Where do mixed media artists find inspiration in the winter? We have hand-picked an incredible amount of amazing painting artworks from deviantart to inspire any artist. Let’s explore!

October is over and with it came another great group of websites. This months selection of websites does share some common traits, vibrant colors, tons of texture, and some great typography. Regardless of the technology used, this months collection of sites shows that elegant design is more than possible on the web.

Twitter has their own method for displaying your Twitter status on your website but they rely on Twitter-hosted scripts and generally hold up the page load. That’s why i would like to showcase some of the best tutorials and WordPress plugins that will display your twitter status on your blog or website. Also you will find high quality twitter icons to spice up your status area.

Cinema 4D is a high-end 3D graphics application capable of procedural and polygonal modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, and rendering. Its easy to use interface has gained popularity among film and motion graphic artists. There are many things you can do using its endless features. You need to discover them and decide how to use them in new and innovative ways to create the creative, beautiful and realistic 3D Graphics. In this article, we look at Cinema 4D as one of the best tools for designers to create realistic objects, 3D models and animation.

Wallpapers can be creative, inspiring and elegant. If you are a designer, you probably need a desktop wallpaper that inspires you to create something creative and original. Today we present 30 stunning wallpapers created by some hard-working and dedicated designers. In this post we present creative desktop wallpapers related to art, photoshop, wallpapers-illustrations and abstract design. They are definitely worth a look.

I was looking for new cool artists to feature on abduzeedo and found these nice vexel arts. I know there are better ones out there but some of them are just amazing and I need to publish them.

One of the best clients for web designers are Real Estate agencies. As Lex Luthor would say, big money lays in land, property... so there's where you'll find good clients. You can count on that. And here is a little inspiration for you. These are really awesome, I was actually concerned that I wouldn't find good looking real estate sites, but I was wrong; there are plenty. Since I'm looking for a good structured settlement with any nearby school, I started visiting some of these (in Brazil only), and found good sites, so it come to me to make this post. I hope you all enjoy this. Cheers!

Minimalism, in the context of design, refers to simple, unadorned designs that embody only the most basic and fundamental needs. In art, it is a movement that has its roots in the post-World War II era, started by highly regarded minimalist artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Robert Morris. Minimalism today refers to a certain style (or even a certain attitude or way of life) that transcends different fields, such as architecture, philosophy, law and, of course, Web design. In this article, we explore the meaning of minimalism in the context of Web design. First, we’ll look at some features of a minimalist Web design in the hope of learning by way of deconstruction. Then, we’ll see a showcase of minimalist designs. Finally, you’ll find some useful resources on the topic of minimalism in Web design.

Rik is an artist that takes pride in his unique and abstract work. He fills his work with vibrant imagery to remind himself that the world itself is still joyful. Rik also explains his designing philosophy, and gives advice to designers who are looking to create their own unique styles, which he has done successfully.

Fundamentally any weblog would be made up of header, sidebar, content section and footer. In the eye of a visitor, the footer is perhaps one of the most unnoticeable section but to a designer who knows how important user experience, navigation and designs, they are treated the same. That said, footer will not be anything less important compared to the header (or masthead) Footer contents varies from developer/author’s short bio, recent articles, Flickr photos, quick links and so on, but it’s interesting to find out how designers prioritize their footer. Not only it will inspires us, it somehow help us understand what we really need in our footer section. Here’s a compilation of 50 Excellent Blog Footer Designs collected everywhere from the blogosphere. If your footer is nice, let us know, we’d like to have it in our sequel entry. In the mean time, full list after jump.

The best thing about festivals, new year celebrations or most of big festivals, are the fireworks!! I've never met a person that didn't like it, or that wouldn't get touched by its magic. Truly, it's magic... thank God for the Chinese. And capturing these are another great thing. Thanks to photography, we get to capture these fantastic multi-colored explosions. Thanks to that, we also get to take a closer look at the details, which are beautiful. Anyways, here's a little selection of 20 beautiful shots I've found on Flickr. Does anyone got any fireworks pictures? If you do, post it here for us!! Enjoy these! Cheers! ;)

For this week's interview we have Max Spencer, a UK based freelance illustrator and graphic designer also member of the fantastic depthCORE art group. Max sent us a wallpaper for the wallpaper of the week #26, a few months ago, so now let's discover a bit of his secrets to create great designs.

Hand-drawing websites are very popular on today’s design. Some of well-known web company applies on these techniques to make a beautiful hand-drawn website for their clients. CSSBuilt.com collects 40+ hand-drawn websites for your inspiration. Be inspired and enjoy!

We’d like to let you know about people we think are doing great work. And this time we present works of five professional matte painters who have colossal experience in film industry. They are: Dylan Cole, Frederic St-Arnaud, Yanick Dusseault, David Luong and Chris Thunig. What is matte painting? - you ask. Matte painting is a mixture of photo manipulation and digital paintings to create the vision of a place that makes you believe it really exists. Matte paintings are widely used as backgrounds for movies and video games.

Last week I published a collection of over 50 excellent navigational menus for your design inspiration. Because I found more examples than I used in that post, and because others seemed to share my appreciation for menu design, I’ve decided to put together a second collection.

Ah! We're back! 65 awesome inspirational designs this time in our business card roundup!

I know WordPress feels the template love so this week it’s Joomla’s turn to show off. Designing for Joomla is not popular as designing templates for WordPress. Here are some excellent examples of what can be done with a little creativity and Joomla. Here are a list of 101 Joomla Interface templates from Template Monster. The gallery photos are linked to their respective pages.

Mess That I Love… I mean it in the good sense. When I was preparing the collection of website/portfolios of British designer and developers I was feeling like in a hospital: very clean and neat style, almost zero images, white, gray, blue and black. All in order, accent on works and portfolio. Today I was looking over the websites of Americans creators, guys that’s such a mess and I love it! They don’t follow some definite style just do what they want to do, they don’t focus on portfolio but have fun in everything they make which make their websites look even more creative. It’s Friday today, let me share some of this amazing mess with you!

Inpsiration comes in all sorts of forms and from any number of varying sources. It can move us to masterpieces, or simply stir us to smile. But can the source of inspiration, depending on it’s color, control how it inspires? Meaning, if the source of inspiration was primarily of a certain color, then would it inspire towards concepts or elements that are generally associated with that color? Can this kind of associative inspiration even be possible? Colors are chosen very carefully in design, due to the attachment of emotion and tone that they carry. So wouldn’t it follow that the same would be true of that colors presence in inspirational sources? That they would transfer these same emotive associations when acting to inspire? In our Inspiration in Color series we present a bit of an inspirational experiment. This is the continuation of a series of posts focused on images that are primarily of a singular selected color. Inspiration in Blue, features a wide range of wonderful works from the design world aimed at doing two things. Inspiring you overall, but also seeing if that inspiration tends to steer towards aspects associated with the color blue. peace, harmony, trust, confidence, loyalty, dependability, depression, coldness, idealism, obscenity, tackiness, air, wisdom, and nobility, are all common associations with the color blue. So where will this inspiration lead? Only you can tell…

Grunge is a stylish design trend that gives web designs a less uniform, less structured, and more organic look-and-feel. It’s characterized by textured/gritty backgrounds, uneven/torn edges, worn, faded and aged graphic elements inspired by urban and industrial architecture and scenery. It gives a way for designers to venture away from the glossy, flashy, and rigid design elements that characterize the "Web 2.0"style – a style that still dominates mainstream web design. In this collection, you’ll find 30 excellent examples of grunge in web design for your inspiration. From portfolios and fashion websites to online stores and church sites – you’ll find a variety of websites that choose to "dirty up" their web design.