Nela Dunato Art & Design Blog
I'm getting a fed up with the right/left brain myth that became so ingrained in our culture. Rarely anyone outside of the scientific world is even questioning it, and it's even more pronounced in our creative circles where people wear the right-brained label like a badge of honor. I'm sure many people won't agree with what I have to say on this topic, and even my best friends and most loyal readers might find this idea in opposition to their views. But I cannot in good conscience support the story I feel is inaccurate and harmful. Read more...
Writing about topics like these always invokes a lot of fear and self-worth issues in me, so I've refrained from publishing this post for a good long while. What if giving up on old dreams translates as being flaky, lazy and not able to finish anything? But usually when I get cold feet about publishing something, it turns out there is a bunch of people who feel exactly the same and are so glad to see someone else writing about it, because they too are a bit embarrassed to admit it. Read more...
For the entire month of November I've been drawing a fairy a day and posting it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #MonthOfFairies. Today I'm sharing my works from the last week and I'm taking you through the entire sketchbook flip on video. Read more...
For the entire month of November I'm drawing a fairy a day and posting it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #MonthOfFairies. Here's an overview of the artwork I created during the third week of the project, from November 17th 'till November 23rd. Read more...
For the entire month of November I'm drawing a fairy a day and posting it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #MonthOfFairies. I'm now officially half way through the journey, and here's an overview of all the artwork I created in the past week, from November 10th 'till November 16th. Read more...
For the entire month of November I am drawing a fairy a day and posting it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #MonthOfFairies. Here's an overview of all the drawings, paintings and sketches I created in the first week. Read more...
I've been itching to do a personal art project that will enable me to work on my technique and style. For the entire month of November I will be drawing a fairy a day and posting it on Instragram, Twitter and Facebook. Take a look at the first drawing in this post! Read more...
This blog post is a part of the ’20 Things You Might Not Know About Me’ Blog Tag started by April from Blacksburg Belle. I'm not a fan of overly personal posts because I presume that wouldn't be interesting to most of you, but honestly — that's just my assumption, I don't know whether you'd like it or not! So I decided to do it and see how it goes :) Read more...
On September the 1st I celebrated the first anniversary of making the switch to full-time self-employment. I find it really funny to read all the advice now, because I broke pretty much every single rule along the way. And this made it more difficult than it had to be. If you're still in your day job, here's a heads-up on what not to do, and what to do instead. Read more...
What do you want to be when you grow up? When I was a kid, I was changing my answer every week. I wanted to be an astronaut (of course), a paleontologist, an archeologist, a medical doctor, an actor, a molecular biologist... After a while I've settled on the fact that I'll be working 'something with computers'. To learn more about how and why I got into art, read this post. Read more...
This month, from September 12th to 26th, I'm having a solo art show in the city of Karlovac. Check out the photos from the opening reception I attended this Friday! Read more...
Rikon is a sci-fi and fantasy convention held annually in Rijeka, Croatia. Even though it has a longstanding tradition (since 1997), it never had a logo. I set out on a task to create the logo design and branding guidelines for this convention that caters to a variety of interests and age groups. See my hand lettered logo design process from sketch to finish! Read more...
When I was a kid and I started getting nice stationery for birthdays, my grandma warned me that I should not 'play' with it, but keep it safe for when I was older. I internalized this story: I don't deserve nice things now. Fast forward 20 years, I realized I still kept my 'nice sketchbooks' because I felt undeserving. Read more...
Don't ignore the question of pricing before anyone asks you. You need to come to the art buying conversation prepared. If you have no idea how to figure out how much to charge for your creations, I've got you covered! I'll show you the exact process I used to figure out the pricing for my art. Read more...
In the start-up world people often present early concepts of their work because they don't want to put thousands of hours of work and boatloads of money into something that isn't even interesting or useful to other people. And what do most of us do? We wait until we build it — no actually, we wait until we perfect it — and then we show it to the world. Read more...
This Friday I was exhibiting my art in Zagreb during the Freaky Friday event. Freaky Friday takes place each Friday the 13th and it features performance artists from all over the world, as well as local visual artists. I displayed my 10 darkest artworks in various techniques including paintings, drawings and mixed media collages. Read more...
Last weekend was filled with various cultural events here in Rijeka, and sadly I couldn't get to visit all of them, but those I did visit I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm continuing the tour next weekend, so I'm making this a 'part 1' of a series, starting with Witching Day and Wallpeople 2014. Read more...
About a month ago I took part in a free CreativeLive workshop Build a Successful Creative Blog taught by April Bowles-Olin of Blacksburg Belle.
Some of us who attended decided to create a blog tour, highlighting our biggest takeaways. If you want to learn how to improve your blog (or start a new one) definitely read this post, and the other posts in the series. Read more...
Fear of failure is probably the single biggest thing that stops people from doing what they love and achieving success. Why is fear of failure so prevalent? Why do we allow it to govern our lives and prevent us from having what we want? What is the difference between people who embrace failing often as a part of their success strategy, and those of us who don't (and hence don't succeed)? The answer is: to some of us, failure is not 'just failure'. Read more...
There's a saying (I have no idea where I first heard of it) 'If you want to achieve something, you need to think like a person who already did it'.
In this post I'm sharing a technique you can use to get yourself into a mindset of this person. Here's the gist: create a 'superhero' persona that will step in and lead the way when you need to make decisions and take actions that will lead you toward your goals. Read more...