This lesson is a basic lesson on dressing a doll for a signature tag or your web page.
While DIP & Picture It can not paint pixel by pixel, which is needed to make dollz with
fine detail, you can still make your own dollz. AND yes this lesson is done in DIP,
BUT if you know where your freehand paint is in ALL the other Picture It! verisons, then you
can also paint clothes on a doll.
My base is from...
This is what we are going to make
For this lesson we use freehand paintbrush. So lets start. You will need to open
your base, once open, then open a new project by clicking at the top
This is a huge file, but I find that you have to make your dollz bigger to paint them correctly.
We will resize down later. You will now have this in your lower screen
You will grab your base and drag it up on to you new project, which is transparent.
We will now go to our paintbrush Once here
you will need to change a few things to get started. First change to your airbrush tool
Next you will go down to And here we will change the
Opacity or the thickness of your paint that you will be putting on. We will set it at 50%
because this will show the lower shading of your base, saving you the shading time.
Now we will go back to our work area You will choose a color
from the color pallet, I have chosen purple, but you can choose what ever color you want.
You will see that you have different colors little squares on one side of the big center square and
colors of the same family on the right side of the larger square. The larger square is the color you
have chosen to use. The family colors will come in handy if you do want to shade, this gives
you lighter and darker colors of the same color, they usually match well. Tool size is also]
important because you will need to try your best to stay inside
the base lines, for less clean up, but if you go out side of the lines or want to reshape your
painted area you can use the eraser tool The biggest secret of this lesson
is that you need to do one section at a time, we are going to do the shirt first, once I am finished, I will
click done, then go back into my freehand paint and paint the shorts, then again click done and go back in
and do the hair. This makes layers of each area you paint if you don't like one, or want to change
it someone you can do so, without messing up the other areas. Also if you are painting the hair and mess up
and use the eraser tool, you don't erase part of your shirt in the process! So always stop and then start a new
area. And remember once you have clicked done, you can not erase anything off of our painted area,
so make sure you erase everything first. You can change the color later or even add some texture to your
different painted areas later. But the color is still too
light, so you will repeat the holding the mouse down and going over the area you just painted.
It is alittle darker now, but still not quite dark enough. So I repeated mine about 4 times, until I was happy.
YOu can decide when you are happy with yours! You can now use the eraser tool and clean up
any parts where you have messed up, you can also use it to reshape the shirt to you liking. Remember when using
the eraser tool, if you have your opacity set at 50% your eraser tool will work the same,
only erasing at 50%, so if you want it all gone fast, go back and change it to 100%. And you always
have the Undo button!
When you are happy with your shirt, click done. Now we will work on the shorts. You do the same
thing, except you can use a different color, I used a darker purple for the shorts, I find
that dresses work well also. Just make the shorts as long or short as you want them, and layer your
paint using the airbrush at 50% opacity. When you get to the hair, it is a little different.
You will need to leave your opacity at 100% and choose your pencil or paint brush tool
You will fill in the area where you want her hair. This takes some playing with,
if you don't like it, then just reset it and start over, it takes practice. I find it easy to just paint in the hair with
a larger brush to start with. Then go back in with
a smaller brush and just kind of add squiggles of darker and lighter colors from the
same family. I also sometimes go back to the airbrush tool,
change to 50% opacity and go over all the hair with a light color kind of blending it
all together. By they way, if you have EyeCandy4000, you can use the filter for
fur, it works pretty nice, the doll at the bottom with the orange/pink colored dress
her hair was done with a little fur filter. You can also go back in with the eraser tool and reshape the hair, if you get it
too big. Now your doll should be ready to resize and save. First you need to rotate the
canvas so that it is taller than wider by going to FORMAT/ROTATE/CANVAS and choose LEFT. Your doll
will be side ways, you need to lock all your doll layers
together by clicking each layer at the right. Click the first one, hold down the ctrl button
and click the other layers, then click the lock in your work area. Now you need to rotate her, by clicking on her,
then going to FORMAT/ROATE/SELECTED OBJECT and then clicking the one that makes her stand
upright. Now, resize her to fit the area. And now resize her. You will do so by going to
FORMAT/RESIZE IMAGE. Here you will see this You will click
the drop down menu above UNITS, and choose PXL this size is HUGE! So you will click the
first number under HEIGHT and delete the first 2 numbers, replace them with something
close to 200-300, depending on how big you want your doll. You can even try 150 or smaller, you
just have to try each to see which you like best. I like 200-250 best, you don't loose
alot of detail with this size. Now save your doll in gif format
to keep the transparet background. See if you like the size, if not then click UNDO and resize again.
Here are some girls I have done in this manner!
HOME
You will need a base to start with, and this is a
wonderful place to start to find a base, you can use a free base or you can use one
of the copyrighted ones like I have chosen for this lesson. Get Bases here...
Now on with the painting. First you will make sure your paint brush is the right size, not too big, and you
can move it around the inside of the base easily, if you are doing sleeves, you will need
your brush to fit into there also, because one you start to paint, you need to do it all
without stopping. I start at the shoulder, hold down the left moush button and hold it down, do
not let it go at all, and paint around the base where you want your shirt to be, when you get the whole
area painted, you can then let go of the mouse button. You will see that you can see through the
paint, and see the base and the shading below. 
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