MS Paint and Paint tool SAI are graphic editors that allow you to create drawings on your computer. MS Paint is an editor that is installed with Windows and is a fairly simple program with a limited set of features. Paint tool SAI, in turn, has a much larger number of tools and functions and allows you to create better images. How to learn to draw beautifully with these programs?
MS Paint Tools
Before you start drawing in any graphics editor, you should study its capabilities. Paint can hardly be called a full-fledged graphic editor, but it is not bad for small editing of drawings and photos.
The toolbar in Paint is on top. This program has a function to select, crop and rotate the image. Also, the canvas can be increased 8 times.
In the "View" tab, you can enable the grid, ruler and status bar. Thanks to this feature in Paint, it’s convenient to create an image by cells.
The program has a small set of tools:
- pencil;
- color fill;
- text;
- eraser;
- palette;
- scale.
In addition, Paint has several brushes to choose from with the ability to adjust their thickness. You can draw a finished shape, a flat or curved line, and also change the outline and fill of these elements using the tools of the same name.
The color palette is quite limited, but has the function of adding additional colors. "Color 1" on the toolbar means the color of the outline, and "Color 2" is responsible for the fill color.
How to draw beautifully in Paint with the mouse
There are several ways to draw simple pictures in Paint. But it is worth remembering that due to the limitations of this program, the drawings will have a rather typical look for Paint and not very high quality. To create full-fledged pictures, it is better to use another editor.
And the first tip on how to paint beautifully in Paint is to use shapes, lines, and curves. Any object that you want to portray can be represented as one or more simple shapes. So, for example, a mountain is a triangle or a trapezoid, a tree is a combination of an oval and a rectangle, and the house consists of several squares and a triangle.
The second piece of advice on how to paint beautifully in Paint is to use scaling and the grid to draw on cells or create pixel drawings.
Third tip - use different brushes and change their thickness. They allow you to create interesting effects. For example, the effect of oil paint or pastel chalk.
Features of the Paint tool SAI
Unlike Paint, the SAI Paint tool has a large set of functions and tools. Nevertheless, this editor is quite simple to master, it is easy and convenient to work with it.
Main features of SAI:
- the ability to work with layers;
- has 25 drawing tools to choose from;
- You can customize and create your own brushes;
- full graphics tablet support;
- hotkey support from Adobe Photoshop;
- work with popular formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP, as well as PSD and TGA;
- fast loading;
- the availability of tools for working with vector graphics.
And this is not a complete list of features available to you in the Paint tool SAI. In this program, you can select and edit individual elements of the image, apply various textures to the canvas and brushes, rotate the image, crop, resize it and much more.
How to learn to paint beautifully in the Paint tool SAI
The ability to draw in the Paint tool SAI depends on your own drawing skill. The graphics editor is just a tool, such as plain paper, pencils or paints. But still there are some tips for novice digital artists that will help improve computer drawing skills:
- First of all, you should buy a graphics tablet, since drawing with a mouse is very inconvenient and will require a lot of time.
- Spend at least a little time studying the program and its capabilities.
- Use layers. They allow you to draw individual elements of the picture independently of each other. No need to try to draw everything on one layer, because it is long and inconvenient. For example, draw an outline on one layer, and add color on another. Also, if you use more than two layers, try to give them a name and group so as not to get confused.
- Minimize the use of too acidic colors. In most cases, they should not be used at all.
- Use the references. Find one or several auxiliary images on the Internet, open them in the program ("File" - "Open"), reduce the size of the window with the image and drag it to a convenient place on the work area. For example, references can be placed on the left, and on the right you can place the canvas on which you will draw.
How to draw in the Paint tool SAI with the mouse
The Paint tool SAI has vector tools that make it relatively comfortable to draw with the mouse. To start working with them, you need to create a new vector layer. The following tools will be available to you:
- Pen (Pen) - a tool that allows you to draw smooth soft lines.
- Eraser - Erases and automatically rounds lines.
- Press (Weight) - makes it possible to change the thickness of the line.
- Color - with this tool you can change the color of the drawn line.
- Editing - allows you to edit a line, delete a point or a segment, duplicate, move, merge, deform and delete drawn lines.
- Pressure - allows you to change the thickness of the line at a specific point.
- Select / Deselect.
- Curve line (Curve) - a tool for drawing curved lines.
- Straight line (Line) - allows you to draw straight straight lines.
To draw a line using the Line tool, you just need to put a point at the beginning of the line and pull in the desired direction. If you want to draw a curved line using the Curve tool, then put the points where the line should be curved.
To edit the line, click on Edit and select what you want to do. For example, you can remove an unnecessary line or bend.
Holding down the Alt key, you can delete an unnecessary point.
To paint over your drawing, select the area you want to paint using the Magic Wand or Select, create a new raster layer and fill it with the selected area. A vector layer can be merged with a raster one and then it will lose all its vector properties.