilities that watercolor offers and why these women are ones to watch in 2021.

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  • Free Download: A Color Theory Guide for Floral Compositions
    Teacher Craft

    Free Download: A Color Theory Guide for Floral Compositions

    Find out what a flower color wheel is: a tool used to match colors with harmony and safety with the help of an expert If you are interested in creating floral designs, you probably know that the success of a composition lies in understanding what each flower communicates with respect to the others, as well as its global meaning. To achieve this understanding there are some concepts that you must know: the use of textures, the sense of heights and depths and, of course, the harmonization of color. If you want to improve on this last point, you will find very useful a presentation on Color Theory prepared by Juliana Bustillo, creative director and founder of ORA The Floral Agency (@orafloralagency), creator of floral designs for big brands like Carolina Herrera, Cartier, Mont Blanc, H&M and many others.

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  • Creating Fonts in Glyphs
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    Creating Fonts in Glyphs

    What makes Glyphs the go-to program for designing and creating fonts? Juanra Pastor, better known as @Wete, is a Barcelona-based graphic designer specializing in typography. He is the founder of Wete studio and has worked on lettering, typography, and advertising projects for clients such as Adobe, Carolina Herrera, Reebok, Desigual, and LVMH. In this blog post, Juanra, who first developed a passion for letters as a 14-year-old graffiti artist, will explain the advantages of working in Glyphs when designing and creating typefaces.

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  • 12 Amazing Websites to Find High-Quality Stock Images for Free
    Teacher Web & App Design

    12 Amazing Websites to Find High-Quality Stock Images for Free

    Find great stock photos websites on the internet for free and use them to make a collage Joseba Elorza (@miraruido) is an illustrator and animator who has also trained as a sound technician; Joseba loves collage. His work has been published in such titles as The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, and the Hollywood Reporter, and he’s created animations for National Geographic, Amazon Studios, Green Day, and more. In this blog post, Joseba shares a list of his go-to websites for making a collage, all of which offer royalty-free images that can be used for different types of content.

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  • Animation Tutorial: How to Capture and Render Your Project
    Teacher 3D & Animation

    Animation Tutorial: How to Capture and Render Your Project

    Professional Voxel artist and animator Zach Soares explains how to capture an animation for online distribution A digital portfolio, on social media or a personal website, is one of the best tools an animator has for finding work. Knowing how to share your animations online quickly and professionally can be the difference between your work being taken seriously or not. Zach Soares is the creative director of animation studio Bunnyhug s and a professional voxel artist and animator with almost a decade of experience. In this tutorial, he shares a simple way of capturing and rendering an animation project so that it can be published and shared online successfully.

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  • What is Macramé?
    Craft

    What is Macramé?

    Learn about the origins of this knotting technique Macramé is a craft that has only gotten more popular thanks to its Instagram-friendly aesthetic and how easy it is to use to decorate and add personality to our homes. Discover more about the origins of this technique and how you can start knotting beautiful pieces yourself.

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  • Basic Settings for Editing Photographs
    Teacher Photography

    Basic Settings for Editing Photographs

    Photographer Nicanor García shares some fundamental editing settings to apply to all your photographs Adobe Photoshop was one of the first programs created for editing digital images; it became popular because it enabled the user to change and manipulate images for creative purposes and to fix mistakes. Editing, or post-production, allows photographers to go a little further than merely taking a photo. Besides lighting and framing, you can take advantage of other basic editing settings to achieve optimal results. You can refine a picture by correcting the perspective, geometry, exposure, contrast, or highlights. Expert photographer Nicanor García runs us through the basic editing settings that can help us achieve amazing photographs.

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  • Materials: Paper Flowers
    Teacher Craft

    Materials: Paper Flowers

    Discover the materials you need to create a wide range of flowers and incredible botanical art with artist and maker Eileen Ng

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  • Explore Escher's Engravings in High Resolution
    Teacher Art

    Explore Escher's Engravings in High Resolution

    The Boston Public Library has digitized several dozens of Escher prints Enigmatic and brilliant, the work of M. C. Escher is worthy of admiration. That's why institutions that keep some of his engravings safe often exhibit them publicly so that we all can enjoy them. One of these institutions is the Boston Public Library — the largest municipal library in the United States — who has digitized almost a hundred of his engravings. Anyone who accesses its archives can explore them in great detail and get to know all the nooks and crannies of the impossible constructions that Escher devised and drew throughout his career.

