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  • How to Learn the Chiaroscuro Technique in 7 min (TUTORIAL)
    Teacher Illustration

    How to Learn the Chiaroscuro Technique in 7 min (TUTORIAL)

    Learn from Marco Mazzoni how to create perfect highlights and shadows on portraits In art, chiaroscuro is the use of strong contrasts between light and shadow, creating depth and drama. Adding a sense of volume, it not only fleshes out the artwork’s subject but also draws the viewer’s eye to it. Artists well-known for their use of this technique include Goya, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio, and it is still very much in use, not only in paintings but also in cinema and photography. In this tutorial, artist and illustrator Marco Mazzoni (@marcomazzoniart) demonstrates how you can transform a simple drawing of a face using the chiaroscuro technique to add shadows and depth. Using just a pencil and piece of paper, the result can either be an artwork in itself or serve as the base layer for a more detailed and colorful composition.

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  • Botanical Illustration Tutorial: How To Draw A Tree
    Teacher Illustration

    Botanical Illustration Tutorial: How To Draw A Tree

    Learn step by step how to draw a tree from references and combine different techniques and processes with Paulina Maciel Botanical illustration, whether realistic or fantastical, is one of the most beautiful styles a creative can practice, thanks to the abundance of colors, the ability to enhance our powers of observation, and the multiplicity of applications, from editorial design to story illustration, packaging design and other graphic needs. In this tutorial, Paulina Maciel (@pau_maciel), the designer and illustrator behind Canela Estudio, explains how to draw and paint a tree from scratch, with a very simple method, using materials available to everyone. Discover it in the video below:

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  • 3 Drawing Challenges That Will Unlock Your Creativity
    Illustration

    3 Drawing Challenges That Will Unlock Your Creativity

    Adolfo Serra shares exercises that will encourage you to imagine, play, and experiment, and unlock your creativity Chance, mistakes, games, limits, and freedom: all can serve to help you unleash your imagination, create a language, and find your voice. In this video, illustrator Adolfo Serra (@adolfoserra) shares three drawing challenges that will push you to experiment with manual techniques and unlock your creativity. Gather up all the art materials you have at home; it’s time to put your creativity to the test.

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  • Free Download: Color Tips for Drawing with Pencils
    Illustration

    Free Download: Color Tips for Drawing with Pencils

    Learn tricks to improve your coloring process with Marco Mazzoni Marco Mazzoni (@marcomazzoniart) is and artist and illustrator. Experimenting with the boundaries of fine art using pencils has been a passion of Marco’s since he was a student. He tells a compelling story through his pencil portraits, drawing inspiration from Sardinian mysticism and the plants that he began sketching as a boy.

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  • How to Capture a City's Personality
    Illustration

    How to Capture a City's Personality

    Architect and artist Carlos Stanga teaches how to find the soul of a city for your illustrations Architectural illustration can provide a unique connection to urban space. It's a way to capture a moment or a building in time and to express creatively how a place makes you feel. Artist and architect Carlo Stanga (@carlo_stanga) has done precisely that with the streets of Milan, London, or New York, to name a few, and has some tips you can follow to capture the soul of cityscapes in your illustrations.

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  • Combat Writer’s Block with This Technique to Beat the Blank Page
    Illustration

    Combat Writer’s Block with This Technique to Beat the Blank Page

    Learn to write stories in a fun and simple way with Natalia Méndez’s creative dice Overcoming the fear of the blank page has never been easy: thinkers, artists, and writers have been faced with creative block throughout history. Fear of failure, a lack of ideas, or the feeling that nobody will be interested in what you have to say, are among the many sentiments that leave us feeling lost and unable to continue our work. Editor and teacher of children's literature Natalia Méndez (@natumendez) explains how to combat creative block by creating dice with ideas and concepts inscribed on their faces to inspire new stories. We explain it step by step below.

