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Photography

7 Tips for Photographing Your Artwork

Learn how to photograph your artwork for your portfolio Sharing your work online is a great way to grow your audience and take advantage of creative opportunities. But to do that, you need high-quality images of your work. For analog mediums, that typically means having to take photographs. After spending so much time and care on your final artwork, it’s important to understand how to best capture and showcase it. Find below some useful tips on commercial photography so that you can make the most of your work.
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3D & Animation

What Is a Turnaround in Character Design and How To Draw One

A turnaround shows a character in different poses. Learn how to create one following these steps. If you work in illustration and animation, chances are that at some point, you'll be asked to create a turnaround. It is a vital tool for successfully modeling in 3D. As the name suggests, a turnaround is a 360-degree view of a character that gives us all the information we need to know. It can be tricky to do it correctly, but Laura Ewing Ferrer (@le_lauraewing) knows a lot about turnarounds. She is an illustrator and storyboarder who loves creating characters and has worked as a freelance artist for various documentaries, pilot series, and publishing houses. Today she will share with you the steps and tricks you should use when making a turnaround.
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Photography

Dos & Don'ts For Freelance Photographers

Visual poet and photographer Danny Bittencourt shares interesting advice on how to manage your career as a freelance photographer Choosing which themes to explore in your work, developing your own visual language, managing your routine and timetable, being your own boss... Sounds pretty good, right? Of course, being freelance has a lot of benefits, if and when you can avoid the most common problems. Visual poet and photographer Danny Bittencourt (@dannybbittencourt) is an expert in freelancing. In this post, she shares her dos and dont's for freelance photographers. Discover more in the video below:
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Design

Free Download: Templates to Create Interior Design Mood Boards

Interior designer Miriam Alía shares her favorite templates with you to impress your clients The mood board is one of your best allies when you are about to embark on a new project. In interior design, the mood board also has very specific functions to help you transform a space, such as choosing colors and materials, establishing a visual balance of the space, and classifying key ideas. According to interior designer Miriam Alía (@miriamalia), the mood board will help you organize all the information you have collected in your search for inspiration, so that you or your client can visualize the idea of the new project and start working on it.
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Writing

7 Tips to Find Inspiration When Writing

Alberto Chimal’s best tips on finding inspiration for writing memorable stories You may think that inspiration comes spontaneously and lets authors write incredible stories without interruptions or hesitation, but this is not the case. To write well, you have to practice, and to find the inspiration, you must know where to find it. Author Alberto Chimal (@albertochimal) reveals some of his best tips to find inspiration when writing, and exploit your narrative potential. 1. Set aside time to write Aim to write a little every day, every week, or at least set yourself a realistic goal—that you must keep to and complete—something you can fulfill whenever it is possible. The most important thing is that you respect the time dedicated to writing and make sure others also respect it. 2. Look for the perfect space Find a space where you can write: at home, in your study, or even in a public place or café. It needn’t be a place you use specifically for writing, but it should be comfortable for you to concentrate and develop your stories.
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Craft

Materials: Beaded Jewelry

Discover which materials you can use to create original pieces of jewelry with Daniela Le Feuvre, co-founder of Fatto–a creative space dedicated to making accessories Beads are one of the most versatile items you can use to make jewelry. Thanks to their varying shapes and infinite colors, you’ll be able to find beads for all different designs. Elsa Amigo and Daniela Le Feuvre are experts in jewelry making. Together they founded Fatto–a creative space dedicated to making accessories out of beads. In the video below, they explain which materials you can use to create original beaded pieces.
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Design

Why You Should Use Mockups in Your Stationery Design

The importance of using mockups when presenting your stationery and brand designs Once you have designed all the elements commissioned, you will need to present them to your client. This is one of the main stages of the project, as the client gets to see the image you have created to represent them to their potential customers and the general public for the first time. Laura Méndez, creative director and founder of design studio Menta Branding (@mentabranding), believes that mockups are an essential element in your branding presentations and stationery designs and tells us why we should always use them.
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3D & Animation

What Is Voxel Art?

Learn about the creative possibilities of voxel art, a technique connected to but different from pixel art To understand what voxel art is, we must first understand what a pixel is. In 2D graphics, a pixel is the smallest visible part of an image. If you zoom all the way into an image, you will notice a grid formed by hundreds of small squares. Each of these squares, all of them in a single blocked color, is what we call a pixel. A voxel is the equivalent of a pixel but in 3D. Think of the pixel as a square and the voxel as a cube. It's as simple as that, and the reason why many artists start their modeling and 3D animation careers by working in voxels. It represents, after all, a fun process for experimenting and creating.
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Teacher Illustration

