Printing effects: a guide to making your cover special
If you thought that self-publishing doesn’t offer much in terms of printing effects that can make your cover SCREAM – you were wrong. …or at least partially. If you decided to follow the print-on-demand route, then you probably won’t have the opportunity to use any of these – sorry. However, if you decided to print […]
Tutorial: My artwork feels off; how to fix it?
Have you ever felt that there is something fundamentally wrong with your artwork? I think each of us has been in this situation before. Imagine: you’ve been looking at the same image for hours on end, fiddling with this and that, but still you can’t shake the feeling that something is off, not right – […]
A 2020 summary – Art & Design
Welcome to 2021 – goodbye 2020! 2020 left us all with a bad aftertaste in our mouths, but one thing certainly did happen – we were forced to navigate a very different reality than the one we knew before. I admit that at the beginning of the year, I was afraid new leads were going […]
Where to find affordable stock images
When you’re a hobbyist or beginner artist, finding stock photos that won’t bankrupt you can be a challenge. Subscriptions to popular stock image services do give you access to bases of millions of pictures, but they can be a heavy strain on one’s budget. However, there are alternatives – sites and accounts created by passionate […]
5 Tools That Make My Job Much Easier (Designer/Artist Edition)
Every artist has tools that they would preferably never be separated from – tools that make our lives SO much easier and save as tons of time that we can now productively use to watch cat memes on the Internet. I searched for some of these far and wide, and decided to share my list […]
Blend it: Lighting for Beginners
Introduction Hi there! In this tutorial, we’re going to take a look at something we all struggle with – lighting. After reviewing the basics, we will analyse several common lighting situations and share some useful resources to help you with further learning. The Basics First things first – let’s take a look at the anatomy […]
Gradient Maps in Photomanipulation – Tutorial
Hi, folks! In this handy tutorial, we’re going to be talking about gradient maps. What are they? How do they work? How can you use them in photomanipulations? See below! What are gradient maps and how do they work? A gradient map is a type of an adjustment layer in Photoshop, which (unlike a traditional gradient […]
6 Book Designers to Follow – I
This new series of posts will showcase 6 designers who do awesome work – and yes, this is mostly to let myself publicly fangirl over people whose work I admire. Also, from now on, I will do my utmost to post a new article or feature every two weeks – it may not look it […]
Upwork, Guru, PeoplePerHour: a Subjective Review of Freelance Marketplaces
Freelance marketplaces, freelance platforms – however you call them, they are one of the easiest ways to get a gig as a new and inexperienced freelancer. They have their good and their bad sides, and in this text, I will tell you shortly about both. I decided to describe 5 places which I have personal […]
Printing Artwork 101: 7 things to remember
In the life of every artist or designer one day comes a time when they want to print something. You start reading what needs to be done, try to figure out how to prepare your files and, often, fail – why have the colours shifted so much? Why is the print so dark? Why did […]
