Lera Kiryakova is a talented digital artist and Instagram star. She is known for her vibrant illustrations and celebrity portraits in a cute, cartoony style.
Do you want to learn how to draw more dynamically and realistically, like your favorite artists on Instagram? It’s much EASIER than you think!
In this course, you will learn essential art concepts and key skills that will help you level up your drawing game and progress faster than you thought possible!
Experienced illustrator, Lera Kiryakova, will show you the exact steps to transforming your artwork beyond basic colors and shadows to absolute masterpieces that command instant attention.
She’ll share her wealth of knowledge and tips gleaned from years of working in the gaming and illustration industry, such as what to focus on, what to avoid, and easy ways to improve.
This course offers a wonderful balance of fascinating art theory and fun practical exercises!
Lera guides you step by step through her illustration process, explaining how to ensure your artwork looks cohesive, make specific elements stand out, and add fun extras like detailed textures and glossy shine for that WOW effect!
Join the course today and become the proficient digital artist you’ve always dreamed of!
Welcome to Lera’s course!
Under her guidance, you’ll discover easy ways to draw more dynamically and realistically!
She’ll share a wealth of tips, teach key artistic concepts, and demonstrate each one using lots of beautiful, vivid artwork!
Tone/value is how light or dark a hue is. This key concept plays a pivotal role in creating eye-popping artwork.
A common beginner mistake is to dive headfirst into colors without thinking about tones.
If your artwork looks flat and dull, but you don’t know why, this could be it!
Lera will help you to leap this hurdle, demonstrating how to use tones correctly and easily check yours in Photoshop!
Want to paint a cohesive illustration, with all the parts coming together beautifully?
In this lesson, Lera teaches how to avoid the ‘sticker effect’, when an element appears to be sitting on top of the artwork.
She shows you several methods to seamlessly merge foreground objects into the background, so it looks like one harmonious scene.
Discover pro hacks to avoid common mistakes (they happen to everyone)!
After this lesson, you’ll be an expert at the art of using reflected light, painting shadows & highlights, and managing contrast perfectly.
With Lera’s help, you won’t struggle anymore with using highlights inappropriately or falling into the oversaturation trap. She’s got you covered!
In this lesson, Lera demonstrates how to expertly add photo texture to your illustration for a realistic, hand-drawn feel!
She shows you how to avoid that ‘copy-and-paste’ look and explains all the steps to incorporate intricate patterns seamlessly into your artwork!
Pick up a bunch of awesome skills in this lesson to level up your coloring and shading!
Some of the cool stuff waiting for you: where to add warm and cool tones, how to tell a story with textures, and why ambient occlusion is so important!
You’ll also discover the amazing world of art accents, using color, light, shadows, contrast, sharpness, and blurriness to enhance your illustrations!
Now comes the fun part: You’ll get to practice your newfound skills and paint a mouth-watering cake with Lera! Yay!
Starting with grayscale values, and building up the shadows and colors, Lera guides you step by step through this fun process!
You’ll also enjoy adding lovely finishing touches like highlights, glows, and fun details to your tasty creation!
Course rating
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Lera Kiryakova is a proficient illustrator known for her endearing celebrity portraits crafted in a distinctive, cute cartoon style.
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Full bio21 Draw is an online learning community where students of all skill levels can learn how to be a better artist. Our contributing artists and instructors are the best in the world.
Our streaming platform on www.21-draw.com makes it possible for anyone to watch hundreds of video lessons by industry legends who have worked for Disney, Marvel, DC, Dreamworks, Pixar & more. A membership gives full access to our streaming platform.
On books.21-draw.com you can buy our popular learn-to-draw ebooks and physical books, separate from the courses, and they too are also delivered to you by the heavyweights of the art industry.
Membership includes unlimited access to all 55+ courses taught by the world’s best artists PLUS new courses as they are released.
Each class includes 10-20 video lessons that are 7 minutes long on average. Most classes include exercise sheets, assignments, and layered PSD or PNG files.
Some classes include the ability to chat with the instructor in a public forum, e.g. if you want feedback on your artwork.
Yes! When you complete a 21 Draw course, you will receive a certificate of completion, which you can download and share with your friends, relatives, co-workers, and potential employers!
21 Draw courses are on-demand (pre-recorded) video tutorials that you can watch online with any digital devices anytime and for an unlimited number of times! This means you can easily watch (and rewatch) them at your own pace and convenience.
We have classes for all levels, even for those with zero drawing experience. In general, artists at all levels can benefit from these courses—whether beginner, intermediate or advanced.
Many lessons in our courses apply to both digital and traditional art. In a few tutorials, digital drawing software, e.g. Photoshop or Procreate for iPad is required. However, for the majority of lessons it is more about the underlying concepts and all that is needed is a pen and paper.
You can download the course resources (exercise sheets, assignments, PSD files, etc.) from the site, but you cannot download the video lessons to your computer.
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