Tips

Beginner and Advanced Watercolor Painting FAQs

Ana Victoria Calderón answers what you’ve always wanted to ask about watercolors Ana Victoria Calderón (@anavictoriana) is a painter and illustrator who uses watercolors as her primary medium. She creates art for Hallmark, Papyrus, Demdaco, Galison, and editorial work for Glamour, Vanity Fair, InStyle, and Elle. One of her three Domestika courses, Modern Watercolor Techniques, has just reached 100K students! To celebrate this achievement, Ana Victoria has been answering some frequently asked questions about watercolor materials and techniques and giving professional tips in a live chat for the Domestika Live series. Read some of her answers below:

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7 Sites for Storing Your Photos in the Cloud

Discover the storage services you can use to organize and back up your images A few weeks ago, Google announced that it will no longer offer free unlimited photo storage after June 2021. Following then, if you require more than the 15GB of storage space available for free, you will need a sign up to a paid plan (as is the case if you have Google Drive). If that’s not enough or you’re looking for alternative options, we’ve compiled a list of sites that offer image storage services: Amazon Prime Photos If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can take advantage of their unlimited photo storage service and free space for up to 5GB for videos. Other services are also offered, such as the option to share albums with other users or get images printed and delivered to your home. Price For more information on prices, check how much an Amazon Prime subscription costs where you live.

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5 Styles of Art Direction for Motion Graphics

Learn how to define the style of your audiovisual projects with Helio Vega

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Copywriting Dos and Don’ts with Carla González

Top marketing copywriter Carla González shares her vital Dos and Don’ts. Being a good copywriter is about much more than knowing how to write. Copywriting involves creating texts for advertising. As such, it persuades and informs, which is a more complex task. To ensure your words convey precisely what you need to say in the clearest, most direct and entertaining manner, you need to master a series of techniques and learn to apply them on a daily basis. Carla González (@carlagoon) has worked as a marketing editor for brands including IKEA, BMW, Vueling, Banco Sabadell and Casio. She shares her experience and defines her top three key copywriting Dos and top three key copywriting Don’ts. Find out what they are in this video:

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How to Identify a Good Logo

Learn how to identify a good logo, with designer Sagi Haviv Your logo is the first image people will associate with your brand. That is a lot to ask of one small graphic, but the greatest designs manage to communicate a company’s identity and ethos in an instant. Few know this better than Sagi Haviv (@sagi), partner and designer at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, who has developed more than 60 graphic identities, including those of the US Open, Harvard University Press, and National Geographic. In this video, Sagi Haviv reviews different designs, highlighting and explaining their strengths and weaknesses so that you can better understand how to apply these lessons to your own work.

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How to Create a Charismatic Character

These are Ed Vill's tips for illustrating characters full of personality In the history of illustration and advertising, there are countless examples of characters and mascots designed initially to be used in branding that have become a resounding success, an indissoluble part of a company's image, or, in some cases, even part of popular culture. Sometimes, the opposite happens. Characters fall into oblivion for their lack of charisma and personality. Such is the case of Speedee, the little-known predecessor of Ronald McDonald. With his big hamburger-shaped head, he failed in his mission to become the official mascot of McDonald's. This is just one of the many examples that underscore the importance of creating characters with personality. Ed Vill (@edvill) has some tips that you should keep in mind when drawing your own.

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How to Vectorize a Lettering Design

Learn to digitize your letters easily using Adobe Illustrator with tips and directions from Daniel Hosoya Advertising designer Daniel Hosoya (@danielhosoya) specializes in digital lettering and teaches the Domestika courses, Introduction to Lettering in Procreate and Digital Lettering with Illustrator and Photoshop. Here, he tells you how to digitize your lettering designs, an essential step if you want to work on your hand-drawn creations and turn them into more ambitious projects.

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How to Make a French Knot

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4 Examples of Creative Portfolios on YouTube

Discover the possibilities of video and YouTube as a way of showing off your talent to lots and lots of people Although it may not be the most popular platform for presenting portfolios, YouTube can be very effective at showing off your work and creative processes. Juan Bermúdez–better known as Kaos (@estudiokatastrofico)–is a YouTuber, illustrator, and writer with a degree in Fine Art. In his course, YouTube: Creating a Channel from Scratch, he will teach you the advantages of using this social network as a means to make your work more visible and what to keep in mind. Here he lists some of his favorite creative portfolios on YouTube and the strategies they use to showcase their products or their creative process: Little King Goods This channel belongs to a leather craftsman who sells products such as wallets, belts, purses, and watch straps. Their videos give the viewer a unique insight into the creative processes behind making each piece. What makes Little King Goods stand out is that customers can purchase the materials and tools and assemble pieces themselves, in addition to buying the finished product. This YouTube channel also teaches its customers DIY methods, showing them how to make the leather objects themselves.

