Illustration

New skills, projects, ideas and fun facts about the world of illustration

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  • Learn How to Create Cartoon-Style Characters for Free With Ed Vill
    Teacher Illustration

    Learn How to Create Cartoon-Style Characters for Free With Ed Vill

    Access Ed Vill's Domestika course for 72 hours for free and learn the steps to create amazing cartoons, from the first sketches to final digital illustrations using Procreate Cartoon characters are an inexhaustible pool of fun stories and great comedy. They're incredibly versatile, the perfect fit for pretty much anything, from short stories all the way to profound social critique. They can give identity and personality to any brand, and they are a great resource when working on advertising projects. The illustrator and character designer Ed Vill knows how to draw them perfectly and, in addition to teaching you the essential tools, he will share every secret trick to make it easier to bring your characters to life using Procreate and the Apple Pencil. Starting December 22nd, and for 72 hours only, you can access the Domestika course Cartoon-Style Character Design with Procreate for free. You will begin by learning how to design a cartoon-style character that reflects a brand's personality using the popular illustration app. You will then work on translating it into different media, both digital and physical, to use it for advertising purposes.

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  • Make Your Digital Fantasy Portraits Sparkle in Photoshop
    Illustration

    Make Your Digital Fantasy Portraits Sparkle in Photoshop

    Learn how to make your digital portraits sparkle in Photoshop, with Bearbrickjia The final touches that we add to an illustration can completely transform the end result. Take your digital portraits to the next level and make them sparkle. Karmen Loh (@Bearbrickjia) is a digital illustrator whose surrealist style fuses fantastical worlds with everyday reality. In this video, she reveals how to make your portraits shine in Photoshop. Watch the video below:

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  • Free Download: Sketching Brush for Photoshop
    Teacher Illustration

    Free Download: Sketching Brush for Photoshop

    This brush for Adobe Photoshop is intended to replace the pencil in your digital sketches Just as we do when we draw on paper using a pencil, the first step in the drawing process is sketching. For many, the first idea is captured directly in an analog way, but it is always necessary to have a first approach to obtain an excellent final result. Illustrator Germán González (@germangonzalez) carries out his entire drawing process in Photoshop, and he soon realized that in order to work in the way he felt most comfortable, with the tools offered by the software, he had to create his own brushes. This brush that he shares with you today is the one he always uses to sketch and capture his first illustrated ideas on canvas.

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  • Beginner and Advanced Watercolor Painting FAQs
    Illustration

    Beginner and Advanced Watercolor Painting FAQs

    Ana Victoria Calderón answers what you’ve always wanted to ask about watercolors Ana Victoria Calderón (@anavictoriana) is a painter and illustrator who uses watercolors as her primary medium. She creates art for Hallmark, Papyrus, Demdaco, Galison, and editorial work for Glamour, Vanity Fair, InStyle, and Elle. One of her three Domestika courses, Modern Watercolor Techniques, has just reached 100K students! To celebrate this achievement, Ana Victoria has been answering some frequently asked questions about watercolor materials and techniques and giving professional tips in a live chat for the Domestika Live series. Read some of her answers below:

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  • Free Download: Anatomical Guide to Human Musculature for Drawing
    Illustration

    Free Download: Anatomical Guide to Human Musculature for Drawing

    This anatomical drawing guide, created by Leonardo Gauna, uses some of his favorite illustrations to show the human musculature As an illustrator, an extensive study of the human figure makes your works enrich and gain in realism and naturalness. To make good illustrations it is not essential to make exact reproductions of reality or the human body, but knowing the specific proportions of things will allow you to work with a greater knowledge of how forms work and obtain better results. To facilitate this task, the Argentine illustrator Leonardo Gauna (@capocosmico) has made a complete anatomical guide of human musculature for drawing that you can download and use as a reference.

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  • How to Create a Charismatic Character
    Illustration

    How to Create a Charismatic Character

    These are Ed Vill's tips for illustrating characters full of personality In the history of illustration and advertising, there are countless examples of characters and mascots designed initially to be used in branding that have become a resounding success, an indissoluble part of a company's image, or, in some cases, even part of popular culture. Sometimes, the opposite happens. Characters fall into oblivion for their lack of charisma and personality. Such is the case of Speedee, the little-known predecessor of Ronald McDonald. With his big hamburger-shaped head, he failed in his mission to become the official mascot of McDonald's. This is just one of the many examples that underscore the importance of creating characters with personality. Ed Vill (@edvill) has some tips that you should keep in mind when drawing your own.

