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Illustration

10 Apps for Restless Illustrators

Inspiration comes in all sorts of places, so best be prepared for it. Here are 10 apps for illustrating on the go A sketchbook and a drawing tool have always been indispensable to artists, needing to be within their reach whenever the opportunity arises. New technologies have relegated paper to second place, favoring smartphones and tablets. Numerous apps are available to allow us to create illustrations with excellent results. Here is a small selection we believe you need to know. Procreate One of the best-known apps around, Procreate's technical and aesthetic features–along with its creative excellence–have earned it an Apple Design Award. It is a comprehensive app that allows us to create digital illustrations to a very high resolution.
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Teacher Craft

Free Download: Printable Punch Needle Template

Discover the possibilities of the punch needle with this embroidery template by Laura Ameba Known as a punch needle or a magic needle, this little embroidery gadget allows you to create authentic works of art with thread by adding volume and texture to your textile creations. Chilean textile artist Laura Ameba (@lauraameba) has spent years exploring its possibilities and has trained in Spain and Japan, where she was inspired not only to perfect her technique but also to explore ideas and ways of expressing herself. This punch needle embroidery template that she has shared with Domestika will help you practice your skills as a punch needle embroiderer and encourage you to show the world your techniques.
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3D & Animation

5 Free Apps for Video Game Creators (Who Can’t Program)

Is it possible to create a video game without previous knowledge of programming? Video games are not limited to one discipline: they need illustration, narrative, design, 3D modeling, and, of course, programming. If you want to create your own interactive game, you may well find it a complex and daunting task. There are often two main obstacles: the price of certain development programs and a lack of programming knowledge. Fortunately, there are a number of free programs that can help you enter this world with, believe it or not, no prior knowledge of programming. We present you the following list of 5 video game design apps of different complexity so that you can find the one that best suits your level and needs. 1. Quest A good story is the basis of many video games, so perhaps you should start with the basics. If you are a fan of complex and flexible narratives but have never had to design an interactive story, Quest will allow you to develop text-based games in the style of the legendary Zork (1977). You won't need any programming, design, or illustration skills for this kind of "Choose Your Own Adventure” game and you will exercise your brain to start thinking like a narrative designer.
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Marketing

What Is Social Selling?

Get to know the strategy that helps you improve your brand value, your content, and your sales through social media Online sales are becoming increasingly more important. The digital age has revolutionized practices, ideas, and marketability, offering opportunities to grow and adopt new strategies, while causing old ways to become obsolete. One of the new options is social selling, a new way of making the most of social media–such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram–and connecting with the market, branding, and identifying potential customers among users. Núria Mañé (@nuriacomunica) is passionate about digital communication, creativity, and technology. She has almost twenty years of experience working closely with companies and entrepreneurs and in this post she shares what she knows about social selling with Domestika: What is social selling? With the term “social selling”, we describe the use we make of social media to meet, connect, understand, and investigate sales prospects. It is a digital and very current way to develop meaningful relationships with potential clients. It's a sales strategy that offers us data about potential customers, including their areas of interest. Where do we find it? If you have a business page on Facebook or Instagram, a LinkedIn profile, or a professional account on Twitter, you are already involved in basic social selling. You may not have used this term before to describe your online activity, but if you present yourself within a digital environment, you are, in essence, already social selling.
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Illustration

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 Illustration

Domestika Projects: Junction - Graphic Novel

Nathan Jurevicius talks about the creative process behind one of his latest projects: Junction My name is Nathan Jurevicius and I'm a multidisciplinary artist working in the field of illustration, fine art, animation, games and publishing. It can be hard to limit what I do to one thing but currently I'm focusing on concept art for tv and film. I began my early career as an editorial illustrator for a number of magazines around the world and then shifted direction to interactive storytelling during the early 2000's. It was around this time I was approached by a company based in Hong Kong to develop toys. The first series that came out was based on my Scarygirl designs and from here I started creating comics and games around the brand.
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Teacher Design

6 Books to Inspire Graphic Designers

These graphic design books will inspire you and help you learn about the history of this discipline Daniel Barba López, graphic designer and director of Monotypo Studio (@monotypo_studio)–a studio dedicated to offering graphic and communication solutions to brands, in everything from small adjustments to a logo to fresh reworks of company stationery, packaging, and other avenues for providing vision and personality–shares his favorite graphic design books. History of Graphic Design, by Philip B. Meggs Learning the history of graphic design is an excellent way to grow as a designer. This book, written by Philip B. Meggs, offers an inexhaustible source of knowledge and inspiration, as it shows us the most relevant paradigms of graphic design from its origins to the present.
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Design

What Is an Art Director in a Design Studio?