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  • Adding Watercolor to Your Sketchbook Drawings
    Illustration

    Adding Watercolor to Your Sketchbook Drawings

    Mattias Adolfsson shows you how a hint of color will take your sketches to the next level and add depth Mattias Adolfsson (@mattiasadolfsson) is an illustrator living in a small town in Sweden, called Sigtuna, just outside of Stockholm. As a young adult, Mattias studied engineering and architecture before switching to graphic design, all the while continuing to draw in his spare time and develop his own unique style. During his degree, he became interested in 3D modeling, using it to build his own universes and tell fantastical stories. For his thesis project, he used 3D design and animation to create a visual piece about three cosmonauts traveling to Mars–a story he had developed over many years in his sketchbook. After graduating from university with a master’s in graphic design, Mattias worked for a decade in the computer games industry. In 2007, he left Electronic Arts to become a freelance illustrator. Since then, he has been commissioned by the likes of WIRED, Google, The New Yorker, Nickelodeon, Hollywood Reporter, Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Disney, Amnesty International, and many more.

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  • Domestika Creatives: Edel Rodriguez
    Illustration

    Domestika Creatives: Edel Rodriguez

    We talked to the artist and illustrator responsible for some of Time Magazine's most emblematic covers, Edel Rodriguez At the age of 26, Edel Rodriguez became Time Magazine's youngest ever art director for both their Canadian and Latin American editions. This extraordinary achievement is just one part of the fascinating life of one of the most interesting artists in America, a multidisciplinary creative who has created emblematic covers, illustrated children's books, and worked on posters for theater and cinema. A brilliant career in which his Cuban origins have played an essential role and which, in recent years, has gained acclaim due to his brilliant work as a cover artist on the policies of the Trump administration. Rodríguez is the author of some of Time's most popular (and, above all, most political) covers but his career is much more than this. We took the opportunity to interview him in New York, at the School of Visual Arts, to go over the milestones of his life and learn about his working philosophy. Watch our conversation below:

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  • Free Theoretical Guide for Manga Characters Creation
    Illustration

    Free Theoretical Guide for Manga Characters Creation

    Get your Japanese comic book project going and learn how to design your characters Andrea Jen (@andrea_jen) is an Argentinian illustrator and author specialized in manga creation. Since 2010 she has made almost a dozen publications in this genre, and has won important recognizing such as the Silent Manga Audition Masterclass Certificate (2017). For her, the most important thing in a manga project is the creation of the characters that will star in the core idea or concept that you have in mind. "What do you want to tell?". It's the first question that according to this artist you should ask yourself, so that you can get down to work and define the universe of characters that will tell the story for you by answering questions such as "What are their ideals?", "What moves them?" or "What experiences have marked you?".

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  • How to Make a Rotoscope Animation in Photoshop
    Illustration

    How to Make a Rotoscope Animation in Photoshop

    Learn how to create an animation with the rotoscope technique using Adobe Photoshop in just six steps Rotoscoping is a technique that involves redrawing a shape—tracing each scene with any drawing technique—frame by frame, based on a sequence of real action images, like a video clip. This generates a silhouette with realistic movement that can be used as a reference to animate a character. The technique was used in films such as A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life by Richard Linklater. One of the experts in this technique is Gonzalo Cordero (@gonzalo_cordero), illustrator, animator, and motionographer who will teach us how to create a rotoscope animation in Adobe Photoshop, which is the perfect way to familiarize yourself with this kind of animation.

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  • Free Download: Stages to Complete a Painting with Ink and Watercolor
    Illustration

    Free Download: Stages to Complete a Painting with Ink and Watercolor

    Illustrator Alex Hillkurtz shares a visual guide of the stages used in watercolor and ink painting Alex Hillkurtz (@alexhillkurtzart) was born in England and grew up in California where he is a renowned storyboard artist for feature films, television, and commercials. His film credits include Argo, Almost Famous, It’s Complicated, and many others. He uses the language of cinema to compose his images, moving beyond what one sees and depicting what he wants others to see. He believes that in our overly crowded lives, sketching and painting invites us to move at a more deliberate pace, giving us a true sense of place, where unexpected stories are revealed.

