Line Art

Vector art is very cool and also very easy – you just have to learn to play with the pen tool – let’s start a project this week – we will begin by drawing in lines using the pen tool….

Step 1

First grab a photo, I’m using http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1146070. Double click the icon in the layer palette to unlock it, rename it source. Under the source layer make a new layer – called white – and fill it with white.

 

Step 2

Next, make a new layer above the source layer – name it lines. Now choose the pen tool and move up to the options bar, choose the paths icon.

 Step 3

Using the pen tool start tracing over the lines and contours of the model, to make a new line just press Control and click – this will end the current line. Build up the lines until you’ve got a few done. As in the picture:

 

Step 4

After you have done a few – turn off the source layer by pressing the eye icon in the layer palette; then move to the lines layer. Choose a small 3 pixel hard edge brush – you can change the size if you wish. Press D on the keyboard to reset the colours to default with black as the foreground colour.

 Step 5

Next we want to stroke the lines, so re-select the pen tool and hold Control and click anywhere on the document to make sure that no paths are selected. Right click with the mouse and choose stroke from the menu – if “stroke sub-path” is available – then a path must still be selected – choose Brush from the drop down list and click OK.

 

Step 6

Now a series of lines where your paths were will be drawn in. Right click and select Delete Path to remove the stroked paths leaving only the lines.

 

 

Step 7

Repeat this process until you have drawn in lines all over the body.

Finally we will have something like this….

 

 

 

Download the lineart file from Here

Next week we will look into filling it out with colour

 

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