There’s frustration in the design world about RGB color mode and CMYK color mode. A design looks great on your computer, but suddenly looks dull and muted when printed. What gives? RGB is the color profile used by computer monitors to display images. But, printers use CMYK, which has a more limited range of colors. …
Digital Art
Canva is a great design tool that can help you make many things from birthday cards to social media graphics. But, you’ve probably had that annoying experience where you download one of the designs you’ve worked so hard on and you realize it’s blurry, grainy, or just not the quality you’re looking for. It looks …
You’re having a great time drawing in Procreate when, suddenly, your lines start looking pixelated. This can be a frustrating problem that feels helpless. How do you get smooth edges and avoid the pixelation? Luckily, there are some things you can do to avoid this pixelation problem. Pixelation problems with Procreate are usually due to …
In order to get the most out of everything that Procreate can do, you need to understand a key feature: layer opacity. Being able to change your layer opacity will open up a lot of possibilities for your art. To change the layer opacity in Procreate, open your Layers panel and use two fingers to …
Photobashing is a popular, if not controversial, way to create art out of existing photos and graphics. No matter where you stand on the controversy, photobashing is something that takes quite a bit of digital design skill, usually in Photoshop. There are some great classes about photobashing specifically. There are also some great classes dealing …
There’s something romantic about the idea of doing art all day and actually making money from it. But, instead of hustling to sell each of our paintings, what if there was a stable job that gave you a regular paycheck for doing the art you love? Say hello to graphic design. It sounds like a …
These days, we deal with a lot of different types of media files. JPEG, PNG, TIFF, MOV, SVG, and yes, PDF. If you know and love Canva the way that I do, you’ll be happy to know that you can upload PDFs to the platform and use them for your designs. To upload a PDF …
You’re working on a design when, suddenly, Canva crashes. Or, you’re just about to open a new design, when Canva freezes. I am a huge fan of Canva, but I’ve been in those crashing and freezing shoes. Software isn’t perfect and, every once in a while, it glitches. So, what should you do if Canva …
There’s nothing worse than slaving over a design just to realize it’s low resolution and won’t print very well. Or, even worse, sell it to someone and have them send you a nasty message about how pixelated and blurry the printed version of your design ended up. What went wrong? Most likely, it was the …
In so many ways, technology has made our lives a lot easier. We can magically edit photos with one click, make designs from endless amounts of stock photos, and create beautiful pieces of art. Wait, wait, wait; that last one isn’t easy. Digital art is surprisingly hard. Maybe we love drawing with pencil and paper …