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  • 5 Essential Courses to Start Your Sketchbook Habit
    Illustration

    5 Essential Courses to Start Your Sketchbook Habit

    Take your sketching and creativity to another level with these experts The sketchbook is the perfect tool to develop as a creative. Regardless of your experience, it is a medium to develop in almost any creative discipline. Establishing the habit of always having your sketchbook with you will help you create surprising and innovative projects. Start to fill one up right now with ideas, sketches, watercolors, and anything else that might occur to you with the help of these five experts.

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  • What Is Exploded View Drawing?
    Illustration

    What Is Exploded View Drawing?

    Learn all about this illustration style used in industrial design and architecture Exploded View is a technical drawing style that shows the individual parts or the assembly order of an object as a diagram. While it’s often used for patenting objects, it first appeared during the Renaissance, and today is also a popular illustration style that is used to create interesting images that don't necessarily guide the assembly of an object. What is it used for? In industrial design, this drawing style helps designers, engineers, manufacturers, and artisans get a three-dimensional, explanatory view of the different parts of an object. Usually, the diagram gives instructions on how to assemble the object, which you’ve probably seen examples of in manuals explaining how to put together a piece of furniture.

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  • 5 Free Tutorials: Figure Drawing for Perfectionists
    Teacher Illustration

    5 Free Tutorials: Figure Drawing for Perfectionists

    Learn how to accurately draw the human figure with the help of these experts Figure drawing is the study of the structure, movement , anatomy and proportions of the human body. As an illustrator, it’s one of the disciplines that will give you the most satisfaction, both for its enormous creative possibilities and because you will be able to check your progress while practicing. Check out these 5 free tutorials in which drawing experts share their secrets to drawing faces, hands and bodies with realism like a professional.

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  • Choosing References to Inspire Your Character Design
    Illustration

    Choosing References to Inspire Your Character Design

    Learn these basic tips for choosing and using visual references when drawing characters with Marcio Takara One of the joys of creating a comic book character is that that person can be whatever you want them to be, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, tiny, or huge, and you can even create a totally new universe for them to live in. Chances are, however, that you’d like to situate them in a world that at least resembles some part of your own reality. Our imaginations are our most powerful tool, but carefully choosing references from which to create can help us design realistic and convincing heroes and villains for our stories. A good reference can also inspire you to take your drawings to new levels and different spaces. Here is a collection of tips from comic book artist Marcio Takara (@marciotakara) that will help you find visual references and provide the basic foundations for your next illustration.

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  • How to Import Fonts to Procreate?
    Illustration

    How to Import Fonts to Procreate?

    Procreate now allows you to add text to your illustrations, drawings, and designs. Learn how to use your favorite fonts Procreate has become, without a doubt, the favorite app of illustrators, cartoonists, designers and creatives around the world. The iPad software allows you to use the screen as a notebook and has a number of extremely useful features for digital artists, but until a few months ago you could not do something as simple as adding text to images. With the arrival of the function to add text comes a big question: how do you add fonts to Procreate? Here, we explain how, step by step.

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  • Free Download: Fantasy Portrait Brushes Pack for Photoshop
    Teacher Illustration

    Free Download: Fantasy Portrait Brushes Pack for Photoshop

    Artist Karmen Loh (Bearbrickjia) shares this collection of brushes for amazing portraits Karmen Loh, better known as Bearbrickjia (@bearbrickjia), is an illustrator from Malaysia whose experience has allowed her to work in the video game industry, participating in productions such as Street Fighter V or Steel Circus, among others. As a freelancer, she has managed to position her fantastic style in her illustration work, and one of the keys to achieving perfection in her work has been the configuration of brushes that help her achieve her style.