Understand the role of an art director and what part they play within a creative team Art directors have a significant role in the design industry. Linus Lohoff (@linus_lohoff), a freelance art director for clients like Adobe, Nike, and Comme des Garçons, helps us explore this role and tells us how an art director translates ideas into visual communication tools. In his Domestika course, he reveals a few secrets he gained from his career, working in different environments and industries.
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Web & App Design

Storyboarder: Free Digital Storyboarding Software

This tool allows anyone to create a digital storyboard in just a few seconds, as if it were on paper The maxim that "less is more" becomes especially relevant when speaking about apps. Even more so when we discover that simplifying how they work doesn’t reduce their functionality. Storyboarder, a free and open source software for sketching stories digitally, complies perfectly with this premise, getting rid of unnecessary tools and embracing extreme simplicity to make creating a digital storyboard practically the same as doing it on paper.
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Design

7 Architectural Works from Around the World that Represent the 21st Century

Domestika teachers choose the projects that, in their opinion, best define the avant-garde and the spirit of the last two decades Like any other manifestation of human ingenuity, architecture is an art in constant transformation, intrinsically related to the historical moment in which it develops. To commemorate World Architecture Day and the Architect's Day–a day invented by the International Union of Architects (UIA) that always falls on the first Monday of October–we present seven projects that symbolize the avant-garde and the spirit of our time in the vision of different teachers of Domestika courses linked to the discipline. This is not a ranking or a definitive list, but rather a set expert opinions, based on the distinctive and innovative features they believe are reflected in these creations. 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
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Illustration

What Is Urban Sketching?

Lapin, urban sketcher, explains what this discipline that arises from everyday life consists of What is your main source of inspiration? For urban sketches, inspiration is everywhere and in all situations of everyday life. This is the case of Lapin (@lapinbarcelona), an expert in telling stories with his drawings based on observation, which has led him to work with clients such as Air France, Le Parisien Magazine, Peugeot, Porsche, and many more. If you like to observe everything around you and want to discover a new style to express yourself graphically, as well as to explore architectural illustration, learn more about urban sketching below.
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Art

Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Virtual Tour

You can now explore the Brant Foundation’s 2019 Basquiat exhibition online Connect to the internet and be transported to New York City. The Brant Foundation has created an immersive virtual tour of the inaugural exhibition of their East Village space. The exhibition, titled Jean-Michel Basquiat, comprises four floors filled with 70 works–created from 1980 to 1987–by the radical underground graffiti artist who went on to become a global sensation. Born in 1960 to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Jean-Michel Basquiat grew up in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, Basquiat frequented the city’s museums and galleries and was encouraged by his mother to create his own works. When Basquiat was hit by a car aged eight, his mother brought a copy of Gray's Anatomy to the hospital. From that moment on, her son developed a fascination with anatomy, inspiring the bodily imagery–in particular skulls, sinew, and guts–that would feature heavily in his work.
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Marketing

How to Get a Job that Works for You in the New Normal

We spoke to the work-from-home maestro, Foncho Ramírez-Corzo, about how to make the new normal work for you Working from home was already growing in popularity before the global pandemic hit, confinement merely sped up its trajectory, according to the incessantly smiley Foncho Ramírez-Corzo (@cholutions). The consultant and entrepreneur, who teaches the Domestika course, Home Office: Working from Home Successfully, shared some tips, tricks, and philosophies that will help you or your business stand out in the market and help anyone make the new normal work for them. Whether you’re out of a job or adapting your current one to new circumstances, his perspective will make your situation feel a lot more hopeful.
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Craft

What is Needle Felting?

Caro Indy answers some of the fundamental questions about the incredible world of needle felting These little furry characters have been created using only a needle and a ball of wool. The technique used to create them is called needle felting, and we talked to artist Carolina Alles–better known as Caro Indy (@caroindy)–, an expert on the subject, to find out more about what exactly needle felting is, what materials are needed to start, and what use they can have. Carolina has created countless characters out of wool fleece, many of which have starred in her various animation projects. They have answered our questions on needle felting for anyone who’s trying to get into the craft.
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Web & App Design

Kidpofy: An App to Preserve Children's Handwriting

This site allows us to preserve children's handwriting and use it and any imaginable format Who hasn't ever seen a notebook or drawing from their childhood and been surprised to see the difference between their handwriting then, through their adolescence, to now? Its offers a special window to the past that we risk losing if we only preserve it physically. Kidpofy is a calligraphy digitization project that takes advantage of technology to preserve the handwriting of our children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces. We can then use it in postcards, letters, decorative objects, or anything else we can think of. The process is very simple: on the project's website (with optimized access for cell phones or tablets), children can write the entire alphabet following some practical guides. The letters are then stored in the project's database.
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Teacher Illustration

