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  • #ColorOurCollections: Top Museums Share Free Coloring Resources
    Art

    #ColorOurCollections: Top Museums Share Free Coloring Resources

    Thousands of cultural institutions invite you to color in images from their world-class collections Adult coloring books have surged in popularity over recent years. Coloring is thought to be a mindful practice that helps switch off negative thoughts and reduce anxiety. Encouraging us to focus our full attention on the task in front of us, coloring can have a calming, meditative effect. #ColorOurCollections is an annual coloring festival run by The New York Academy of Medicine. Launched in 2016, this social media event takes place every February and sees libraries, museums, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world share coloring book pages featuring images from their collections, which can be downloaded for free.

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  • Access Over 300 Painting and Architecture Books Published by Getty
    Art

    Access Over 300 Painting and Architecture Books Published by Getty

    The Getty Museum in Los Angeles offers an online catalog of books about architecture, photography, and painting You know that feeling when you finally find the book you’ve been searching for? Suddenly, you're holding onto pages of reference material, infinite sources of inspiration, and new ideas that are waiting to be discovered. Well, now, thanks to the Getty Publications Virtual Library, you will be able to experience this feeling over and over again. The site allows you to download books for free, and even print them out. You’ll gain access to over 300 titles about art, photography, archaeology, architecture, conservation, and humanities.

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  • 435 Free Bird Watercolors from the 19th Century
    Illustration

    435 Free Bird Watercolors from the 19th Century

    Get inspired by these watercolors of North American birds as an introduction to naturalist illustration If you have the opportunity to escape to the mountains or spend some time in a park with your paintbrushes, do not miss it. It’s the best way to make the most of watercolor when painting botanical and naturalist illustration. If, however, what you really like is painting birds, you will need a great deal of patience, as they can spread their wings at any moment, and leave you halfway through your composition. In addition to working from observation, you can use reference images to practice painting birds from other countries, and even from other eras. Birds of America gives you this opportunity: a journey into the natural world of the 19th century. Printed between 1827 and 1838, this free resource contains 435 life-size watercolors of North American birds, all reproduced from hand-etched plates. Its author, John James Audubon, America's first ornithologist, is considered the original wildlife illustrator.

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  • Watercolour World: Access 100,000 Pre-1900 Watercolor Paintings
    Art

    Watercolour World: Access 100,000 Pre-1900 Watercolor Paintings

    Explore this archive collating 100,000 watercolor paintings created before 1900, which have been recovered by the Marandi Foundation Long before photography existed, artists, explorers, and scientists used watercolors to capture the world around them and record moments from everyday life. While lots of museums and organizations have recovered a great deal of material, there are still millions of priceless paintings out there waiting to be discovered. Although most of the authors are anonymous or unknown painters, the Marandi Foundation has committed itself to finding, digitizing, and categorizing these artworks for its Watercolour World archive, which includes more than 100,000 watercolor paintings. You can use their search engine to explore their catalog and download images for free in high resolution. Collaborative efforts have led to the foundation discovering where a lot of these paintings come from and what they were trying to say.

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  • Access Thousands of Free Artworks from Museums and Libraries On Artvee
    Art

    Access Thousands of Free Artworks from Museums and Libraries On Artvee

    Discover this free image bank filled with paintings, drawings, and illustrations by artists from centuries ago Over recent years, important museums and libraries around the world have been granting access to their public domain art collections for free use. Artvee is a website that classifies and groups the best images in one place, making them easier to discover, download, and use. In their archives, you can find works by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Raphael, and Sandro Botticelli. Here we explain how to navigate the site and share some examples of the type of work you will be able to access.

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  • Get Thousands of Free Cassette Designs on Tapedeck
    Design

    Get Thousands of Free Cassette Designs on Tapedeck

    Download thousands of images of cassettes, the retro object that is making a comeback On March 11th, it felt like the death of Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette tape, signaled the death of his creation. However, nothing could be further from the truth: the cassette tape is back, not just as a piece of design to be admired but a tangible way for independent bands to distribute their music. This has resulted in increased interest in the way they are made. The site Tapedeck.org is a project created by German graphic designer and street artist Neck Cnse, which showcases the amazing beauty and, sometimes, usualness of the designs. Below, we share a selection of unique models and explain the story behind this revival.

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  • 5 Websites For Downloading Free UI Design Icons
    Design

    5 Websites For Downloading Free UI Design Icons

    Find the perfect icons to make your project shine One of the most important decisions when carrying out UI design is choosing the right icons. When you start working with icons, you soon realize that this decision is not just a question of aesthetics. Every detail counts, and there are various factors to think about, such as whether your icons need a supporting element for users to understand them. Christian Vizcarra (@christvizcarra) is an expert in interface design and is here to guide you through this process. Here he shares his favorite websites for finding icons in a range of styles. Enjoy! Iconfinder You’ll easily find what you're looking for on the world's largest icon marketplace. With more than 4,900,000 different types, this website is the place to go to find one icon in particular or a complete collection for your projects. One of Iconfinder’s key features is its team of creatives, who are always on the lookout for what users need. Its filter is very detailed, and you can browse through different sections: designers, categories, or styles. Aside from the icons that are available for free, you can also access their Premium rates.