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  • Domestika Diary: Pepita Sandwich
    Illustration

    Domestika Diary: Pepita Sandwich

    Take a tour with Pepita Sandwich of her life in her new home, New York Pepita Sandwich is an illustrator known for her vibrant style full of color, movement, and personality. She has collaborated with international brands such as Adidas, Spotify, and Cartoon Network and even published two books. In this Domestika Diary, she takes us around her new home, New York, showing us where she finds inspiration and art supplies.

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  • 20 Craft Artists to Follow in 2025
    Craft

    20 Craft Artists to Follow in 2025

    Get inspired by the most successful craft artists of the Domestika community in 2025 Craft has acquired many followers, but the image it evokes can be old-fashioned and doesn’t reflect the many possibilities it offers. For this reason, crafts are often considered an unsung category of the creative world. The best way to learn about this art form is by exploring what contemporary craft artists are doing to innovate and rejuvenate old techniques like embroidery, ceramics, collage, and crocheting. The possibilities are endless, and we are here to prove it. Reset and change your Instagram feed, with images from creatives from around the world that will surprise and inspire you to take on a craft. Kathrin Marchenko (@kathrin_marchenko) Inspired by fashion and haute couture, Moscow textile artist, Kathrin Marchenko, uses tulle and colorful threads as a canvas and creates art pieces with 3D effects.

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  • 12 Basic Principles of Animation
    Teacher 3D & Animation

    12 Basic Principles of Animation

    Whether done by hand, using software, in 2D or 3D, these rules apply to all types of animation There are several ways to bring a drawing to life, but one in particular has become a reference over the years. In 1981, Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas published a book compiling 12 basic principles of animation for making characters seem more realistic, with a focus on physics and emotions. Although these rules were applied to classic animations such as Snow White (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasy (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942), they are still relevant today, despite technological advances and the advent of 3D. They are constantly being expanded and updated to include new styles and techniques.

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  • 15 Reasons to Use a Sketchbook by Sergio Bleda, Miguel Gallardo and Puño
    Teacher Illustration

    15 Reasons to Use a Sketchbook by Sergio Bleda, Miguel Gallardo and Puño

    We ask three illustrators why they use a sketchbook and why you should too Sergio Bleda (@sergibleda) is a professional cartoonist and illustrator from Valencia (Spain). In his Domestika course Inking Techniques for Comics and Illustration, he explores the technical and creative possibilities of inking. He is also passionate about sketchbooks and always carries one around. He sees his job as quickly translating ideas into images so that they go from being an abstract concept to something readable. Sketchbooks, therefore, are handy tools. Here are his five reasons why you should use one as well: #1 Every drawing that starts in a sketchbook can be defined as a clumsy "graphic babbling": a small step that makes you lose your fear of the unknown. The first word of a new language. #2 It allows you to work without pressure. Sometimes you draw without knowing precisely what you are looking for, and a sketchbook is perfect for that.

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December 2020

  • Naming a Brand in 5 Easy Steps
    Teacher Marketing

    Naming a Brand in 5 Easy Steps

    The right name transmits what a company does and has communicative value for the user The process of choosing a name for your brand can be summarised in five key points. Xavier Grau (@xgrau) has over 20 years of experience in this field. Today, he presents the questions you need to be asking yourself when you undertake this task.

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  • What is a Concept Artist?
    Teacher 3D & Animation

    What is a Concept Artist?

    Nacho Yagüe, art director for Gameloft, explains what a concept artist is Creating settings, scenes, and environments is an essential part of developing any game. Nacho Yagüe is an art director and concept artist who has worked on Ubisoft games such as Assassins Creed: Unity, Watch Dogs 2, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. He is an expert in designing levels, textures, and animations for video game concept art. To help us to better understand what this profession entails, Nacho explains a concept artist’s role in the video game industry. He also shares some examples that will give you a better idea of the type of work they produce and where they fit in the production process for developing a new video game.

