Materials: Commercial Illustration With Colored Pencils
Discover the materials you need to get started in commercial illustration with colored pencils
Drawing
Grab a pencil and a piece of paper and let your imagination soar, no matter what your level.
Drawing
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Teacher DesignSketching Tutorial: How to Create Stone Textures With Pens and Markers
Learn how to create stone texture using pens and markers with Fran Molina
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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?
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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Free Download: Figure Drawing Pose Guide
Practice your figure drawing skills with Zursoif's guide
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The Mythical Creatures that Inspired Everyone from Murakami to Miyazaki
Learn the history of the spirits and folklore that continue to inspire Japan's most iconic cultural creations, from Studio Ghibli to Pokemon Mascots are a feature of everyday life in Japan: neighborhoods, drugstores, the military, and even prisons have their own cuddly characters. This year, banned from taking to the streets because of COVID-19, many mascots began posting pictures of themselves on social media, adding blue wigs and scales to their typical costumes. These features are a tribute to Amabié, a 174-year-old mythical beast whose image, legend has it, has the power to protect people from plague. The social media trend started when one illustrator rediscovered Amabié and posted their illustration of the creature online, dubbing it a “new coronavirus countermeasure”. The post went viral, and within no time thousands of other people were sharing their own versions of Amabié. Amabié is what is known in Japan as a yokai, a sort of supernatural spirit or monster from Japanese folklore. Some are believed to bring luck, while others bring misfortune. Many originate from superstitions, and they can be characterizations of everything from earthquakes and rivers to diseases and cures.
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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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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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Teacher IllustrationIllustration 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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Teacher IllustrationDrawing 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
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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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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Teacher Design5 Free Classes to Learn How to Make a Mood Board
Learn to plan your creative projects like an expert with these lessons For any type of creative discipline, the planning and conceptualization of ideas is an essential moment in the development of projects. In these cases, the mood board is your best ally. By learning to make yours, you will be able to have visibility of your ideas and translate them in an orderly manner. Below 5 creative experts in different disciplines share with you practical advice to create your own mood boards. To watch each class, just click on its red title. Enjoy!
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Teacher DomestikaLearn to Unlock Your Creativity for Free Drawing with Puño
For 48 hours only, access this course for free to improve your drawing skills It doesn't matter where your skill level is at: if you like to draw and you still find it difficult to master elements such as color, shadow, perspective or proportion, this course is for you. Illustrator and educator Puño (@puno) is dedicated to teaching people who believe they would never be able to draw just that. He has perfected a teaching method by which, through simple and fun exercises, he will get your hand going and your mind to work, unlocking your creativity.
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Challenge: Turn a Blob Into a Character and Unlock Your Creativity
Creative director and toy designer Nathan Jurevicius faces the Domestika Challenge Nathan Jurevicius' art is as varied and original as his own career: illustrator, conceptual artist, author, and toy designer, the multifaceted creator has contributed to numerous publications, advertising campaigns and exhibitions around the world. His clients include Nickelodeon, MTV and Ikea. His personal project Scarygirl can be found in comics, toys, video games, and a film is currently in production. In this Domestika Challenge, Nathan shares an exercise to unlock our creativity by combining watercolor spots and drawing as he faces his own Challenge in front of the cameras. Can he transform colored spots into characters and worlds with their own identity? Find out in the following video:
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Teacher IllustrationIllustration Tutorial: Exercises to Learn How to Draw Animals
Learn the technique to draw animals with basic shapes from scratch with Puño, illustrator and teacher The good thing about drawing is that it gives us infinite possibilities: we can follow all the rules, or break them to let ourselves be carried away by our intuition and imagination. Regardless of whether we have a better or worse style, the important thing about drawing is that it allows us to express ourselves to have a lot of fun. In the following video tutorial, the illustrator and teacher Puño (@ puño) invites us to put aside embarrassment to learn how to create animals with simple geometric shapes, just with a marker and a sheet of paper or cardboard. Based on his advice, we can begin to realize that drawing is available to anyone. Discover it below
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Over 9000 Free Botanical Illustrations Made by Women
Enjoy this free collection that celebrates the work of female scientists throughout history Women have contributed enormously to biodiversity research and the study of nature. They have collected specimens, researched new species, published books and catalogs, and drawn detailed scientific and botanical illustrations. Women's contributions to science become more significant when considering the obstacles they have had to face throughout history. To honor their work, the Biodiversity Heritage Library compiled this album of female scientists' illustrations from the last three hundred years.