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  • The Louvre Shares a New Digital Database Compiling More Than 480,000 Artworks
    Art

    The Louvre Shares a New Digital Database Compiling More Than 480,000 Artworks

    “Collections” is the French museum's new initiative to digitize its 200-year history If you head to the Louvre's website right now, you will encounter the following message, "The Musée du Louvre remains closed until further notice." But while the French museum has closed its doors in the real world, it has thrown them wide open online. Since March 26th, this year, people all over the world have been granted access to a digital database compiling over 480,000 artworks, known as the “Collections” initiative. A revolutionary move that helps to make art history more accessible to all. While it was already possible to visit the museum virtually, the newly configured louvre.fr site now gives you first-hand access to all of the documentation compiled by the Louvre's curators for each piece. This means having access to 480,000 entries, including the images and objective details.

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  • 10 Free Color Palette Websites To Achieve Harmony And Contrast
    Design

    10 Free Color Palette Websites To Achieve Harmony And Contrast

    Take advantage of these color tools to give the perfect finish to all your projects In all branches of design and the arts, color is one of the key elements for the end result to be consistent and pleasing to the eye. Two components that you should also take into account when choosing your color palette are contrast and harmony, which will make all the colors integrate into your chromatic proposal. That is why Leire and Eduardo (@leireyeduardo), graphic design experts and color lovers, share with you 10 free websites that will help you complete your chromatic proposal, all of them focused on contrast and harmony.

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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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  • 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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  • The Art Institute of Chicago Is Sharing Thousands of Free Images
    Art

    The Art Institute of Chicago Is Sharing Thousands of Free Images

    The Art Institute of Chicago’s digital library contains over 40,000 files that you can download for free The Art Institute of Chicago has a collection of over 300,000 works of art and a history spanning back to the 19th century (having been founded by George Armour in 1879). It is one of the most important and relevant art institutions across both the United States and the world–up there with New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The collection includes works by local and international artists from early and modern times. Standout pieces include those by artists from Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish schools. While many museums and galleries had already digitized part, if not all, of their permanent collections, The Art Institute of Chicago only made this leap more recently. Its digital library allows users to explore and download high-quality images of artworks from their collection.

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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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  • 3 Websites to Download Free High-Quality Mockups
    Teacher Design

    3 Websites to Download Free High-Quality Mockups

    These are the websites the designers use to get the best mockups The icing on the cake for any great design project is to see that smile on the client's face during the presentation thanks to high-quality visuals. Mockups are editable images that allow you to show a design the way it would look if it were applied to the product or in real life. Without a doubt, they are one of the most significant assets for designers when it comes to publicizing their work. Pattern designer Laura Varsky and members of the design studio The Branding People have shared with us the websites they usually trust when looking for resources for their presentations. Mockup world This website houses a wide variety of mockups and editable resources of different styles that can be adapted to the design you are working on. Laura Varsky (@lau_varsky) points out the importance of choosing the ones with smart objects and, above all, looking for those that offer you higher-quality images — especially if you are going to end up printing the mockups once you have applied your design to them. Most of the website's resources can be downloaded on the site, but some will redirect you to the creator's webpage.

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  • This Digital Archive Is a Treasure Chest of Typography and Design
    Design

    This Digital Archive Is a Treasure Chest of Typography and Design

    The TM Research Archive compiles every issue of the magazine Typographische Monatsblätter, which played an important role in the history of typography If we look back on 20th-century graphic design history, the emergence of International Typographic Style–a movement of Russian, Dutch and German origin that developed mainly in Switzerland during the post-WW2 years–was a huge turning point. Looking to unify shape and content and drawn to simplicity and typographic design, International Typographic Style had such a huge influence on global design that its impact is still felt today.

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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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  • Studio Ghibli Releases Free Images From All Its Movies
    3D & Animation

    Studio Ghibli Releases Free Images From All Its Movies

    Download more than a thousand free high-res images from this beloved animation studio's films The films of Studio Ghibli without a doubt have won the heart of animation lovers all over the world. Much of their emblematic films appear in many of the critics' selections as unmissable works of art. In September, the studio's producer, Toshio Suzuki, published a handwritten note in which he communicated the free sharing of images of eight of his films. In the following months the number increased and, since the beginning of December, what should be the last collection for a while, is online for free download. In total there are already 1,178 images, from all films!

