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Teacher Marketing

Marcelo Tas, Mònica Rodríguez, Cecilia Tham on Working Remotely

Three professionals working in communications, entrepreneurship, and business reflect on their 'extreme' experiences of working from home It was already becoming an ongoing/long-term trend. It’s now become an imperative: the new normal. Remote working was already the standard for many creative professionals, but for others, it has marked a significant change. Studies carried out in countries like Spain, the United States, China, and South Africa have shown that employee productivity can increase by up to 15% just by working from home. "In the past, the words 'working from home' conjured up images of people lying half-naked on a couch or in a bathtub while tapping away at their laptops. These clichés have been replaced by the truth: people who are able to reconcile their work life and home life, without having to make personal sacrifices, are more productive and happier," says Nicholas Bloom, a researcher and professor at Stanford University in the United States. Nicholas led a macro study on remote working involving employees from companies in China. The study highlighted the benefits of working from home. Marcelo Tas (@marcelo_tas), Mònica Rodríguez Limia (@rodriguezmon) and Cecilia Tham, professionals working in communications, entrepreneurship and business, tell us about and reflect on their own “extreme” experiences of working from home. Discover more in the video below:
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Marketing

Why You Need a Video Portfolio or YouTube Channel Trailer

Learn how to promote your portfolio and build a community with Juan Bermúdez Romero, aka Kaos With over 700,000 users subscribed to his channel, Kaos (@estudiokatastrofico) knows that using YouTube can be the ideal strategy to promote your career as an artist. A writer and illustrator based in Spain, Juan Bermúdez Romero, better known as Kaos, decided to use his YouTube channel as a personal portfolio and has collaborated with major brands like Disney, Wacom, Fiverr, and many others. In his Domestika course, he teaches you to create your own YouTube channel and share your portfolio with the world. One of the most crucial steps in this process is creating a video portfolio that will be the channel trailer. First, you’ll need to define your goals and values. Then, you can set out to create your channel’s trailer to showcase your portfolio. You must follow three pre-production processes: the idea, the script, and the storyboard.
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Photography

What is Documentary Photography?

This artistic discipline, different to photojournalism, captures real scenes in the unique style of the photographer Photography lovers have been transported to far-away corners of Brazil by Sebastião Salgado’s photos. They have roamed the streets of Paris through the eyes of Robert Doisneau. Documentary photography freezes conflicts, stories, and scenes in time, yet using a more artistic and authorial approach than, say, photojournalism.
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Marketing

4 Key Tips for Creating Viral Content for Social Media

Learn to create viral content for social media and see your likes and shares soar Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives: we swipe, click, share, like, and save posts every day. Our desire to share content with our friends, family, and followers is what causes posts to reach more and more people and even become “viral.” In the digital world, if a piece “goes viral,” it means it has become incredibly popular in a matter of hours or days, having been shared by thousands, if not millions, of people on social media. The term is used as a marketing strategy to promote products and services. While, in general, viral content has a short shelf life, it’s still very effective. Publicist Renato Farfán (@nato_farfan) is an expert in creating viral content for social media. In this blog, he shares four key points that will help arrive at the best ideas for your next viral post.
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Illustration

Materials: Botanical Illustration with Watercolors

Find out which materials you’ll need to start creating botanical illustrations with watercolors Designer and illustrator Paulina Maciel (@pau_maciel) has made a career of botanical illustration with watercolors. She has worked on projects for brands such as Palacio de Hierro, Desigual, and various creative agencies. To capture a flower’s beauty or the intricacy of its filaments, not only will you need an understanding of color and botany, but also the right materials. In the following video and the guide below, Paulina shares which materials she uses every day and explains how she works with them.
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Teacher Design

