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  • 7 Beautiful Films on Great Artists
    Film & Video

    7 Beautiful Films on Great Artists

    The best films on history’s greatest artists, as chosen by illustrator Alex de Marcos García From Van Gogh to Basquiat, there are some names–and some pieces of art–that everybody recognizes. Far fewer people know about the person behind the masterpiece, however. We study their techniques and the movements they began but sometimes their personal lives can be equally insightful for those of us who want to learn from them. Illustrator Alex de Marcos García teaches the Domestika course Pictorial Portraits Using Digital Techniques and, even in his modern-day craft, encourages students to find out more about the artists they love. Alex has shared his 7 favorite artistic biopics that reveal just what a great film about a creative genius can bring to our understanding, enjoyment, and creation of their art and ours.

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  • 7 Polaroids and Inspiring Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky
    Photography

    7 Polaroids and Inspiring Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

    Discover this collection of Polaroids taken by the Russian filmmaker–each one is accompanied by a quote that invites you to step into his world… Memory, dreams, and spirituality play a central role in the meditative work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Born in Zavrazhye in 1932, he is considered by many to be one of the greats of film history. He won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury twice at Cannes with Solaris (1972) and The Sacrifice (1986); the Golden Lion in Venice for Ivan's Childhood (1962); and was posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's prestigious Lenin Prize. Many of his sequences are iconic, such as the burning house in The Mirror (1975) or the protagonist’s long walk in Nostalghia (1983) as he tries to keep a candle alight. Tarkovsky was also concerned about the aesthetic and moral implications of the art itself, a topic he explored in his most-celebrated book, Sculpting in Time.

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  • A Brief Introduction to the Kantan Needle
    Craft

    A Brief Introduction to the Kantan Needle

    Discover the origin of this needle and the different types of embroidery projects you can create with it As a creative discipline, embroidery offers endless possibilities. Enthusiasts will find great satisfaction in discovering new materials to create projects that go far beyond working with a traditional needle and thread. In this blog, designer, art director, and embroiderer, Koral Antolín (@koralantolin) presents the Kantan needle–a tool that will help you add unique touches to your designs.

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  • Essential Shortcuts for Working with SketchUp
    Design

    Essential Shortcuts for Working with SketchUp

    Improve your workflow when creating and 3D modeling in SketchUp SketchUp is a 3D modeling software for different projects, from architectural and interior design to civil engineering, movies, and video games. It is an ideal software for those who are starting out and want to share their ideas in 3D, as it is quick to learn and get good results. We have put together the most useful shortcuts to improve your workflow:

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  • Contest: Create Your Own Version of Domestika's Logo
    Teacher Domestika

    Contest: Create Your Own Version of Domestika's Logo

    Over 2 million creatives on Instagram! To celebrate, participate in this creative challenge At Domestika you always have the power to choose: you can learn to design, draw, embroider, sculpt... Each person's experience is unique and different, but one element is the same for everyone: the desire to create and to share. Now that there are 2 million followers on Instagram (@domestika) we want to celebrate with a creative challenge: create and share your own version of the Domestika logo (specifically its isotype) in your own style, using the technique of your choice. It could be designed in Adobe Illustrator, embroidered on fabric, painted with watercolor, 3D-printed... the options are endless. The most important thing is that it is uniquely yours, and that it reflects your experience as part of the Domestika community! Below you can see some examples:

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  • 5 Free Classes to Learn How to Vectorize
    Teacher Illustration

    5 Free Classes to Learn How to Vectorize

    Discover the basic tips to master vectorization in Adobe Illustrator Vector illustration is a discipline in which aspects of both graphic design and digital illustration come together. Whether you use Adobe Illustrator or similar vector software, knowing vectorization principles will make your sketches look professional. Join these 5 vector illustration experts to discover easy ways to vectorize your designs. To watch each lesson, just click on its red title. Enjoy!

