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art Tag

With Father’s Day just around the corner, I couldn’t help myself with creating a little dad joke art for the occasion 🙂 You may have seen this similar tutorial I made last year, but this year, I wanted to try it with my gouache brushes and integrate the lettering into the art for a full composition. I also wanted to share a realllllly easy trick to create center highlights and a vignette that you can add to any background to give it more focus and make it *pop* 😉

It’s the last Thursday in March, which means it’s time for your free April 2019 desktop wallpapers! This month’s wallpaper was entirely created in Procreate, with just the dates added in using Photoshop and my font, Miss Magnolia. This month’s wallpaper is all about intertwining elements 🙂 To intertwine the foliage + flourish elements, I used layer masks, exactly as shown in this tutorial. All of the lettering + doodles were made using my free Procreate Monoweight Brush (available in the Resource Library). For the dates, ‘R’ is for Thursday, to distinguish it from a same-sized Tuesday ‘T’ at a glance. 

The download includes the April 2019 desktop wallpapers in two common resolutions: 1280x1024px and 1920x1080px, with and without dates. I’ve left the year off of the ‘no-dates’ versions, so you can use it for any April in the future, too!

It’s almost Valentine’s Day! If you’re creating your own valentines this year or have ever needed a heart shape in the past, then you know it’s not a default shape that comes with Illustrator. It can also be a little tricky to figure out using the default shapes as ‘shape builders.’ In this week’s tutorial, I share my favorite 3 (quick) ways to create a heart shape in Illustrator. Read on to see them all!

If you’re just getting started with Procreate – especially after all the recent updates – it’s totally normal to feel a bit overwhelmed! This week, I wanted to do a super simple Procreate tutorial for beginners that will also give you some great insight into the capabilities Procreate now has. In this tutorial, we’ll create 2 easy ribbons in Procreate and you’ll pick up some tips you can use for your future digital artwork, as well. Read on to get started!

This week, we’re returning to one of my favorite topics: watercolor textures! Ever since I received these brush pens in the mail, I have been swooning over all of the cool textures I’m able to create – and quickly, too! These are the most vibrant watercolor-simulated outcomes I’ve been able to achieve with brush pens, which makes the creation process that much more fun. Use these as backgrounds for your lettering, or even scan them in and make a digital texture or repeat pattern out of them! Read on to see 3 different watercolor texture tricks using brush pens below.

I experiment with new materials and supplies constantly for my (traditional) hand lettering. I would actually be scared to know how much time I’ve spent eyeing different hand lettering supplies (and reading their reviews) over on Amazon. I’ve invested in a lot of new ones this year and currently I have 5 favorites that I find myself always returning to and reordering. If you’re just starting out with lettering, or if you’re on the hunt for some new supplies but would like to read a real (almost every day) user review, here are my current top 5 favorite hand lettering supplies (totally unbiased, with no affiliation to any of em) 🙂

Things have changed quite a bit in the last 5 years. Back then, it was perfectly acceptable to attach a pdf (which you had a zillion different variations of) to an email, but that just isn’t the case anymore. Pdf portfolios are a dated way of portfolio delivery on top of taking up valuable space in a potential employer’s inbox. Enter the digital portfolio age where having an online digital portfolio presence is essential for a graphic designer. Luckily, you don’t have to be a programmer or a super nerd to get your work online and looking fine 😉

This week, I’m rounding up options to get your portfolio up as quickly as possible, looking as professional as possible, and collecting some nice SEO in the process. All of the options – free and for a fee – available below!

Happy Tuesday! I’ve gotten quite a few requests lately on layout design for a business card, so this week I wanted to share some design friendly layouts that could be used for different types of businesses, and also make each one print-ready using Illustrator. At the end of this tutorial, you’ll have 3 business card design layouts (front and back!) you can print at home using the bulk print method, or send off to a professional printer. Read on to see how – links to the fonts and resources used included below!

One of the changes I’m happiest I made last year was finally joining the amazing people on Instagram (I know, superrrr late to the party). I had created an account a couple of years before, but I had been so focused on creating tutorials and getting the blog to a good place that sticking to regular Instagram postings seemed too overwhelming at the time.

Last year, I felt like I had finally hit a rhythm and I’m so glad that I decided to add Instagram into my weekly mix. I am literally amazed every single day by incredible artists creating and posting breathtaking art (cue guilt on party lateness). I love the camaraderie, the new insta-friends I’ve made and the ability to connect with people/artists/designers who are passionate about the same things. In honor of them, I wanted to start a new monthly/bi-monthly post where I share some instagrammers who I deeply admire and who I think you’ll also love. Welcome to post #1 where I’m sharing my first 5 (of many, many, many) InstaLoves.

Last week, I gave away some free October desktop wallpapers and I wanted to share how I created the typography before I digitized it 🙂 I’m calling it skeleton typography, since it was inspired by Day of the Dead sugar skull designs and we’re creating some decorative ‘guts’ for our type. In this fine art tutorial, we create our skeleton typography using 4 writing utensils and a sheet of 110# white cardstock. Get creative with your own Halloween typography this year using the same techniques for any words you choose! Read on to see how 🙂

As many of you know, I’ve been kind of crazy about watercolors lately (check out my new Skillshare class, this tutorial, or this one for proof!) and have started receiving emails asking what art supplies I’m using for creating my fine art assets – whether it’s textures, lettering, or just types of paper. Today I wanted to share the exact art supplies I’ve been using on a weekly basis to create everything you’ve seen here over the last few months. I hope this list will eliminate some of your own guess work (as I researched all of these supplies thoroughly before investing in them) – and help you to create your own future assets!

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