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  • Discovering Leonardo Da Vinci's Digital Notebooks
    Illustration

    Discovering Leonardo Da Vinci's Digital Notebooks

    It took us 500 years, but we can now access the notes, thoughts, and drawings of one of the greatest geniuses in history (for free!) Renaissance artist, musician, inventor, anatomist, architect, paleontologist, botanist, scientist, writer, sculptor, philosopher, engineer, and painter, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) is considered one of the greatest geniuses of all time and one of the most talented artists in history. Not only for his incredible works such as La Gioconda (1503), The Last Supper (1498), or The Annunciation (1472), but also for the notebooks and books full of diagrams, drawings, personal notes, and observations he made that are now proof of his genius. Leonardo seems to have started annotating his ideas and world views in the mid-1480s. He was a pioneer of the use of paper as a sketching tool and filled pages and pages with ideas, comments, thoughts, and inventions, blending the mind of a designer with that of a scientist. And now, some of these priceless notebooks are freely available on the Internet.

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  • Ayo Vega: Meet the Multifaceted and Multidisciplinary Artist
    Illustration

    Ayo Vega: Meet the Multifaceted and Multidisciplinary Artist

    Be inspired by this Spanish artist’s versatility and learn how he has turned his creativity into a winning strategy Ayo Vega (@ayo_vega) is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in creating and overseeing digital content. His output includes illustration, photography, graphic design, and visual effects for different digital platforms, engaging lots of different audiences with his viral creations. Check out this overview of his work, which shines a light on Ayo’s personal passions and unique online social media presence. He delivers a unique strategy for markets that are hungry for original and quality content.

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  • The Best Procreate Shortcuts
    Illustration

    The Best Procreate Shortcuts

    Speed up your workflow using a keyboard connected to your iPad when drawing in Procreate Procreate is one of the most popular apps for illustrators and designers using iPads. This award-winning creative application allows you to create beautiful sketches and stunning illustrations using Apple Pencil or just your finger. Whether you’ve just discovered the app or are already a skilled user, you'll find these keyboard shortcuts extremely useful. Download a free PDF with the Procreate Shortcuts at the end of this post.

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  • Illustration Tutorial: How to Illustrate a Character with Ink
    Teacher Illustration

    Illustration Tutorial: How to Illustrate a Character with Ink

    Learn with Alejandra Acosta how to take a character from a story and illustrate them with ink There are almost as many ways to illustrate as there are illustrators, but some illustration techniques have survived the passage of centuries thanks to their effectiveness, character, and results. Combining several of these techniques, such as ink printing, will allow us to obtain more original and unique illustrations. In the following video tutorial, the illustrator Alejandra Acosta (@alejandraacosta) teaches us how to create illustrated characters through the process of ink printing. A very organic and simple technique that can give us surprising results. Discover it below:

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  • Challenge: Designing an Album Cover in 15 Minutes
    Illustration

    Challenge: Designing an Album Cover in 15 Minutes

    Designer and Illustrator Steve Simpson takes on the Domestika Challenge Steve Simpson (@stevesimpson) has worked with major clients such as Disney Pixar, Adobe, and The Wall Street Journal, and has won over 50 awards from organizations like the Association of Illustrators. His distinctive and whimsical style has been applied to everything from children's toys, postage stamps, whiskey bottles, and hand-lettered packaging. In this Domestika Challenge, the illustrator only has 15 minutes to design a custom album cover commemorating Queen’s 50th anniversary. Can he quickly come up with an original take on such a classic cover? Find out in the video below:

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  • What is Sumi-e?
    Illustration

    What is Sumi-e?

    Illustator Flor Kaneshiro tells us about Sumi-e painting, a Japanese illustration technique of Chinese origin Sumi-e is a Japanese word formed by the terms "sumi" (ink) and "e" (painting). It is a centuries-old drawing technique that came to Japan with Buddhist monks from China, and has since been combined with other techniques and original interpretations In the video below, the Japanese illustrator Flor Kaneshiro (@florkaneshiro) talks about sumi-e, its characteristics and most common uses.

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