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  • 5 Free Apps for Recording and Editing Video
    Teacher Web & App Design

    5 Free Apps for Recording and Editing Video

    Discover five video editing apps that will improve your way of working Recording or editing video on cell phones allows you to film and share whatever you want, at any time of day, transforming short clips into cinematic masterpieces. You no longer need sophisticated equipment to start generating great content, just a phone camera with a decent app. In this post, we share five free apps that will help you capture and edit beautiful videos. ProMovie Recorder This iOS application allows you to record high-quality videos in 4K resolution (or 3K and upwards on older phones). It has various functions for controlling exposure, focus, frame rate, color temperature, white balance, and other recording settings. It also has an automatic mode if you’d prefer to start recording straight away.

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  • Top 10 Creative Projects of 2020 on Domestika
    Teacher Domestika

    Top 10 Creative Projects of 2020 on Domestika

    We have compiled a list of the most-liked projects to be shared by the Domestika community in 2020 There are only a few days left of the year, so we want to present the projects that have received the best feedback from the community out of all of those published in 2020 on Domestika. As was the case in 2019, the projects of the year are dominated by the medium of illustration. Final projects for different courses have also made the list, while fantasy and poetry have been celebrated as much as hyperrealism. Illustrator Adolfo Serra also gets a special mention for having authored two of the ten final projects to make the list. These are the top ten creative projects of 2020 to be published on Domestika: My project for the course: Watercolor Illustration with Japanese Influence, by Jessica Alvarez (@vanila_ryder) This final project, which was created for Flor Kaneshiro’s course, is titled Mandado. In this artwork, Jessica–the author–draws on Japanese influences, yet takes it a step further: she combines oriental techniques with a Latin American aesthetic inspired by Mexican markets.

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  • 21 3D Artists You Should Know in 2025
    3D & Animation

    21 3D Artists You Should Know in 2025

    Meet some of Domestika's Instagram top 3D modelers and animators 3D modeling and animation are disciplines with a bright future ahead. Used in cinema, advertising, social networks, and even art galleries, these three-dimensional sculptures that come to life continue to leave us all in awe. Each artist has their own different techniques and style, but they all have one thing in common: they put countless hours (sometimes even days) into the smallest details in order to achieve perfection. Even the most minimalist work has a high level of complexity and requires focus and expertise in several creative areas. Do you want to discover the many faces of 3D and animation? This list of artists who stood out on Domestika's Instagram is the place to start. They create characters and entire worlds using only software and incredible skills! Alex Z (@ghost3dee) Alex Z is a 3D animator who creates fantastic scenes with organic and natural movements, confusing even the most skeptical observer.

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  • Copywriting vs. Content Writing
    Writing

    Copywriting vs. Content Writing

    Learn some of the key differences between these often confused terms The roles of a copywriter and that of a content writer are often confused. Both figures are equally important in building a brand or product. We have gathered information from Domestika experts to define these two marketing processes and understand their main differences. They may be different, but both aim to connect with customers by using important messages about a particular brand. The common part of these two disciplines is the word writing, and indeed they both exist to tell a story about a brand or a service. However, their style, purpose, and strategy deployment are quite far apart. Let’s see in detail what their differences are.

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  • Improve the Quality of Photos and Videos With Artificial Intelligence
    Web & App Design

    Improve the Quality of Photos and Videos With Artificial Intelligence

    Discover how artificial intelligence has learned to interact with information contained in an image so it can improve it Artificial intelligence, a term that not long ago brought to mind scenes straight out of science fiction films, is today a reality. The good news is that it has lots of practical uses, such as medical diagnosis, remote control of devices, finance, transport. Interestingly, it is also being applied to creativity. These artificial intelligence apps make it possible for filmmakers, animators, and researchers to get high-definition results from images and videos in low-resolution or that have been recorded using old equipment. A.I. Gigapixel This app for both Windows and Mac claims to enlarge photos by up to 600%, while perfectly preserving the quality and detail of each image. It also includes features such as automatic face refinement. Artificial intelligence "recreates" the pixels that would get lost using an automatic enlargement process, such as those you can perform in Photoshop. Artificial intelligence has learned this process by analyzing thousands of sample images. A.I. Gigapixel offers a trial version. The app usually costs $99.99. This video explains how their technology works:

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  • The History of Typography: From 11th Century China to the Digital Age
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    The History of Typography: From 11th Century China to the Digital Age

    Discover how, throughout history, typography has been used to communicate more than just the words it spells out Typography is sometimes easy to take for granted: you’re reading these words, absorbing their meaning, but probably aren’t paying close attention to the letterforms that compose them. Other times typography can be impossible not to notice, like when a wedding invitation is written in Comic Sans, or a sign is hard to read because of an unfortunate font choice. The history of typography is about more than how easy something is to read or write. It reveals how the design of letterforms has shaped societies and transformed the meaning of the written word. So, where did typography come from and what do typefaces have to tell us?

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  • 5 Socially-conscious Artists Creating Art Out of Waste
    Art

    5 Socially-conscious Artists Creating Art Out of Waste

    Turning waste into works of art: meet inspiring artists from around the world For centuries, humans have exploited nature. The monstrous amount of waste we produce is an issue that socially-conscious individuals have turned their attention to. Today, creative people around the world are making art out of waste. This choice of material causes us to reflect on what items we discard and push as far away from our lives as possible. In this sense, an artist's decision to put these items into a museum as part of exhibitions is very provocative. We have selected five artists whose work you ought to explore: Vik Muniz Brazilian artist Vik Muniz is one of the most well-known artists working with waste, with his work having been exhibited in MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. In the documentary, Lixo extraordinario (Extraordinary Garbage), Muniz recreated masterpieces from art history, such as the Mona Lisa, with peanut butter and jelly. He used leftovers from a macarronada (a typical Venezuelan dish) to recreate Medusa’s panicked face in Caravaggio's famous painting, and used scrap metal to create a world map. The pieces are full of irony, forcing the spectator to question what can be labeled “sophisticated” art.

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  • How to Use Textures in Photoshop
    PLUS Teacher Illustration

    How to Use Textures in Photoshop

    Illustrator and designer Willian Santiago teaches you how to create different textures in Photoshop Programs like Photoshop open the door to infinite digital illustration processes, such as adding effects and textures created using traditional techniques. Textures, in particular, can add a rich layer of detail that make your drawings have more of an impact. In this tutorial, illustrator and designer Willian Santiago (@williansantiagodg) will show you how to use different textures in Photoshop to bring your creations to life. Watch the video below:

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  • 10 Tips to Market Yourself Better on Pinterest
    Teacher Marketing

    10 Tips to Market Yourself Better on Pinterest

    Natalia Escaño shares some simple tips to boost the position of your pins among the top search results Pinterest is one of the most visual social networks, with a search power comparable to that of Google, but basing its content strategy on aesthetics and being a tool to find inspiration. This makes it a handy tool for creatives, artists, designers, illustrators, photographers, and even companies who want to share their products differently. Natalia Escaño (@nataliaescano) is a designer and illustrator and one of the most prominent Pinterest influencers in Spain, with more than a million followers and a portfolio of clients that includes brands such as L'Oréal Paris and Disney. As a great connoisseur of this platform, at both a user level and business level, she knows what it takes to stand out with attractive, eye-catching, and extremely visual content that will surely resonate with the audience. Here are the 10 fundamental tips from Natalia Escaño to improve the SEO of your Pinterest pins:

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  • Find Inspiration for Your Next Tattoo
    Illustration

    Find Inspiration for Your Next Tattoo

    Discover the trajectory and references of Chilean tattoo artist Polilla Tattoo Edward Lorenz's Chaos Theory states that small decisions can have profound consequences in our lives. Florencia Landaeta, better known as Polilla Tattoo (@polillatattoo), is living proof of this. After her husband — back then her boyfriend — gave her her first tattoo, the graphic designer became interested in this discipline and found a calling she continues to follow to this day. Moth fell in love with the trade, which allowed her to keep her interest in drawing. Three months after that first session, she held her first tattoo machine.

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