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  • The 4 Best Open-Source Software to Awaken Your Creativity
    Design

    The 4 Best Open-Source Software to Awaken Your Creativity

    The Domestika community has selected the best open-source programs for getting creative Open-source software invites developers to work in collaboration. It guarantees that the program being developed is kept available to all and is, in general, free to use. These programs are great options for creatives, students, and beginners across different disciplines wanting to experiment with free versions of popular software that often ends up being expensive. We reached out to the Domestika community over Instagram and asked them what they consider to be their favorite open-source programs. These were the top-voted answers. Blender Blender is a free, open-source 3D creation suite. You can work on all types of 3D pieces: modeling, animation, simulation, rigging, rendering, video editing, and much more. This program also allows you to work on digital painting projects, 2D animations, and video games development. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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  • Adrian Brandon on Creating Art That Starts a Conversation
    Illustration

    Adrian Brandon on Creating Art That Starts a Conversation

    The Brooklyn-based artist talks about the power of art to start a conversation about Black lives and Black culture Adrian Brandon (@ayy.bee) is an artist dedicated to raising awareness of injustice towards Black people, and celebrating and creating an understanding of Black culture, “and the unique joy, swagger, and love that is shared in our community”. For Adrian, creativity has always been a huge part of his identity, “I was that kid in the back of the classroom doodling way too much and not paying attention in class.” Having grown up in a crafty household–in which Mother’s Day called for designing a full brunch menu and pulling flowers from the garden, while his father’s birthday was preceded by making a chessboard and all its pieces out of clay–he credits his parents for fuelling his early interest in art.

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  • Free Download: Content Marketing Planner
    Marketing

    Free Download: Content Marketing Planner

    Use this template by Ellie Rivers to easily create a multi-platform content and marketing calendar for your e-commerce business Marketing campaigns are a powerful way of attracting customers to your e-commerce. While it’s important to have a content and marketing calendar year-round, they are especially crucial during peak sales periods like the holidays. E-commerce marketing consultant Ellie Rivers has over 15 years of experience working independently and as part of a digital consulting agency for luxury, fashion, and lifestyle brands. In her English-language Domestika Live on October 15, she explains how to use this content marketing planner to create an effective digital marketing campaign for your e-commerce business. If you miss the Live, you will be able to find an archived version of it to enjoy later.

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  • Creating a Magazine Cover with Illustrated Type
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    Creating a Magazine Cover with Illustrated Type

    Birgit Palma shares her process for creating a magazine cover in her latest Domestika Live Birgit Palma (@birgitpalma) is an Austrian illustrator and lettering expert based in Barcelona who’s been freelancing for the best part of the last decade. She’s worked on projects for major clients, including Adidas, Adobe, Diesel, Hyundai, and Coca-Cola. After revealing that she shares her birthday with Hugh Hefner (April 9th, in case you were curious!) and that she used to love playing Counter-Strike and headbanging to heavy metal, Birgit shares her top tips for combining illustration and typography in her latest Domestika Live. Before showing us how to create illustrated modular typography from scratch, Birgit shares her process behind creating a cover for the magazine, Yorokobu.

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  • What is CGI Photomontage?
    Photography

    What is CGI Photomontage?

    Discover this method for creating impressive (and often unimaginable) images, as if by magic The initials CGI stand for “Computer Generated Imagery” and refer to any form of visual expression that uses a digital medium: digital photography, analog photography scanner, digitalizations, image banks, and 3D images, etc. Ricardo Salamanca (@ricardo_salamanca) is a designer and art director. He has worked on advertising campaigns that have won awards at festivals around the world. Ricardo describes CGI as “the result you create with an image that has been digitized,” which involves integrating photography shots, 3D images, or takes of actors performing against a green screen, as well as any other image generated using digital means.

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  • 4 Project Management Tools for Working From Home
    Web & App Design

    4 Project Management Tools for Working From Home

    Work more efficiently from home and make the most of your time with these tools The evolution of technology and the democratization of the internet have made working from home a daily reality for many. Managing projects remotely means that teams can be completely decentralized–a designer in Peru can successfully work on a project for a client in Europe without ever meeting face to face. Foncho Ramírez-Corzo (@cholutions)–a digital marketing expert and consultant–embraces and applauds the home office trend. In this blog, he shares a list of project management tools that will transform your working-from-home routine and help you juggle different tasks and stay organized.

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  • Upcycling Tutorial: How to Start Patching Your Clothes
    Teacher Craft

    Upcycling Tutorial: How to Start Patching Your Clothes

    Learn to prepare patches to repair your clothes with Ofelia & Antelmo Fixing damaged clothes is not only good for our pocket, but also for the environment. Patches are a canvas on which you can paint, draw, and embroider: they allow us to extend the life of our favourite garments in style. Gabriela Martinez, specialist in embroidery and textile art and creator of Ofelia & Antelmo (@ofeliayantelmo), will show us the first step in fixing and adding personality to our torn or stained clothes with patches that you can even embroider if you so fancy. You can see the tutorial here.

