How to Paint Digital Designs Using a Mouse
Digital painting is something that requires a steady hand to accomplish, but once you have the hang of it, it's fun and can result in truly beautiful paintings. If you can handle a mouse with any dexterity at all, you can do this and create the most delightful designs.
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Instructions
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Practice drawing with your mouse, if you have never used one before, it will be a new frontier for you and will require a little practice to get it right. Just open your paint program for starters and doodle with the mouse for a while to get an idea of how it runs on the page. Some mice work more smoothly than others and of course the workings of the mouse can be controlled right on your PC as well. Microsoft paint is a good program to train yourself in as it is good and simple and doesn't require a lot of training to figure out. Draw loops and circles, squares and stars. Gain proper control over that mouse.
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Once you get the hang of it, try it with a photo software program, the kind that offers paintbrush mode and see what types of alterations you can make on your favorite photographs. This is good practice as well, as it allows you to see a real object, for example, a rose, and gives you the opportunity to learn to draw a rose simply by tracing the rose in the image with your cursor. If you don't have a photo software program with this important feature, then simply upload a photo into your Microsoft Paint program and do the tracing there. Once you have done this enough times, you should be able to draw a passable rose (or any other object) without using a photograph.
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Take a person's photograph, and then trace over their face with your mouse, and see how neatly you can draw the lines. Does it look like a face? More importantly, does it look like that person's face? Draw the lines first in black, then try it again in the natural skin and hair tones, which can usually be done with the little eyedropper icon, held over the image itself. It will pick up the correct color for you. If you finish the picture and cannot see your own lines afterwards, you are doing well. Try this with animals as well, which will be more difficult due to the fur or feathers that need to be traced.
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You will be surprised by how quickly you go from tracing photos to actually drawing those images freehand on your own. It is all a matter of getting to know your subjects well enough that you can see what they should look like in your memory. Just be very patient and do your best and things will get better all the time. Don't give up and remember, you can always delete your mistakes, or erase them and start again. Just have fun with it because, who knows? You may just find yourself involved in a new career in art.
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Don't forget your color wheel. This is very important when painting freehand. The idea behind this is that whatever color is opposite the color you are using, is the color that will mute your original color if used correctly. For example, red is opposite green on the wheel and red is always used when painting grass, in order to mute the vibrant green tones. Similarly, a small touch of green will mute the reds that you use. Go lightly though. The original colors should still look like the colors they are supposed to be, just not quite so bright.
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Tips & Warnings
Remember, practice makes perfect. Rome wasn't built in a day and no great artist ever was either.
Resources
- Photo Credit Deep Space Objects painted on PC by Kristie Karns
