Making a Child’s Drawing in Paint Shop Pro

A part of Paint Shop Pro X2 that seems largely neglected is its Art Media tools. Although they are nowhere near as formidable as those in more expensive and specialised illustration packages, they can still be used for fun little projects such as this.

I feel I must warn you now that these tools are seemingly memory intensive, so you may experience mouse lag when you are drawing. Quite often when I tried undoing a mistake Paint Shop Pro would crash requiring me to use the Task Manager to close it and pick it up again from a previous save. So save often, and wherever possible don't make mistakes, but if you do, make sure you use the Art Media's special eraser to fix them rather than rushing towards the Undo keys.

Step 1. Open your image and select New Layer. Select New Art Media layer and name this layer Lines in the window that comes up. Then, move to the right tab of the new layer window and select the type of paper you want it to appear on from the drop-down arrow in the thumbnail. Corel already has a few of these built in for you, so for this task lets use one of the rough paper textures.

You need to create another one of these layers with the same paper type and name it Colour for later on. Then make sure that the Lines layer is on top, then Colour and finally Background.

Step 2. Make sure you are working in the Lines layer and in the bottom-most group of your tools you should find the Art Media tools. Select the Colour Pencil or Crayon tool and zoom into your picture. Set the colour to whatever you want your edges to be and click on one of the corners of the object you are drawing.

Step 3. Resize the tool so that the tip is still a tad chunky, but make sure it's big enough to destroy all detail in the image. You need space between these lines to fill with colour after all.

Now, place your cursor over the next corner and hold shift whilst you left click. This will create a straight line between the last point you clicked and the one you are clicking now, and if your line is not perfectly straight it isn't a major problem; it will add to the authenticity of your picture. Draw the main shape of the house out in this fashion. If there is anything obscuring part of your image like the bushes here, just imagine the shape of the object behind them; we really want to simplify the image here.

Step 4. Now draw a line across the bottom of the door. We want to go around the edges of all the windows too now, and the edges of every pane of glass. Don't worry about all the individual panels in the door itself, just draw the window, letterbox and a doorknob for now. Change the colour accordingly for these details; a yellow doorknob and letterbox tends to look the best.

Step 5. Finally we want to draw the roof and chimney. Draw the chimney as you would normally, and do the same for the outline of the roof too. However add a few horizontal lines and maybe some diagonal ones too to create some big chunky tiles.

Step 6. Now begins the fun bit; start colouring your house whatever colours you like. Make sure you do it in the Colours layer though so that the lines remain visible, and try to stay within them where possible. Remember, you still need to colour white areas too; it's all too easy to assume your painting on white and leaving an area clear that should be white, and this becomes more important later on in this process.

Step 7. You can now press the Eye icon next to the Background layer to hide it. Create a new Raster layer to act as your paper, and use the Flood Fill tool to fill it with the colour you want. Rename the new layer to Paper and place it behind the layers containing your drawing, but on top of your background layer.

Step 8. Now we need the obligatory animal, family member and plant outside the house. So create a third Art Media Layer at the top of the Layer List and draw them, you can also name them if you want to.

Step 9. Finally, when you are absolutely certain you are happy with your work, right click each of the Art Media layers above your Paper and select Merge>Merge Down.

When all the layers are combined into one picture layer, above the hidden original Background image, open Effects>Texture Effects>Texture. In the window that opens, select a paper texture that you like and customise it so that it looks like the sort of paper a child draws on. I used the Paper Coarse texture, increased the scale of the effect and reduced the depth to keep the effect subtle.

There you have it, a child like drawing created in Paint Shop Pro.