Illustration 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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Illustration

Domestika Diary: Alfonso de Anda

Mexican illustrator Alfonso de Anda tells us about his creative routine and sources of inspiration during confinement Confinement can undermine the inspiration of even the most creative people. Alfonso de Anda (@deandaalfonso), a multifaceted Mexican illustrator who has working on projects in areas as varied as editorial illustration, animation, advertising, mural design, fashion design and gallery exhibits, has not been immune to this effect. However, he has found ways to stay creative and productive. In this Domestika Diary, the illustrator opens the doors of his home, his routine, and his studio to share his daily life with us and the strategies with which he has fought the feared creative block during the pandemic. Discover it below:
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Teacher Design

5 Essential Courses for Learning Programming from Scratch

Dive into the world of programming and discover these courses taught by top professionals Today, having an online presence is essential for almost any profession. For this reason, those working in programming have endless clients knocking at their doors, looking to make their digital dreams a reality. These courses serve to help you learn to code without any previous knowledge. WordPress Theme Development, a course by Ignacio Cruz Moreno WordPress is a platform offering numerous templates that can be adapted to any and every one of the user’s needs. However, sometimes things don’t always turn out exactly as you might have hoped. To ensure that you don’t encounter any design or functionality problems, Ignacio Cruz will teach you to develop your own WordPress theme to use -for your own projects or share it with other users.
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3D & Animation

5 Loop Animation Styles That Will Inspire You

Animator Pablo Cuello shares the work of 5 incredible creatives When you think about animation, you might imagine feature films from the big film studios. However, you don't need to create such complex or lengthy animations to inspire a deep emotional response in your viewers. Pablo Cuello (@pablocuello) is an Argentine graphic designer and animator who works with After Effects to create short and straightforward pieces that overflow with appeal:
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Teacher Marketing

What Is Copywriting and How Can I Become a Copywriter?

Discover what makes a good copywriter and what is their main role in an advertising agency The copywriter shoulders a great deal of the creative responsibility behind an ad. Some of the best advertising campaigns in history have originated from the mind of a copywriter. Yet, for many people, it is still unclear what their role is within an advertising agency. It is also sometimes hard for them to explain it to anyone outside of the industry. We’ll explain who is a copywriter and their role in an advertising agency in this day and age.
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Music & Audio

Basic DJ Equipment for Beginners

Discover the setup recommended by Chuck Pereda for mixing electronic music Always wanted your own DJ setup? Before you start preparing your set and get ready to make your DJ debut, you will need some basic equipment (in addition to a love of music.) Chuck Pereda (@chuck_pereda), a DJ and radio presenter with more than two decades’ of experience, shares a basic list of essential equipment for beginner DJs. Chuck wants to point out that you will be able to acquire the following material second-hand. These are just recommendations, get together what you can, and turn up the volume.
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Photography

5 Essential Books to Learn Composition and Balance

Improve your photo composition skills with a handful of recommended publications Creating an image is not merely putting different elements together. Composition and balance are essential to ensure our photo elements are well placed, effectively structured, and guide the viewer's gaze to the center of our image. Lídia Vives (@lidiavivesphoto) is a photographer specialized in artistic photography and known for her pictorial self-portraits that always hide secrets. Lídia's work has been exhibited in galleries in Spain and Australia and is inspired by the Renaissance's great Italian masters.
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Writing

Brainstorming for Developing Audio Visual Script Writing Projects

Use a practical exercise to play with ideas and create memorable stories What do all books, movies, TV series, and comics you enjoy have in common? Possibly the fact they are all based on an unforgettable tale, no matter how complex or straightforward the story will be developed visually. Alejandra Moffat (@alemoffat) has written scripts for features, animation, and documentary films featured in festivals such as the Berlinale or the Havana Film Festival. Here, she will share a simple brainstorming method to get your ideas into an audiovisual project.
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Teacher Photography