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  • Transfer a Drawing to Fabric With This Simple Method
    Teacher Craft

    Transfer a Drawing to Fabric With This Simple Method

    Learn a simple method to transfer your drawings to fabric to be able to embroider them easily When starting to embroider, no matter what method we want to use, having a pattern helps us know where to work, especially if we are just starting out. A common option is to transfer a drawing to fabric and then use it as a reference for our stitches. In the following video, the designer, embroiderer and art director Koral Antolín (@koralantolin) shows us a simple method step by step to transfer our drawings to fabric and embroider them easily. Discover it below:

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  • What Are Character and Paragraph Styles in InDesign?
    Design

    What Are Character and Paragraph Styles in InDesign?

    Learn how to apply character and paragraph styles in InDesign, a key step in editorial design While, among designers, it’s not as popular as Photoshop and Illustrator, InDesign is an essential program for those working specifically in editorial design. As a layout tool, it enables users to work with large bodies of text in an agile and simple way, making it a favorite for designers working on magazines, books, newspapers, brochures, or even posters. In other words: people who work with different types of text, such as titles or pull-quotes, that are repeated throughout the document. One of the most useful tools InDesign offers is character and paragraph styles; these allow you to create shortcuts for editing similar texts with just one click. Although this is one of the program’s most notable features, often people don’t know the difference between the two and therefore don’t make the most of what they can do. To help you speed up your editing and layout processes, here we explain everything you need to know about character and paragraph styles when working in InDesign.

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  • What Is Location Scouting, and Why Is It Important in Photography?
    Photography

    What Is Location Scouting, and Why Is It Important in Photography?

    Photographer Viridiana enlists the main aspects of this pre-production stage Preparation is crucial in all kinds of photography to determine the success of your images. Once you have a concept clear in your mind, it is time to move on to pre-production. This includes finding a place to shoot, in other words, location scouting. Photographer Viridiana (@holaviridiana) specializes in editorial fashion photography, and her work has appeared in magazines such as Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan. Read on as she explains why scouting a location is essential.

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  • What is Amigurumi and What do I Need to Start From Scratch?
    Craft

    What is Amigurumi and What do I Need to Start From Scratch?

    This crochet and knitting technique makes any day-to-day object irresistibly adorable While it’s practically impossible to pronounce this crochet technique’s name, anyone who tries falls in love with it. Amigurumi allows you to create sweet little characters and other items in a soft, adorable style. Something this kawaii and lovable had to come from Japan, but what is Amigurumi? And how can you start making such wonderful creations? We spoke to Leire Villar, aka Ameskeria (@ameskeria). This amigurumi and crochet specialist talked to us about the nature of her craft and revealed everything you need to give amigurumi a go. Discover her tips in the video.

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  • Learn How to Analyze Color Palettes Using a Book From 1902
    Design

    Learn How to Analyze Color Palettes Using a Book From 1902

    Discover the work of artist and color theory student Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in her book, Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color Mixing colors to create specific effects, transmit feelings, and boost certain moods is what color theory has been teaching for centuries, starting with the first records from the artist Leone Battista Alberti (1435), and the studies of Leonardo da Vinci (1490). However, during the eighteenth century, Isaac Newton revolutionized this field by studying light dispersion and discovering the color spectrum as we know it today. Since then, several scholars, artists, and scientists have analyzed the visible spectrum's colors to create a knowledge base that can guide other people in combining shades and creating palettes. In 1902, the artist Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, known for her work with watercolor and oil painting, started to compile the color palette of everyday objects and elements present in nature to understand the color patterns found in the natural world.

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  • A Brief History of Pop-Up Books
    Teacher Craft

    A Brief History of Pop-Up Books

    Pop-up books started 800 years ago as a "philosophical machine", evolved into scientific manuals, and still survive today as a kids' favorite. The oldest pop-up books do not have dazzling illustrations of castles, forests, kings, queens, dragons, and fairies. They were made in the Middle Ages to facilitate the understanding of natural and religious phenomena. One of them is a Volvelle (a type of book containing rotating circles attached to the pages), handmade in 1250 by the English Benedictine monk Matthew Paris, which explains the relation between the moon's seasons and phases and religious holidays.