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How to Tell Visual Stories on the Internet

Josune Imízcoz shows us how to master tone, aesthetics, and emotion in audiovisual storytelling on social media Josune Imízcoz (@josune_imizcoz) has written for newspapers, presented on TV and radio, and is a journalist whose creativity is constantly evolving. Lately, she has been specializing in digital audiovisual storytelling, i.e., videos especially conceived to be shared and consumed on social media. The videos aim to tell great stories in a few seconds, trying to connect with an audience that is overexposed to information on the internet and on social media. It is essential to pay particular attention to tone, aesthetics, and emotion when creating digital content. What are those, exactly? Josune defines them as follows:

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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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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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How to Use Color to Shape Your Compositions

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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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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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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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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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The Visual Differences Between Online and Offline Communications

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The Importance of Observation When Drawing Birds

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

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Three Ways to Mix Watercolors

Learn three methods for mixing watercolors to create different colors and effects, with Alex Hillkurtz One of the many reasons for watercolor’s popularity is the freedom and experimentation that it affords. Beyond the technique you use when putting brush to paper, the way you mix your colors offers an opportunity to add your own personality to the page. In this video, storyboard and watercolor artist Alex Hillkurtz (@alexhillkurtzart) shows three easy methods for mixing watercolors to create different colors and effects.

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The First Steps to Tell Children's Stories

Illustrator and author Estelí Meza presents you with an exercise to create and organize the initial ideas of any story Estelí Meza (@estelimu) is an author and illustrator of children's books, book covers and magazines, working acrossMexico, Spain, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates. She is an expert in creating engaging stories and has worked for publishers such as Scholastic, Anaya, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Kalimat, and Penguin Random House. She has created an exercise which will help you learn successful storytelling steps, regardless of where your story is destined for.

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How to needle felt a rotten apple with a worm

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This Game Will Help You to Improve Your UI Skills

Designing an excellent interface is an achievable goal, you just have to train your eye to observe detail Aside from their technique and expert knowledge, a great UI designer stands out for their attention to detail. A bad kerning, a misaligned object, or an inadequate icon has no chance of slipping by them. Training your eye to appreciate the details and differences between a perfect design and a flawed one takes years of experience and observation. Fortunately, there are many fun ways to improve, such as playing Can’t Unsee–a web game for improving your UI skills. A reinvented classic The user is presented with two images, seemingly identical, and has to identify the differences and select the better design based on its appearance. The game’s name, “Can’t Unsee,” couldn’t be more fitting. Once you’ve discovered the error, your eyes will be drawn to it.

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The Importance of Storyboarding in Animation

Designer Roberto Puig talks about the importance of using storyboards and animatics in animation projects Storyboarding is an integral process in the development of animation. It includes all the planned details of the piece, and it is a clear and detailed document of the ultimate result. Despite its importance, many professionals and animation studios jump this step of the process. Roberto Puig (@rpuig)—graphic designer and director of Don Porfirio studio—highlights how this step is fundamental and gives us some tips on how to execute it best. Why is storyboarding important? The main reason all animation projects must include a storyboard is to help us achieve exceptional outcomes. It also ensures that everyone involved in the production has a vision of the product from the start, including the client. It is also useful for organizing all the individuals' jobs and tasks within the animation project pipeline. These tasks can be assigned from the beginning, even before the project is in development. Furthermore, during the storyboard stage, our client can suggest any changes that can be easily applied. This would be more complex at a later stage.

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Tips for Digitizing Your Sketches

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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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5 Free Classes to Boost Your Procreate Skills

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Type Illustration: Transform Your Inspiration

How to transform your reference images into graphics for your next type illustration project Type illustration has existed for centuries: woodcut initials are some of the earliest examples, which can be found in medieval books and old bibles. Some are so detailed that they are like small stand-alone works of art. Combining type and illustration is a powerful tool that can captivate our attention and convey a message. It can transform the meaning of a word because not only are you reading it, you are seeing it. “As soon as you start to illustrate a word, you give it some special kind of feeling,” says Birgit Palma (@birgitpalma), a Barcelona-based artist specializing in illustration and lettering. “You can make the word stronger, but you can also destroy the word, depending on the type of illustration you use.” Illustrated type can send subliminal messages that convey an impactful meaning.

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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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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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