I often use outlines that I drew in my sketch book by hand. Once I've drawn them and inked in the
outline. I won't be covering anything dealing with pictures that have already been colored or
shaded in in this tutorial, but outlines without any color are something I often prefer to create
the old fashioned way in the real paper sketch book. You can do this with any outline that is
very simple even just a stick figure if that's what you want.
You will need:
a hand drawn outline that you want to put to use in your digital artwork
digital camera or scanner
graphics software (I use gimp)
computer
your own creativity
1. scan or digitally the hand drawn outline and save it on your computer
2. open a new file and paste the outline into it, then create a pasted layer
3. the next step assuming there are the outline is ready to use as it is and
doesn't need a flaw corrected is to use threshold function (under the color menu)
which will reduce all the shades of black and white on the page to only black and
white (nothing in-between) tweak the settings until you are satisfied with the result
4. use the select by color tool, select the white spaces, and use the cut function to
get rid of them
5. if there are any little black spots that you don't want to keep still in the picture
use the eraser to erase them
6. What you do with the picture after this is up to you, so whatever you decide to do
remember to have fun with what you are doing, and enjoy your artwork once you finish
it
Compensating for flaws:
Sometime the picture has flaw that need correcting, when that
happens are some tips that might help:
In some cases the outline it's self is perfect but there is a lighting issue (this happens
a lot when I use the digital camera to input the outline into the computer rather than the
scanner (despite this I use the digital camera more often than the scanner)) for a lighting
issue you can alter the brightness and contrast before using the. Do this between steps 2
and 3.
Sometimes your outline might be perfect for paper on paper but not on computer. This can
happen in many ways, the outline has a break in the line either because it was not noticed
while you were hand drawing it or inking it in, sometimes information is lost in the process
of digitizing the picture. Sometimes you don't get the
outline right and really wish you could erase part of what you've inked it. Sometimes no matter
how you adjust the brightness or contrast you can't use the threshold function losing the outline.
I've had all of these happen. So here is what you can do about it. Step one and 2 are still
valid, follow them and then instead of following through on the rest of the steps above do
the following:
A. Open an new layer above the existing picture
B. use either the paint brush or pencil tool (for this I recommend avoiding the air brush tool,
and I also like to use a tablet and stylus) next trace the outline, make sure you trace the
whole outline, make sure that you don't leave parts of the outline broken inadvertently doing
this cause problems when you select or try to fill parts of the outline later, and in the process
feel free to not trace flaws that you wish were not part of the picture, think of it as your chance
to edit the picture.
C. When the outline has been traced make the layer with outline you were tracing from invisible
or delete this (I personally don't delete them but you are free to)
Before you do this there are some other
pieces of information that for you:
- This tutorial doesn't cover what to do with the outline once the outline is ready for use. At
this point there are a large number of options, so have fun.
- I recommend keeping the outline on a layer separate from anything else you add to the picture at
this point (including outlines of backgrounds), doing this allows you to use this outline
in more than one picture with a wide verity of colors
- Another tip for I can give you right now, I always try to avoid merging layers, and always keep
the outlines separate from the layers of colors or effects doing this as part of my standard
creative process to to create a library of reusable component pictures for any of
my future artwork without any extra effort on my part.
- While some may suggest this is not a valid method I say it is an artists way of working
smart rather than hard. Besides even if I were to create a new picture using a
composite of exclusively older component pictures it would still be a new picture.
- So with all of this in mind, have fun putting this information to use. Using hand drawn
outlines is a technique I put into use on regular basis, and absolutely love using. I
spent most of my life drawing on paper before I ever touched the subject of computer
graphics, so today it only makes sense that I would draw upon my full skill set, and my
full resources a great deal of which exist on paper rather than digitally...It only makes
sense that anyone would do the same. Sometimes doing the outline on paper can simply feel
more natural than doing it on the computer, some people say that there is something about
the using hand drawn components will add quality.
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