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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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Teacher IllustrationCharacter 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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Teacher IllustrationPainting Tutorial: Gradient Techniques on Silk
Learn how to make two different types of gradients (from light to dark, and color to color) with this silk painting technique, with Desedamas Silk is a material that offers numerous artistic possibilities that go beyond sewing: it is also a canvas on which to paint and capture all kinds of illustrations. The textile artist duo Desedamas (@desedamas) teach us how to take advantage of the qualities of silk and master the technique of grading in two different ways. You can see the tutorial here:
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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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Teacher IllustrationProcreate Tutorial: How to Digitize Your Comic Sketches
Learn step by step how to redraw, refine, and polish the vignettes that will shape your comic, with Charles Glaubitz Nowadays, practically all comic book artists have to know how to work both in analog, with pencil and paper, and in digital, taking advantage of the drawing tools offered by programs such as Manga Studio or, more recently, the iPad software Procreate. Procreate allows us to import our sketches and work on them with a wide range of brushes that we can customize to our liking. Mastering it is an essential skill for any good comic artist, and the good thing is that its simple interface makes things much easier. In the following video tutorial, comic book creator and multidisciplinary artist Charles Glaubitz (@mrglaubitz) shows us step by step the process to import a sketch on paper to Procreate and start working with it, to get a fully digitized comic book. Watch the video below:
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Bring Your Drawings to Life With This App
Learn to use RakugakiAR and make your creations move around in the real world using the magic of augmented reality Have you ever imagined the characters in your illustrations coming to life and jumping out of the paper? That is precisely what RakugakiAR can do thanks to the magic of augmented reality. Created by a team of developers in Japan, this app is guaranteed to put a smile on your face from the very first time you use it.
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Practical Exercise: Freehand Negative Drawing
Learn to invert color by hand with this technique from Amadeo Gonzales Amadeo Gonzales (@amadeog77) is an illustrator, drawer, lecturer, and self-taught musician. He is the creator of Carboncito, a magazine filled with graphic arts and comic strips that, since 2001, has published the work of a wide range of contemporary Latin American artists. Amadeo has also published a variety of fanzines, including Tránsito intestinal, Actitú records, Bandas inexistentes records, Frustrazine and Nervenzusammenbruch.
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Teacher IllustrationChallenge: Draw Captain Spock in Tones of Pink
Pablo Velasco Bertolotto takes on the challenge set by Domestika to reproduce in detail the iconic character from the Star Trek saga Hair, eyes, clothes, hands, reflections, and textures... all in pink: the challenge proposed to the illustrator and graphic designer Pablo Velasco Bertolotto (@bertolotto) in this edition of the Domestika Challenge. He will have to play with different shades of pink to obtain the necessary contrasts and variations to give life to the character. The figure that this creative artist has chosen for this purpose is the mythical Captain Spock, from the Star Trek saga. Will he be able to perfectly reproduce, with hardly any variation in color, the creator of the 'live long and prosper' greeting? Find out in the video:
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Free Download: Guide for Drawing Head and Body Proportions
Learn how to draw a human head and body using the correct proportions Although the human body is probably the figure we know best, many of us would find it difficult to correctly draw its proportions from memory. The length of the arms, the width of the shoulders and hips, where the wrists hit the body... and the same goes for the head and face. The relationship between all these body parts, which we have seen so many times, becomes a little less obvious when we sit in front of a blank piece of paper with a pencil in hand. This guide to anatomical proportions, shared with Domestika by Brazilian comic artist and illustrator Marcio Takara (@marciotakara), will help make the task of drawing people much easier.
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Teacher IllustrationIllustration Tutorial: How to Refine Drawings of Urban Objects and People
Learn the basics of how to enrich an architectural illustration by including different elements like urban objects and people, with Carlo Stanga Creating an architectural illustration is more than just mastering straight lines and buildings. Being able to fill these compositions with local details, through distinctive objects and people from that place, is key to being able to capture a location’s atmosphere. In this video, architectural illustrator Carlo Stanga (@carlo_stanga) explains how to prepare and sketch urban people and objects, which you can later include in your final composition. From how to use them to create depth, to why they’re so key in giving life to your illustrations, here he shares his own process for how to create these studies of objects and people to create engaging and unique architectural illustrations.
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Teacher IllustrationTutorial Illustration: How to Use Shapes to Create Vector Drawings
Learn the basics of how to draw over your original sketch using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, with Nathan Jurevicius Making the jump from a sketch to a digital illustration doesn’t have to be as daunting, or require as many tools, as you might think. Using just a mouse and the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, multidisciplinary artist Nathan Jurevicius (@nathanjurevicius) demonstrates how to create shapes which will serve as the building blocks for your vector drawings. In this video, learn how to add detail to your illustration using the pen tool, how to keep your workflow organized, and how to build on your original reference sketch.
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7 Ways to Simplify an Image in Visual Communication
Discover how to simplify an image to communicate a graphic message clearly
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Free Download: Easy Doodle Exercises to Learn to Draw
Puño shares with you easy exercises to warm up your hand Puño (@puno) is an educator and illustrator who has worked in advertising, animation, photography and editorial illustration, including the publication of several books of his authorship. Puño teaches daily to draw that they thought would never be possible, and he trusts that the idea is to simply lose his fear of the sheet and the pencil.