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  • 15 Realistic Portrait Illustrations That Make an Impact
    Illustration

    15 Realistic Portrait Illustrations That Make an Impact

    Discover the illustration talent within the Domestika community Drawing, as a discipline, encompasses a plethora of techniques and styles. Realism is one of them, and it requires a lot of practice and great attention to detail; it demonstrates great technical ability. In this blog, we present 15 realistic portrait illustration projects from the Domestika community. To discover the process behind each piece, click on the title in red. Profile of a Man, by Krystan Grace Art (@krystangraceart) United Kingdom This detailed portrait was created with white chalk and Derwent Charcoal pencils on black paper.

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  • What is Architectural Illustration?
    Illustration

    What is Architectural Illustration?

    Discover more about this specialized branch of illustration Architect and architectural illustrator Héctor López (@_thearchitector) says that “architectural illustration is the visual representation of an object that can be as small as a construction detail or as big as an entire building or block of buildings.” Humans have created visual representations of architectural objects for thousands of years. According to Héctor, the earliest known example of an architectural plan dates back to 2200 BC. It’s part of a statue of Gudea, who ruled the state of Lagash in Southern Mesopotamia c. 2144–2124 BC. The statue, titled “Architect with a Plan,” features Gudea sitting with a tablet on his lap, which shows the floor plan of a temple. During and following the Roman Empire, more and more examples of architectural illustration that were more fitting with the discipline we know today began to appear.

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  • 5 Scrapbook Art Websites to Inspire Your Illustration Projects
    Illustration

    5 Scrapbook Art Websites to Inspire Your Illustration Projects

    These attractive websites will show you ways to use scrapbook art in a professional and artistic way Nuria Meléndez (@nuriamelworkshop) is a Mexican designer, illustrator, and scrapbook lover. She has created work for children's and young adult literature, cultural magazines, musical projects, theaters, and museums. She has worked for publishers such as Penguin Random House and establishments such as The Mexico City Museum and UNAM. She loves working on projects that involve play, collecting, and transforming as part of the creative process. She uses illustration, collage, and other craft techniques combined with two of her favorite concepts: transformation and nostalgia through scrapbooking. In her Domestika course, Nuria helps you create an illustration scrapbook by finding new ways to stimulate your creativity and experiment with cutouts, and allowing you to find new ways to express your imagination. Nuria lists five websites where you will find tips and ideas to ensure that your scrapbooks turn into incredible treasures. Let’s have a look at them in detail below.

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  • Domestika Diary: Adolfo Serra
    Illustration

    Domestika Diary: Adolfo Serra

    Illustrator Adolfo Serra reveals his creative routine and the keys to fighting creative block Renowned Spanish Illustrator Adolfo Serra (@adolfoserra) specializes in books for children and young adults. He spent much of the lockdown reconsidering the nature of creativity. His colourful style is full of fantasy and is often influenced by the new places and cultures he discovers while traveling, which is one of his greatest passions. But the lockdown rules prevented him from moving, so his energies focused on finding inspiration in the things around him. In this Domestika Diary, Adolfo reveals the multitude of ideas waiting to be discovered and turned into art in our immediate surroundings. He invites us into his studio and talks about his creative routine, his sources of inspiration and his techniques for avoiding the dreaded creative block:

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  • 15 Thanksgiving Vintage Art Pieces
    Illustration

    15 Thanksgiving Vintage Art Pieces

    Check out some amazing retro artworks dedicated to this holiday As any other celebration, Thanksgiving Day is ever-present in popular culture, and can be found in artwork since it first began. We compiled some vintage art, illustrations, posters and postcards that will get you in the holiday spirit.

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  • 10 Creative Challenges To Try At Home
    Illustration

    10 Creative Challenges To Try At Home

    Activate your creative engines exploring these challenges with family and friends Are you still figuring out how to spend your family time this holiday season? These creatives, experts in disciplines such as illustration and graphic design, accepted some of Domestika’s creative challenges that you can try at home with family and friends. Spend some quality time with a creative twist! You’ll only need a pen, paper, color pencils or markers, watercolor or acrylic painting, objects you can find at home, and if you’re feeling like it, your tablet or computer for some digital drawing activities. To read full instructions on each challenge and learn more about each creative, please click on its red title. Enjoy!

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  • Materials: Botanical Illustration with Watercolors
    Illustration

    Materials: Botanical Illustration with Watercolors

    Find out which materials you’ll need to start creating botanical illustrations with watercolors Designer and illustrator Paulina Maciel (@pau_maciel) has made a career of botanical illustration with watercolors. She has worked on projects for brands such as Palacio de Hierro, Desigual, and various creative agencies. To capture a flower’s beauty or the intricacy of its filaments, not only will you need an understanding of color and botany, but also the right materials. In the following video and the guide below, Paulina shares which materials she uses every day and explains how she works with them.

