OpenCanvas 1.x tutorial

8/14/2019 OpenCanvas 1.x tutorial

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/opencanvas-1x-tutorial 1/4

Okay, so to start with, basics are good. You want to make a new

file. So you go file > new. Not too complicated, but I figure I'm justgoing to be totally anal retentive and type out, like, every step here

:3

At this point, our lovely little “New” box shows

up. If you want to make the new 'canvas' that

you're going to be working with the same size assomething that you copied, you click 'clipboard'

(the tab that you can barely see that's at the top

right hand of the box). If you're not pastingsomething, then you just go ahead and stay on the

*1 tab and type in how wide and tall (in pixels)

you want the canvas to be. 500X500 is fine.

So, your new, blank canvas appears and it's all lovely and whatnot... you can maximize it or not, it's up

to you. But now I'm going to explain the tools that I'll be using in my creation today~! So, first of all...

we have our loverly toolbar. You see how the 'pencil' tool is highlighted? That's what youwant highlighted. Because I said so. The one next to the pencil that looks like a compass

rose (the x thingie) is the move tool. The dropper beneath the pencil means 'pick up the

color where I click'. This is not necessary. Why? Because (now pay attention!) if you hold

down the Shift key and click, it uses the eyedropper tool and samples the color without

having to go and switch tools. Nifty, huh? And there's also the rotating and resizing and

blahblahblah tools, but we aren't going to use those today. Okay... at the bottom you cansee the magnifying glasses for zoom in and zoom out. Those are also not necessary. To

zoom in our out, press CTRL and the + button or CTRL and the – button . You know,

control and plus make 'zoom in' and control and the minus key make 'zoom out'. Kind of

easy to remember, yeah?

Then we have our lovely 'preview window'. This is so that you can dragthe 'red box' of what you can see... like, if you were zoomed in and you

wanted to scroll to another part of the image, you could drag the red box

over that part in the 'preview' box, and it would be there on the giantcanvas, too. What is in the red box is what will be filling up your screen.

At this point, we can see everything unless you've zoomed in, so the red

box goes around... well, everything. This is also unnecessary. Why? Holding down the shift key while clicking and dragging the mouse moves

the picture moves your 'canvas'. Think of it as putting a finger down in

the middle of the paper that you're drawing on. You drag it down, and



the paper moves down. Again, relatively easy. But if you want to drag the red box, that's cool, too. It's

not like you have to switch tools, or anything. I just use the spacebar method. ^_^

Next, we have our colour palette. The triangle means

where in the rainbow you are, whereas the circle means

how much grey you have in the colour, and also howlight you are in the colour.

Light = upwards, and grey = to the left.

Pretty easy. You can select a colour that way. Yay. Irandomly have it at blue, because the last thing I was

colouring was bluejeans. Go ahead and choose a colour

that you want to use for your lineart. Yes, I'm teaching

you how to use the tools for doodling ^_^

Since the first thing that we're going to be doing is

lineart, make sure that the pen/pencil tool is selected,

like it is here. The other tools are the brush tool (for colouring) the blur tool (for... well, blurring) and the

eraser tool (surprise!) for erasing :D

You see the two bars beneath the big square with a dot

in it? You know, the things with the triangle sliders? If

this is unclear, just say so. But the bottom slider

changes how big your brush/pencil/eraser is.

Drag the triangle (which I drew a red line around) in the direction of the red

arrow, and the tool you're working with gets bigger. Dragging in the other direction makes it smaller, etc. ^__^

Okay, now using the pencil/pen tool and the

colour we have chosen, we doodle some

lineart. Click and drag to make lines. If you

mess up, press CTRL and Z and it'll undo thelast thing you did. Yay ^.^

So yeah... make a lineart. Do a happy face or whatever you feel like. This is just a for fun

thing, learning the tools and whatnot, so it's

not that important.



Okay, so now we're going to use the 'layers' box. We're not going to doanything complicated with blending modes or anything, but... yeah.

Layers. Basically, it's like... different layers are different clear sheets that

you're drawing on, like if you had a bunch of clear overheads. You candraw something on one layer, and something on another. If you mess up

on the second layer, you can erase it without effecting what you drew on

the first one. Does that make sense? Anyway....

At this point we want to make a new layer cause we're finished with our

lineart and I like to color on another layer. Because I'm cool that way.

So click layer > NewLayer (MultiplyMode/Default). A new layer willappear. (ooooh, ahhhh) and it should look something like the picture

below. Now don't touch the layers anymore until we're done, and then

you can fiddle with the stuff if youwant, but that's not what we're doing

right now. We just wanted to make a

new layer. Yay, new layer!

Soooo, next, since we'll be coloring, we click on the paintbrush tool.

Yay paintbrush! You can see that the circle in the square is a lot bigger

than it was for the pen, because the paintbrush covers more area. Again,drag the slidey thing back and forth to adjust the size. (I explained the

slidey thing earlier. It was the thing where I drew a red arrow ^_^)

And so then you choose a colour that you're going to use to colour

with. I chose a peachy one, because I'm going to be doing the skinin this tutorial, because I feel like it. Yay. ^_^



And so you colour! It blends kind of

automatically, so sometimes it'll drag the 'white'of the uncoloured spaces into what you're trying

to colour, but you just have to experiment to get

the feel of it. Once you've laid down your basecolour, you choose another, darker shade. And

you go back to paint in the shadows. The key is,

keep resampling the colours with the colour dropper – if you want to change a shadow back to

a light area but don't want to undo the whole

stroke, just hold shift and click on the light area, and your paintbrush will paint the light colour again

^_^ and you can paint over the shadowed area that you want to lighten.

And yeah, just... have fun

shading and blending! Hopethis tutorial helped at least a

little ^.^

-Lucefyr

Documents

OpenCanvas 1.x tutorial