Virtual Egg Painting | |
by Jacci Howard Bear
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Start with simple shapes
With today's graphic software you can create a masterpiece in a minute. But many of us are so overwhelmed by all the fancy filters and exotic sounding tools that we never move beyond simple squares and circles or typing in words and adding drop shadows.
Actually, there is a lot that you can do without really knowing what you are doing. Sound crazy? Then open up your favorite drawing and paint programs and let's paint some Easter eggs.
This tutorial is non-software specific. Although I used CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint 7 to make these eggs, you can use Adobe Photoshop, or PaintShop Pro, or something else. You may have to work around some steps, but basically we're just exploring and experimenting and becoming more familiar with our graphics toolbox.
Draw an egg
First, we need an egg to paint. One way to do that is to draw an ellipse in a drawing (vector) program then make one end fatter and the other pointier.
I used the ellipse (or circle) tool to start.
Or, you could draw a shape on paper and scan it or find a piece of clip art of an egg and make it solid black. We want a plain, unadorned egg to start with.
After reshaping your ellipse into an egg (or scanning an egg, etc.) make it a solid color (black works fine) and save the image. If you don't want to make Easter eggs, draw a circle and make beach balls.
CorelDRAW users: Draw the ellipse, convert to curves, use the node editing tools to reshape the ellipse.
Next we move to our paint program where we'll create a mask or a "stencil" to paint. I'll show you how to paint your eggs (or your beach balls, or any other shape) without worrying about "staying inside the lines."
Next Page > Masking Your Egg > Page 1, 2, 3, 4