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  • 5 Online Watercolor Painting Courses to Spark Your Creativity
    Illustration

    5 Online Watercolor Painting Courses to Spark Your Creativity

    Develop all your creative potential and learn from the best watercolor experts Watercolor painting is popular for the freedom it provides. Both the technique used to stroke the paper with the brush, and the way the colors are mixed, offer the opportunity to add your own personality to the sheet. For this reason it is often said that, more than a technique, watercolor is an attitude. But mastering it is not always easy: the balance between the amount of water and pigment will always define the final result and only experience will teach you to control the process. These five courses taught by professionals will help you start, develop and improve your talent. They are essential for those who know the unpredictability of watercolor and are an excellent option to make the most of Domestika's Black Friday.

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  • Meet Amy Pearson and Her Beautifully Illustrated Portraits
    Illustration

    Meet Amy Pearson and Her Beautifully Illustrated Portraits

    Be inspired by the unique style of her illustrations and her stunningly lifelike portraits Amy Pearson (@amypearsondesign) is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator specialized in creating art that combines analog and digital techniques. At the heart of Amy Pearson’s work are beautiful images of women who display power and strength. She has worked with clients like The Beauty Effect, Nylon, and more. Her work has included magazine spreads, privately commissioned portraits, and other projects showcasing her unique creative style, and she markets her self-directed artwork through her website. In her Domestika course, Amy seamlessly combines graphite, watercolor, and Photoshop to create a stunningly lifelike portrait.

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  • How to Use Color to Shape Your Compositions
    PLUS Teacher Illustration

    How to Use Color to Shape Your Compositions

    What are color values and why should we pay attention to them before creating a color palette? The sentence “color doesn’t need color” might sound strange at first, but all will soon start to make sense. When creating a structure or composition in an illustration, painting, design, or other visual work in which color plays a key role, it is not the color wheel itself that is of key importance, but the spectrum and the values that we apply. Below, illustrator and concept artist Jean Fraisse (@jbfraisse) explains why color doesn’t need color if we know how to apply it using the right values:

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  • Illustration Tutorial: Drawing Composition Basics
    Teacher Illustration

    Illustration Tutorial: Drawing Composition Basics

    Learn why composition is the backbone of any illustration and how to apply the basics of composition to your own work, with Pietari Posti Composition—how the elements of an image are organized—tells a viewer how to read an image, showing them where to look, in what order, and why. Knowing how to organize the visual objects in your drawings will help you make sure they are read the way you want them to be. In this tutorial, Pietari Posti (@studioposti) shares a few basic tips to help you compose a balanced and harmonious image.

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  • Domestika Creatives: Marina Esmeraldo
    Illustration

    Domestika Creatives: Marina Esmeraldo

    We dive into the geometric and colorful world of Brazilian illustrator and artist Marina Esmeraldo Marina Esmeraldo was born in Brazil, but her desire to learn and evolve her career has transported her to London and Barcelona. Despite training in architecture in the north east of Brazil, her frustration with the industry and her passion for graphic arts rerouted her career and she became an illustrator. Her style, inspired by everything tropical and her training as an architect, is all about shapes, patterns, and experimental compositions. Her career as an illustrator has led her to work with brands and publications such as Google, Coca–Cola, Adidas, Häagen–Dazs, The Washington Post, Wired, Women's March, and many more. Marina Esmeraldo welcomes us into her Barcelona studio to tell us about her career, her creative process, and shares advice for diving into the world of illustration. Discover more below:

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  • Drawing Tutorial: Using Basic Shapes in Children’s Illustration
    Teacher Illustration

    Drawing Tutorial: Using Basic Shapes in Children’s Illustration

    Jimena S. Sarquiz shares tips for creating characters in Procreate using basic shapes When it comes to producing artwork that demonstrates creativity and imagination, it’s certain that the artist will have developed formulas to make their processes easier. In illustration, basic shapes–circles, squares, triangles, among many others–play an important role when it comes to determining the key elements that make up a character or a scene. Illustrator Jimena S. Sarquiz–creator of monitosbonitos (@monitosbonitos)–has worked on illustration projects with Editorial Norma, Edebé, Santillana, Macmillan Education, Cambridge University Press, and Editorial Televisa. Today, she shares tips for getting your proportions right, as well as how to take basic shapes and turn them into characters. Discover more in the video below:

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  • The Importance of Observation When Drawing Birds
    Illustration

    The Importance of Observation When Drawing Birds

    When depicting plants and animals, careful observation is essential. Here are some tips for drawing birds Nature illustrator Antonia Reyes Montealegre (@antoniapajarito) is passionate about birds and their diverse anatomies, something she loves to capture in her drawings. Nothing’s as good as looking out to the treetops and capturing the essence of the colorful birds that live in them. It is necessary to focus on details to recreate a realistic picture of nature. For this reason, we must learn to observe these creatures.