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  • 7 Books to Inspire You When Writing Video Game Scripts
    Teacher Design

    7 Books to Inspire You When Writing Video Game Scripts

    Discover the titles every aspiring narrative designer should have in their personal library The simple video games that entertained us for hours decades ago seem downright prehistoric when compared to today's blockbusters. With a style and narrative much closer to cinema, video games have become authentic works of art in which dialogs and stories have an impressive weight. In this new reality, professionals like Víctor Ojuel (@victor_ojuel)–narrative designer for video games–are a key piece for the development of titles. Books, of course, are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for video game writers like him, so Victor is sharing with the Domestika community which books have influenced his professional career: The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler It is, or should be, the bedside book for any professional scriptwriter. Although this book was written with Hollywood film productions in mind, Victor thinks it is an essential reference manual for those who want to start writing video game narratives because he uses the theory behind The Hero with a Thousand Faces with an efficient approach.

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  • 5 Essential Brand Strategy Books and the Power of Presentation
    Marketing

    5 Essential Brand Strategy Books and the Power of Presentation

    Discover the brand strategy publications that will help you harness the influential art of presentation design The way we present information dramatically influences what the audience absorbs, which is why presentation design is an art in and of itself. Katya Kovalenko (@katyakovalenko) is a Barcelona-based data designer with a background in communication and advertising. She helps businesses communicate visually, clearly, and effectively. Some of her clients include Telefónica, Nestlé, Indra, and plenty of startups she has assisted in delivering their messages efficiently. In her Domestika course, Katya explains the potential of presentation design and the process she uses with her clients to build their brand strategy. She helps you structure your presentation, develop the content and narrative, and design it professionally.

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  • Jon Berkeley: Illustrations That Tell a Story
    Teacher Illustration

    Jon Berkeley: Illustrations That Tell a Story

    Editorial illustrations complement a text and tell a story without using words Irish illustrator Jon Berkeley (@jon_24) found his call in editorial illustration. While he usually enjoys drawing for younger audiences, he has also found that working for newspapers and magazines is ideal for educating, informing, and entertaining readers, an activity he finds challenging and gratifying in equal parts. Berkeley was born in Dublin, the city that saw him grow and develop into a professional illustrator. He took his first steps in this field when the internet had yet to become the hive of creative opportunities it is nowadays and carved himself a career by knocking on every possible door. This is how he got to collaborate with Time, Newsweek, and The Economist.

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  • Turning a Concept Into a Strong Project Statement
    Photography

    Turning a Concept Into a Strong Project Statement

    Conceptual portrait photographer Verónica Cerna shares tips for turning a concept into a strong project statement Verónica Cerna (@veronica_cerna) is a photographer and videographer who’s had her work published in magazines such as Musée Magazine, Shots Magazine, Better Photography, and Revista Pecado. Verónica started out creating self-portraits and has always been drawn to experimental portraiture. During her teens, she discovered that photography was a way for her to understand herself and take control of her body. She counts Edward Hopper, Ouka Leele, and Gregory Crewdson among the artists she’s been most influenced by. In her Domestika course, she invites you to learn about her process for creating a series of conceptual portraits. In this blog, she shares tips on how to create a concept and convert it into a powerful statement.

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  • What is Surface Pattern Design?
    Design

    What is Surface Pattern Design?

    Learn more about surface pattern design through these examples and discover the techniques used to create them Maybe you’ve heard of this term or come across it while scrolling through one of the many creative accounts you follow on Instagram. However, you’re still not 100% sure what surface pattern design consists of. And while you constantly encounter countless examples, you’ve not clocked that an object in front of you has been created by a surface pattern designer.

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  • Domestika Diary: Elaine Li
    Photography

    Domestika Diary: Elaine Li

    Art director and photographer Elaine Li shares her process for capturing cityscapes This year, coronavirus has had an impact on nearly every sector, and for industries like travel photography the sudden restriction of movement has come with a unique set of professional challenges. But just because travel is limited doesn’t mean photographers still can’t turn their lenses onto their home cities, finding new ways to capture iconic landmarks. Elaine Li is a Sydney-based art director and photographer who specializes in cityscapes and travel photography. In this Domestika Diary, she explains what lenses she likes to use and takes us on a sunset photoshoot of the Sydney Opera House while sharing tips and recommendations about how to take dynamic shots.

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  • Learn to Unlock Your Creativity for Free Drawing with Puño
    Teacher Domestika

    Learn 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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