The Pros and Cons of Photography Work from Home

In the video 'Working from Home', photographers in three different countries relate their experiences of bringing their production into their homes In the second half of September, the US environmental scientist and engineer Gretchen Goldman went viral, with more than 300,000 likes on her tweet graphically portraying the truth of her WFH set up. With just two photos, she shows how she appears working remotely, impeccably dressed (from the waist up) while commenting on a political and environmental issue on CNN. Meanwhile, in the image next to her, we see the environment she really finds herself in during the broadcast: surrounded by children's toys, in a messy room, with a chair for a desk. This has become a common reality for many millions of workers around the world during this pandemic: between 25% and 30% of workers in the United States and the European Union, according to a report by Global Workplace Analytics, a number that could reach 41% by next year, as a study by the consulting firm Gartner predicts. To understand how professionals in a career essentially linked to contact, interaction, and physical presence have adapted to working at a distance, we interviewed photographers from different corners of the world. Among them, the Brazilian Bob Wolfenson, creator of some of the most famous portraits of celebrities, anonymous people, models and personalities of his country; the Hong Kong based Elaine Li, art director and multi-faceted photographer; and the duo Daniel Rueda and Anna Devis (@annandaniel), from Valencia, Spain, whose photos take a fantastical, ironic, and stylish look at the everyday that has earned them almost 900 thousand followers in Instagram. Watch the video below:
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Illustration

Free Download: Perspective Guide for Urban Sketching

Download Lapin's perspective guide to add soul and personality to your urban sketches One of the advantages of urban sketching is that it allows us to represent the reality of a city, but from our own perspective. Unlike what we would achieve with a camera, we have the possibility of instilling soul by adding details that would otherwise go unnoticed. In this case, perspective also plays in our favor: we can create a realistic illustration that fits everything we see including angles a camera could never capture.
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Teacher Illustration

Domestika Projects: Greetings From Ha Tachana

The Ink Bad Company's founder tells us about one of his most exotic illustrated projects: postcards from Tel Aviv My name is Juan Carlos, and I manage a one-person studio devoted to illustration: Ink Bad Company. I was born in a small town in Jaén (Andalucía, Spain), where I learned to harvest olives the traditional way, by shaking the trees. I made my mother happy choosing to study in Granada instead and ended up moving to Valencia, where I'll happily draw anything in exchange for financial compensation. My field of expertise is adult, commercial, and media illustration. And even though I have worked for important clients and agencies in pretty awesome projects, I want to believe that I really draw for myself at the end of the day. I love to dig into my brain, extract things that I have seen out there, mix them as well as possible, and try to make the result drinkable and tasty. Basically, this is how I work.
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Web & App Design

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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Marketing

7 Free Sites for Independent Journalists

Explore these resources to promote your work and improve your online presence If you are a professional journalist, regardless of whether you work independently or are just starting out, you will find that an excellent way to position yourself in the marketplace is to improve your online presence. This is true if you do reporting, if you are a photographer, or if you specialize in specific social media content. That's why we've compiled a list of useful sites for you to use, as well as others that will help you with your topic search and productivity. What other sites do you use? Medium This site has gained a lot of popularity among independent writers of all kinds. Its interface allows you to easily upload photos and text, and publish your notes directly. Its monetization system allows you to earn money if your content goes viral and you get a certain number of readers.
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Illustration

Turn Your Designs Into Products You Can Sell

Mike Sandoval shares some tips that will help you turn your designs into products people want to buy Whether you are thinking of creating a line of T-shirts with your illustrations or just want your designs to flood the streets as stickers, these tips are for you. Mexican illustrator and graphic designer Mike Sandoval (@mike_sandoval_) has transformed his work into silkscreen prints, T-shirts, prints, bags, pins, skateboards, stickers and any other product you can imagine. These years of experience have helped him realize what any creative should consider if he wants to turn his designs into successful merchandising. Define your style We are not talking only in terms of aesthetics, but also about the themes you focus on, as well as the causes you support with your designs or illustrations. In order to market products with your design in them, it is highly recommended that potential buyers recognize your work as yours. Having a clearly defined style is essential.
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Teacher Craft

Cyanotype Tutorial: Printing with Leaves and Flowers

Learn how to create cyanotype prints without using digital or manual photolithographs with Fábrica de Texturas Cyanotype is a monochromatic artisan technique for printing negatives; it requires a surface treated with a series of chemicals and an object to be placed on top of it (the object can be a photographic negative or anything else that covers the light). When the sun shines on it, the surface darkens, while the covered areas do not, thus leaving a mark with the shape of the object. This is a simple technique that requires few materials. If done properly, it will allow us to create original prints on pieces of paper, cardboard, fabric, and more. In the following video tutorial, Gabriela Rodríguez, from the DIY design workshop Fabrica de Texturas (@fabricadetexturas), teaches us how to get started in cyanotype using some simple elements such as leaves and flowers. Discover it below:
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