Drawing Tutorial: Using Basic Shapes in Children’s Illustration

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

5 Courses to Get You Started in Lettering

Learn to master the basics of lettering with top professionals in this field For many artists, letters are their greatest muse. These artists extract a sentiment from a word that catapults their creativity. Lettering is a medium that many use to capture their passion for letters. Discover the methods, tips, and unique visions of these five lettering experts, who will help you to channel emotion through illustrated letters: Illustrated Digital Lettering, a course by Birgit Palma Austrian illustrator and artist Birgit Palma shows you have to convey meaning with words through shape, color, and volume. Her projects are brimming with positive energy and have so much more to say than a plain and simple word. In this course, you’ll learn to create expressive letters.
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Teacher Craft

Needle Felting Tutorial: A Step-by-step Guide To Making a Strawberry

Learn how to sculpt a simple strawberry out of wool using needle felting techniques It takes great patience to sculpt art toys out of wool and create the shapes you desire. However, the results are worth the time they take: needle felted creations are simple yet beautiful, charming both children and adults. Portuguese artist Maria Filipe Castro, better known as droolwool (@droolwool), is a needle felting expert. She loves bringing colorful characters to life. She has exhibited her creations in galleries and also sells them through her online shop. In this tutorial, droolwool will show you how to make a simple strawberry using common needle felting tools and materials. Discover more in the video below:
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Design

The Visual Differences Between Online and Offline Communications

Learn how graphic elements online should differ from their offline counterparts The rules for online and offline communications are not the same: the things we say and do online are not exactly the same as those we say or do in real life. For companies and brands, this is no different, each space has different requirements that need different strategies to achieve a particular image. James Eccleston (@james80) is a Brand and UX Specialist with over 18 years of international experience working for major brand communication agencies in London, digital start-ups in Latin America, and running his own agency in Madrid. He considers the main different between successful online and offline branding campaigns is attention span, "When you communicate online," he says, "your users have a very short attention span. Usually, it's around 15 seconds." Keeping someone's attention is challenging enough on a desktop, but more so on mobile, when the screen space is smaller, and there are more distractions.
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Craft

Louis Bicycle Creates One-of-a-kind Embroidered Clothing

Louis Bicycle creates hand-dyed embroidered clothing, from hoodies to bucket hats Being forced to adapt to new circumstances can take us down unexpected paths. Louis Bicycle (@louisbicycle) was taking a break from tattooing and selling his hand-made screen prints and linoleum block prints at a street fair in San Francisco when the pandemic caused the fair to shut down. During those first few days stuck at home, he picked up a tote bag that he had started to embroider a tiger onto a couple of years before. He finished the bag and put it online. “It got a decent response, so I made another the next day. It just went from there.” Since then, he has put out a variety of clothing—unique pieces that sell out almost immediately. “I've sewn for a long time, even a small amount as a kid. As I got older, I fixed clothes. I had a little wave a few years ago where I made some little embroidered patches. I just did it for a month or so and set it down. I hadn’t done hoodies in the past, just patches and tote bags. I soon figured out a way to put a backing on the hoodies so I could embroider them in a way that it would stay flat.”
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Design

What Most Websites Have In Common

Why similar looking websites aren’t necessarily a sign of bad design Have you ever noticed that a lot of web pages look the same? You aren’t just imagining it: one study of over 10,000 websites found an increase in design conformity over the last few years. From large banner images to hamburger menus (those three horizontal lines that reveal a list of pages), the visual language of the internet has become more standardized. Why has this happened? Is this uniformity a sign of lazy design? We spoke with experts to discover the challenges, and needs, that web designers today are responding to. Turns out, there are a few major reasons why designers are creating similar looking websites, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for creativity.
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Writing

20 UX Design Books for Beginners

This collection of books will help get you started with UX Design for apps and websites UX Design is a skill that's in hot demand. To keep up with current trends in this rapidly growing industry, it's important to constantly seek out new sources of information and inspiration. Professional web designers and developers Ethan Parry (@ethanparry), Mario Ferrer (@marioferrer), and Luz de León (@23design) share with us the essential books on UX design that you should have in your library:
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Teacher Design

5 Free Classes to Learn UX Design for Beginners

Get started in UX design and get to know the world of digital usability One of the biggest trends in web design, whether for websites or for apps, is UX design, our user experience design. This simply means that all design decisions are made with the users' needs at the center. These 5 experts in UX design will help you to discover basic principles of this discipline to make your digital projects have a high impact. To watch each class, just click on its title in red. Enjoy!
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Design