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  • 5 Resources to Create Beautiful Photomontages
    Photography

    5 Resources to Create Beautiful Photomontages

    Discover these sites and resources to create high-impact photomontages Photomontage is the composition of different images to create a completely new one; it’s used as much by artists as by advertisers. Here are the best free resources to aid you start out or perfect your skills in this creative discipline, helping you achieve better finishes with your experiments in photomanipulation.

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  • Ukiyo-e: the Beauty Behind the Classic Japanese Woodblock Prints (For Free)
    Art

    Ukiyo-e: the Beauty Behind the Classic Japanese Woodblock Prints (For Free)

    Find hundreds of thousands of prints on the most extensive online ukiyo-e database Woodblock printing is one of the most famous Japanese art forms, an elaborate technique that was first used by temple monks to reproduce Buddhist texts efficiently. We associate it nowadays with ukiyo-e art, illustrations from the 17th to 19th centuries that capture scenes from everyday life: kabuki theater, geishas and courtesans, sumo wrestlers, folk tales, and landscapes.

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  • Letterform Archive: 1000 Years of Typography Online In Ultra-high Quality
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    Letterform Archive: 1000 Years of Typography Online In Ultra-high Quality

    Let the Letterform Archive’s ultra-high quality digital collection inspire your typography Letterform Archive was founded by Rob Saunders, a letter arts collector who wanted to share his collection with the public. They have been a reference for over 10,000 visitors in the last five years, but visiting their diverse collection of typographies, calligraphies, artworks, and texts has become impossible in quarantine. However, whether it’s a loose page from a Qur’an from 1150 or every copy of the boundary-breaking design magazine, Emigre, they’ve gone to extraordinary measures to bring the artwork to you.

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  • 8 Websites to Download Free Stock Music
    Music & Audio

    8 Websites to Download Free Stock Music

    Give your audiovisual projects an original touch with these free audio resources Free music and sound libraries are a staple for creating video projects. They don’t only help you produce unique pieces with audio elements adjusted to your needs, but they help build your style. You’ve got to invest sufficient time to choose the right track instead of just the most popular ones. That way, you’ll make more professional and original projects. That’s why we’ve made this list of 5 platforms so you can find the perfect feel among an enormous variety of options. NoCopyrightSounds (NCS) This record label is one of the most practical and high-quality resources around for free music. NCS was founded by a British entrepreneur Billy Woodford in 2011 and, although his original idea was to provide music to video game developers, it’s possible to use his library for all kinds of audiovisual projects published on YouTube or Twitch. The collection is predominantly electronic music, and the only requirement is to credit the musicians and the platform.

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  • 5 Websites For Free Stock Videos
    Film & Video

    5 Websites For Free Stock Videos

    Discover the best sites for downloading free footage to use for your video projects These are the top sites for downloading free stock videos to use in whatever project you’re currently working, be it audiovisual or web. All of the sites we’re recommending are free both for personal and commercial use, and some of them even offer photography, music, sound, and motion graphics content as well. Among their libraries, you will discover footage in 4K and a range of aerial shots that have been captured by drones or using time-lapse, as well as archives that you can search by category or using tags. Life of Vids This free selection offers videos, clips, and loops without any copyright restrictions, to use for both personal and commercial projects. The footage includes a range of shots of the great outdoors, the workplace, aerial shots, food, cities, people, and more. The only thing they do ask is to limit redistribution across other websites and, providing you’re happy to, credit the authors. You can upload your own footage as well.

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  • You Now Have 2.8 Million Free Images to Use on Your Projects
    Art

    You Now Have 2.8 Million Free Images to Use on Your Projects

    The Smithsonian Institution releases millions of high-resolution images from across its collections into the public domain The Smithsonian Institution is the world's largest museum and research complex, a must-see attraction in Washington D.C. that documents the history and heritage of the United States while also highlighting the world's natural and cultural diversity. The collection held in its vault is, by all accounts, staggering. It is estimated to have nearly 155 million pieces altogether, including more than 146 million artifacts and specimens at the National Museum of Natural History. The Institution has started digitizing its entire catalog, a process that will take years to complete. Less than 25% of it has been digitized thus far! The site offers high-resolution 2D images and 3D models, as well as research datasets and collections metadata. The Smithsonian's 19 museums, research centers, libraries, and even the National Zoo have contributed. The database includes content across the arts, sciences, history, culture, and design, from portraits of American historical figures to 3D scans of dinosaur skeletons.

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  • Download 16,000 BBC Sound Effects Free
    Film & Video

    Download 16,000 BBC Sound Effects Free

    For the first time ever, the BBC are making their enormous sound effects archive openly available and free for personal and educational use Whether it’s a baby waking up, the warble of an African bird, or the roaring of a single motor cylinder, it can all be found in the BBC sound catalog.

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