Interior Design Tutorial: How to Choose Your Color Palette

Learn the importance of materials and aesthetic elements in choosing the color of your space Choosing the right color palette is one of the biggest decisions of any interior design project and it is not one you should take lightly. The color you choose will affect the entire project, from your materials to your furniture, so knowing how to bring these elements together is key to a successful design. In this tutorial, Vasso Asfi (@studiolav) shares some basic principles and tips for choosing the right color palette for your next project.
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Illustration

5 Online Watercolor Painting Courses to Spark Your Creativity

Develop all your creative potential and learn from the best watercolor experts Watercolor painting is popular for the freedom it provides. Both the technique used to stroke the paper with the brush, and the way the colors are mixed, offer the opportunity to add your own personality to the sheet. For this reason it is often said that, more than a technique, watercolor is an attitude. But mastering it is not always easy: the balance between the amount of water and pigment will always define the final result and only experience will teach you to control the process. These five courses taught by professionals will help you start, develop and improve your talent. They are essential for those who know the unpredictability of watercolor and are an excellent option to make the most of Domestika's Black Friday.
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Illustration

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 Craft

Crochet Tutorial: How to Take Body Measurements For Pattern Making

Learn to take your own body measurements with Alimaravillas, and create a crochet pattern Before you start to crochet a piece of clothing, there’s an essential step: taking your body measurements. In order to get the right results–and to avoid ending up with a sweater that is too short or your head not fitting through the hole for your neck–it is essential to learn how to take measurements correctly. Alicia Recio Rodríguez, known as @alimaravillas, is an expert in crochet. In this tutorial, she talks us through how to take our own measurements without needing anyone else’s help so that we can create a pattern. You can watch the video below:
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Art

Domestika Diary: Naíma Almeida

Visual artist Naíma Almeida sheds light on her creative routine during lockdown and her experience experimenting with augmented reality Our creative processes are unique. They are influenced by different circumstances; they are a result of our cultural references, the feelings we have at the time, the tools we have available, and of course, the environment in which we find ourselves. We can’t escape these elements, not even in lockdown. In this Domestika Diary, visual artist Naíma Almeida shares her routine, creative processes, thoughts, and creations during lockdown. Discover more below:
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PLUS Teacher Illustration

How to Use Color to Shape Your Compositions

What are color values and why should we pay attention to them before creating a color palette? The sentence “color doesn’t need color” might sound strange at first, but all will soon start to make sense. When creating a structure or composition in an illustration, painting, design, or other visual work in which color plays a key role, it is not the color wheel itself that is of key importance, but the spectrum and the values that we apply. Below, illustrator and concept artist Jean Fraisse (@jbfraisse) explains why color doesn’t need color if we know how to apply it using the right values:
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Teacher Illustration

Illustration 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 Photography

5 Free Classes For Taking Creative Photos and Videos At Home

Learn from the experts how to create spectacular photos with the resources you have at hand The time when high-impact photography necessarily required expensive equipment or a professional set is long gone. With the help of these 5 experts, you can simply use your mobile (or use that old SLR camera that you may not use) to create photo and video projects that reflect your personal style, and all from the comfort of your own home! To watch each class, just click on its red title. Enjoy!
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Design

3 Websites Every Squarespace Designer Should Know About

If you are looking for inspiration for your next website, these three sites will inspire you to design wonderful pages using Squarespace. Squarespace is a powerful publishing system with beautiful templates. It allows you to create any type of web page with no coding involved. Founded in 2004, it is behind many of the pages we browse daily, like artist portfolios or restaurant pages. Many designers prefer Squarespace to other publishing tools, like WordPress, because of the quality of its templates. They all have good typography, neat transitions, and responsiveness, allowing the users to enjoy the pages on mobile phones or tablets without having to make tedious adjustments.
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Photography

What is Light Painting Photography?

