back to graphics
Needlepoint
This will use the paintbrush plus dodge, burn, smudge and soften and it would be good to make sure you can use these before you start. Other than that I hope you have great fun.
I favour the grid method - this involves laying a grid over your original and over your canvas and then copying your interpretation of the picture from square to square. I recommend opening your new picture at 1000 x 1000 pixels then opening the picture you want to paint and resizing it so that it's longest side is 1000 pixels. The original I used is here or feel free to use your own.
If you are painting
still life or landscapes (the real thing) you could always make a frame
from card (or use an old picture frame) and tie cotton threads across
it in both directions to form a grid of squares (10 x 10) then you just
set that up to look through at your subject.
Next create a new layer and put a grid on that layer - I have set up a couple of grid tubes and grids a jpeg or gif files in case you want to use them in other art packages. But PSP has a built in Grid option under View. Just click View and then click Grid - you can also adjust the grid size under the view option.
10x10blackgrid tube 10x10whitegrid tube 10x10jpeggrid 10x10whitegifgrid
Once you have your grids in place you can start drawing the main parts
of your picture - in this case I used a black background with a white
grid - if you set the tubes up in psp and want to use them you must still
put them on a new layer on their own and to place them make sure your
cursor is in the centre of your blank picture (500,500) and then the grid
will be positioned properly.
Create a new raster
layer again to paint on (you now have a black background layer, a layer
with a grid on and a blank layer for painting.
Here I have drawn the basic outline using the paintbrush set to width 1 (all other settings to 100)
You can zoom and fiddle with the windows in order to draw the eyes outline
then the fun starts.
I prefer to start with the eye and build from there, in PSP you can
use the eye dropper to select a colour from the picture and then going
back to your painting you can (using the paintbrush) start painting
in your picture. Use a brush width that you are comfortable with and
play with the softness/hardness and opacity to let you gradually build
your paint on the paper - an opacity of around 40 - 50 works well. You
will be using paintbrush and burn, dodge, smudge and soften brushes
- all of which work best with a gentle approach and opacity of around
40 or 50.
Here I have started on the eye and using the paintbrsuh to put in the basic colours and then using burn to darken specs in the eye and dodge to lighten some then soften them and apply the grey and white highlight. Finally soften than and use similar effects on the skin and feathers around the eye.
Gradually build the painting using a lot of darkening and lightening and smudging to give shadows and highlights.
Feathers (or the impression of feathers) can be achieved quite well using dabs of colour and then smudging them. The edges can the be brought up using burn to add shadow and dodge to add light. A fine brush is used for the hairlike feathers around the beak.
Here the colours have been blocked in before smudging etc. Then the burn and dodge tools are used the build the detail which is again smudged and repeated until you are finally satisfied.
When you are satisfied you can hide the layer with the grid on and resize your image to around 400 x 400 - this will make all the lines finer and make your painting look better still.
I have no problem with you linking to this site or sending others here.