Finally here!🚀
Today is the day! The third edition of Our Planet Week just started! And just at the same time I released my new website and Art Print Store!
Happy Earth Day, everyone! Today the third edition of Our Planet Week launched! And I can already see the most amazing interpretations for the prompts! Thank you so much for all of you joining the illustration event. I will be sharing my favorite illustrations e interpretations on the Our Planet Week’s timeline!
It’s been almost two months since I posted my last Substack. I took some time to recharge and finish some cool projects, my website included. Because the last update it had was in 2020. I migrated my illustration portfolio from Squarespace to WordPress, and I will be sharing part of that frustrating experience.
So enjoy! Happy Earth Day / Our Planet Week 2022
The Menu for This Week
🌳 A Frustrating Fresh New Look
🌳 Printing your artwork at home?
🌳 Our Planet Week 2022 third edition
🌳 Learn Illustration with me
A Frustrating Fresh New Look
I just published my new Website & online Store!
It took me more than two years to properly sit down and update my website, and after a lot of work and suffering, I published it yesterday. And when I say suffering it’s because, for some random reason, we decided to migrate from Squarespace to WordPress. And when I say we, I include Pedro in the mix. He was in charge of the technical decision of going down that route. And I can tell, after a long time of working on the site, he regrets it so, so, so, so much.
In January, I started working on updating my Behance and planning to use the results of the photoshoot sessions for my new website. Squarespace was fine for a few years, but surfing around, you could tell that they were a bit behind on design, at least in a DIY sense of the word. Creating a page with a 4 or 5 columns portfolio seemed a lot of work. So migrating to a more flexible and less expensive platfom (Squarespace is 47 EUR per month) was something I wanted to do for a while.
As always, Pedro was in charge of the tech part, as he uses all the platforms out there to create his websites. We wanted a lot of functionalities, so it was either WordPress or Webflow. And the latter seemed a bit more complex to use. And Pedro, who used to work on WordPress way back, thought. “they were bad, but a lot of time and tech has passed; it must be much better by now”. Wrong.
We got a nice template and a year discount of 50% to use the highest WordPress tier, which was good. But immediately after installing the template, the problems started. The one we got required a lot of paid plugins. On top of that, the template was kind of buggy, so it took us a week to fix it.
It was supposed to be a quick transfer and ended up being a nightmare. So if you are thinking of migrating your site, and you don’t have plans like me to have a gated part of the website, or a crazy store configuration, I recommend you to check other alternatives.
Either way, I’m really happy how the website came up to be! But most probably, I will be migrating it once more as soon as my year passes.
Printing Your Artwork at Home?
I tried a bunch of different papers, so you don’t have to
The questions about my home art printing, the papers, printer, ink, and printer settings are among the ones that repeat the most. And it’s not surprising - having the right paper to print your artwork on is super important, especially if you want to sell your prints. And finding the right one isn’t easy and takes a lot of trial and error, so I reviewed tons of paper for you.
In this video, you will see how different papers affect the quality of each print. I’m showing you my printer, which I’ve been using for the last five years (!), and I’m making a comparison of all the papers I’ve tried out.
All the papers and the printer are in the video description below, so you can check them out if you’re interested.
Also, remember that once you subscribe to my Youtube channel, you can go to the community tab and see a screenshot of my printer settings.
#OurPlanetWeek 2022
The third edition is here! Let’s plant 5000 more trees!
I’m happy to share some great news with you all! Our Planet Week is here! This edition is shaping up great! We have an awesome hosting team, a bunch of really inspiring and thought-provoking prompts and… I’m happy to say that once again, One Tree Planted is joining forces with us, so that together we can really make a difference and plant trees with our art!
For all of you who don’t know what Our Planet Week is, I invite you to visit our website www.ourplanetweek.com and our Insta @ourplanetweek for all the information.
On my art account, I’m also sharing all the latest info about the event, so be sure to follow @asiaorlando_
For those of you who are familiar with the initiative and have already participated in previous editions, I’ll be super happy to see you join us once again for a good cause and an awesome art challenge!
Learn With Me! Procreate Class
Digital illustration & Procreate online course.
As I’m sure you all know by now, my first online course is officially out there. As promised, there I teach you to illustrate digitally and show you my full process. In the course, I share the best advice and tips I received from my best art professors and continue to use them in my work. We start talking about influences and working on our own unique style. We go through all the stages behind every artwork, starting with choosing and collecting inspiration.
You will learn how composition rules will affect your illustration and how you can apply color theory to serve the mood and tell a story. After that, all that’s left to do is sketch! Once I make sketches, I decide on which one to go with and move to a color draft.
I show you how I choose and define the colors in my work and finally, how I add details. Last but not least, I talk about showing your work online in different ways and talk about contracts and licensing! All of that you will find in my online class. I’m working in Procreate, sharing some of my favorite shortcuts and tips, but you can apply the knowledge and techniques learned using any app you like, like Photoshop or Affinity.
Remember to always use my link to the class if you want to share this one HERE
During that short time that my class’s been officially out, I’ve already seen your projects and progress and had a chance to get to know you a little bit better. It’s a pleasure to have such great students and I hope to see more of you joining our community!
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While migrating from one host to the other was a pain, now that you are on WP, do you feel that you have gained more flexibility and are at least saving a bit on yearly fees? Don’t you think that on the long run you will be happy you made the move? Anyways, I definitely like the look and UX of your new website And I am enjoying your Domestika class. Warmly, Monique