Visual artist and photographer Cristias Rosas introduces you to the technique of "painting" with light There are different methods to achieve unique effects in artistic photography that allow images to go beyond what the camera can capture. These methods allow creators to express their emotions and communicate more subtle messages to their audience. Often, they also produce more striking images. One of those methods is light painting. Visual artist and photographer Cristias Rosas (@cristias_rosas), who has explored the expression of metaphors through his images in artistic photography, explains what it is and how to apply it to your pictures.
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Illustration

Domestika Creatives: Marina Esmeraldo

We dive into the geometric and colorful world of Brazilian illustrator and artist Marina Esmeraldo Marina Esmeraldo was born in Brazil, but her desire to learn and evolve her career has transported her to London and Barcelona. Despite training in architecture in the north east of Brazil, her frustration with the industry and her passion for graphic arts rerouted her career and she became an illustrator. Her style, inspired by everything tropical and her training as an architect, is all about shapes, patterns, and experimental compositions. Her career as an illustrator has led her to work with brands and publications such as Google, Coca–Cola, Adidas, Häagen–Dazs, The Washington Post, Wired, Women's March, and many more. Marina Esmeraldo welcomes us into her Barcelona studio to tell us about her career, her creative process, and shares advice for diving into the world of illustration. Discover more below:
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Design

What is Creative Block and How to Overcome It?

Learn more about creative block with useful advice from experts Even the most creative of minds and the most experienced professionals will, at some point, fall victim to creative block. It’s that feeling that you’ve run out of ideas, you’re incapable of producing work, or that you are unable to access your creativity. Creative block affects musicians and painters as much as it can affect writers and photographers, or anyone else putting out creative work. If we’re not careful, a creative block can result in a catch-22: feeling uninspired and unable to create can negatively impact one's self-confidence, which causes the person to feel even less inspired and less able to create. As Sylvia Plath famously said, “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Therefore, it’s important to familiarize oneself with the different tools and techniques available that will help you to combat your fear and get your creative juices flowing. In this blog post, several of Domestika's teachers–from professional writers to top photographers–share their advice. Practice, practice, and more practice Scriptwriter, storyteller, and teacher Alberto Chimal (@albertochimal) says that the best way to overcome a creative block is “practice, practice, and more practice.” If you’re lacking original ideas, pay attention to the world around you and something is sure to spark your imagination. “Inspiration never comes quickly nor when you’re sat at your desk. It could be an anecdote you hear or a news story. It could be a place you discover or an attractive scene you happen across.”
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Design

Free Download: Storyboard Template for Books

Editorial Designer Silvia Hijano Coullaut shares with you a template for this book planning tool If you are starting an editorial project that has a significant graphic component, a good practice is to think in advance which images will appear on each page. That way, you will be able to correctly distribute the images and give rhythm to the whole book. The editorial designer Silvia Hijano Coullaut (@silvia_libracos), works in the production of handmade books with all kinds of finishes for contemporary results from artisan techniques.
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3D & Animation

All the V-Ray Essential Keyboard Shortcuts You Need to Know

Improve your workflow using these shortcuts for the rendering engine V-Ray Widely used in movies—think Avatar, Robocop, Iron Man, and Tron Legacy, to name just a few—, the video game industry, and architectural visualizations, V-Ray is one of the favorite render engines for 3D professionals. Discover all the shortcuts you need to start working efficiently with this software and speed up your projects.
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Art

The Art Institute of Chicago Is Sharing Thousands of Free Images

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

20 Design and Creativity Books to Add to Your Bookshelf

Domestika teachers recommend their favorite books to get your creative juices flowing Every great creative needs a great collection of books to inspire fresh ideas. With this in mind, several of our teachers have selected their favorite books that will help artists and students find the inspiration they need to launch their next project. Check out the selection below and add your own recommendations in the comments! The Book of Shrigley, by David Shrigley Designer Marco Colín (@marco_colin) says that lots of people experience crises because they’re convinced they don’t know how to draw. This book by Shrigley is the perfect antidote. The simplicity of his work shows that a lack of technical skill should never be a barrier between you and creating something remarkable.
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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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