Articles & Inspiration
I recently did a search for witch themed graphics for a little project I’m working on and discovered there’s an entire sub-genre of art styles dedicated to witches and witchcraft. Become bewitched by this inspirational showcase of wicked designs and illustrations with a witchy aesthetic. You’ll find a variety of creative pieces in a myriad of art styles, ranging from cartoon character illustrations to digitally painted pinups, along with an assortment of mystic and magic related graphics.
I receive requests for design resources for the Affinity creative software more and more frequently from Spoon Graphics subscribers. While I haven’t found the time to tempt myself to migrate over from the Adobe apps just yet, I have tried to source as many Affinity tools as possible from creative experts who do use this great Adobe-alternative software to share as part of the Access All Areas membership on Spoon Graphics. For those wanting more, this roundup should provide plenty of assets for Affinity users to explore. I have searched for the biggest and best collections of design resources made specifically for Affinity Designer. These are the best value products currently available!
When it comes to abstract art, anything goes! However, there is one particular combination of styles that has become surprisingly popular. The elegance of classic Renaissance sculptures and the psychedelic digital explosion of the Vaporwave aesthetic are two contrasting styles you wouldn’t expect to see together, but as you will discover from today’s inspiration showcase, it actually works! Check out these combinations of famous statues from the likes of Michelangelo and Donatello with modern digital art trends such as neon lights, abstract shapes, and vibrant colours.
Whatever happened to the good old fashioned brand mascot? There aren’t many companies these days that have a cute cartoon representative! The only exception might be modern eSports logos, as showcased in one of my previous inspiration posts, but the visual style has evolved from the fun and friendly classic cartoon into strong and powerful, vector art. Fans of the retro design style will be happy to know that there still are some designers out there creating classic mascot characters to accompany their vintage brand identity designs. In today’s inspiration showcase I feature 40 nostalgic logo designs with retro mascot characters. Admire the different old-school art styles inspired by mid-century or the even earlier rubber-hose cartoon aesthetics.
Samurai warriors are one of the coolest icons of Japanese pop culture! These legendary warriors are a popular subject for artists and designers, who not only feature fearsome Samurai in stunning illustrative work and character concept art, but the iconic battledress is also commonly used within logo designs too. In today’s inspiration showcase I present 40 amazing designs and illustrations of Samurai Warriors, including incredible digital paintings, detailed vector art, and mashups of Samurai with other pop culture icons.
With Halloween coming up this week, I figured it would be an ideal time to produce another morbid inspiration showcase featuring skulls! Portraits of people lacking their skin and flesh seems to be a weirdly popular subject for many artists and illustrators, with skulls and skeletons being depicted in all kinds of art styles ranging from nightmarish horror scenes to humerus cartoon characters. Check out this showcase of 50 illustrations from a variety of talented artists.