5 Courses to Perfect Your 3D Modeling and Design Skills

Learn how to use different programs and techniques to improve your 3D design and modeling skills The world of 3D design and modeling is so broad that the possibilities are truly endless; that means that you can choose the software and style that bestfit your creativity and skill level. Whether you are taking your first steps or improving your 3D modeling and design skills, these five online 3D modeling courses will inspire you to reach new levels in your professional career. Low Poly Character Modeling for Video Games, a course by Daniel Gutiérrez The low poly style is one of the most attractive contemporary aesthetics in video game creation, animation, and illustration. The objects and characters created with this technique show clearly defined polygons and flat faces but achieve an emotional impact nonetheless. Daniel Gutiérrez teaches you how to make them perfect in this course.
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Illustration

The Importance of Observation When Drawing Birds

When depicting plants and animals, careful observation is essential. Here are some tips for drawing birds Nature illustrator Antonia Reyes Montealegre (@antoniapajarito) is passionate about birds and their diverse anatomies, something she loves to capture in her drawings. Nothing’s as good as looking out to the treetops and capturing the essence of the colorful birds that live in them. It is necessary to focus on details to recreate a realistic picture of nature. For this reason, we must learn to observe these creatures.
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Teacher 3D & Animation

Spark AR Tutorial: basic tips to start from scratch

Discover the basic tools to manage the Spark AR software and create your first animated filters for social media, with Ayo Vega
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Film & Video

Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for AVID Media Composer

Discover the basic keyboard shortcuts of one of the most-used video editing programs on the market AVID Media Composer is one of the most complete, professional, and stable nonlinear video editing software available. A well-known name in the editing industry, it is mainly used by professional video editors worldwide, but casual and non-professional users will also enjoy its advantages. Speed and efficiency are the primary skills of a good editor, and as you progress in your use of AVID Media Composer, you will realize that there's a significant amount of time to be saved once you learn some of the most useful keyboard shortcuts. Below, we have compiled some of the basic ones for Mac and PC to get you started.
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Illustration

5 Watercolor Artists Whose Work Will Inspire You

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

What Is a Counterbrief?

Andrea Galvez and Martín Bedoya, from FIBRA branding studio, show us the methodology they use to create an efficient counterbrief To understand the role of the counterbrief in a branding project, it is important to first remember the concept of the brief: a document or process with essential information and instructions on how to create a brand. From this document, the design process is born. The brief usually comes from the client, the counterbrief is the designers' answer to everything requested and, according to Andrea Galvez and Martín Bedoya from FIBRA branding studio (@fibra_branding), it is the most crucial step in their work process. It is through the counterbrief–the first delivery made to the client–that the project script and the refinement of the initial ideas are defined.
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Illustration

Challenge: 3 Fun Ways to Stimulate Creativity

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

Free Download: Template for Making Origami Envelopes with Cartoncita

Cartoncita, who specialize in origami and scenography, show us how to create origami envelopes and mini boxes Estela Moreno Orteso is the founder of Cartoncita–a studio workshop specializing in creating objects, spaces, and decorations out of paper and card. Their clients include big brands such as Vespa, Samsung and Hermès. In her live, Estela will show us how to create an eight-sided envelope, which is called a “tato” in Japanese, and a small box using the millennium-old art of origami. Here you can download the templates for free:
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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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Illustration

What Is Zentangle?

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

12 Creative Ideas For Your Stationery Design

12 creatives from the Domestika community share the designs they've created for brand stationery If you are working in branding or brand identity design, or are interested in working in this field, you will know the importance of a brand’s stationery. Despite living in a world where everything is digital, printed material is still standing its ground as clients try their best to stand out from the crowd. Read on as 12 creatives from the Domestika community show you ways to produce stationery designs for different brands, in mockup version or printed, and inspire you to start your own projects. Click on the red titles to access every entry in detail. 1910, by HUMAN (@human_) This was part of a brand identity project for a Mexican restaurant in London. The contemporary design draws from elements from traditional Mexican culture and a color palette inspired by the work of architect Luis Barragán. Learn more about this creative studio in the course, Principles of Concepting and Branding.
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Teacher Illustration

20 Watercolor Paintings by Ana Victoria Calderon's Students

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

The Story Behind "Accidentally Wes Anderson"

We spoke to the creator of the popular Instagram account who has just launched a bestselling book for adventurers Accidentally Wes Anderson was created for adventures and explorers. It is a book brimming with beautiful photos and intriguing narratives for curious beings. Each photo looks like a frame straight out of a Wes Anderson film. Yet these are not film sets. They are authentic spots that you can visit, all over the world, and each spot has its own unique and enchanting story.
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Film & Video

10 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts to Work Faster in DaVinci Resolve

Speed up your workflow when editing video projects with these shortcuts New controls and tools are constantly being added to video editing programs, making them more complex and creating the need to keep track of such tools. DaVinci Resolve, one of the most popular post-production video editing suites around, is one such program. For this reason, video editors must get familiar with basic keyboard hotkeys to keep their work flowing. If you are not using them already, check out the following 10 essential DaVinci Resolve shortcuts to get started:
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