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  • 5 Watercolor Artists Whose Work Will Inspire You
    Illustration

    5 Watercolor Artists Whose Work Will Inspire You

    Be inspired by the work of these contemporary watercolor artists Few are lucky enough to grow up in a house whose walls are plastered in art. So, when it comes to launching your own creative career, you’ll need to seek out your own inspiration. Isabela Quintes (@isabelaquintes) –an illustrator and painter specializing in botanical watercolor painting–did exactly this. Quickly she found that one artist led her to another, and so on, and soon she had built a network of influential references. Today she shares five of her favorite watercolor artists with the Domestika community. Ana Victoria Calderón (@anavictoriana) Mexican artist Ana Victoria Calderón inspired Quintes to first experiment with watercolors. Calderón uses a diverse color palette that expertly mixes darker and lighter tones. She also shows off her technical versatility mixing in acrylics and employing tricks using salt.

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  • Challenge: 3 Fun Ways to Stimulate Creativity
    Illustration

    Challenge: 3 Fun Ways to Stimulate Creativity

    Art director, graphic designer, and illustrator Rogério Puhl tests out his own challenge and surprises himself with the results Since he was a teenager, Rogério Puhl had always dreamed of being an artist. At the age of 14, he enrolled at Chapecó School of Arts in Brazil. After discovering the world of digital illustration at the age of 18, he began a career in advertising, and went on to work for some of the most successful agencies in Brazil: AlmapBBDO, DM9DDB, Africa, Ogilvy, WMcCann, Young & Rubicam, and more. His portfolio includes projects for clients such as MTV, McDonald's and Red Bull, and he has created copyrighted murals around the world. Thanks to many years of experience, Rogério has lots of tips on how to get your creative juices flowing. In this challenge, the artist shares three ways to keep your mind active. The exercises can be carried out anywhere using whatever tools you have at hand. Not only will you have fun but your brain will also get a workout. Rogério was in fact very surprised with the results he got when he tried it out himself.

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  • Download Over 15,000 Comic Books for Free
    Illustration

    Download Over 15,000 Comic Books for Free

    Comic lovers can now access thousands of high-quality gems from the Golden Age Are you a comic book lover? An illustrator curious to explore character and background designs popular before the Sixties? Or simply interested in researching historical commentary through graphic storytelling? In that case, the Digital Comic Museum has a massive treat in store for you. A vast archive of pre-1959 comic books in excellent condition, uploaded by users, has been compiled by the museum and keeps growing. The comics are available under public domain restrictions and fully downloadable. All entries have been meticulously checked by the site’s moderators and administrators to avoid copyright infringement, and contributors are encouraged to keep on entering new scans adhering to the rules.

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  • What Is Zentangle?
    Illustration

    What Is Zentangle?

    Learn about the abstract pattern drawing style that will help you relax and refine your mark-making The term Zentangle comes from the words 'zen' (the Buddhist meditative philosophy for balancing the mind) and 'tangle'. The goal of this art practice is to achieve calm. It was developed as a concept in 2004 in the United States, from the minds of Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts. Zentangle is a style of drawing, mainly abstract, that uses repetitive patterns and represents an artistic method of relaxation for many.

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  • 20 Watercolor Paintings by Ana Victoria Calderon's Students
    Teacher Illustration

    20 Watercolor Paintings by Ana Victoria Calderon's Students

    Check out these projects of the Domestika community made with the watercolor painting technique Ana Victoria Calderón (@anavictoriana) is a painter and illustrator, who has found watercolor one of her favorite means of expression. She is inspired by elements of nature to create illustrations that you can also find applied to all kinds of products.

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  • Three Ways to Mix Watercolors
    Illustration

    Three Ways to Mix Watercolors

    Learn three methods for mixing watercolors to create different colors and effects, with Alex Hillkurtz One of the many reasons for watercolor’s popularity is the freedom and experimentation that it affords. Beyond the technique you use when putting brush to paper, the way you mix your colors offers an opportunity to add your own personality to the page. In this video, storyboard and watercolor artist Alex Hillkurtz (@alexhillkurtzart) shows three easy methods for mixing watercolors to create different colors and effects.

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