Beginner's Lessons 4 -Turning Photo into Line Drawing
Turning a photo into a line drawing
Often people do not try painting because they say they cannot draw. Drawing comes with practice.
If you are too intimidated to even start then you need to temporarily find a way around the thing that intimidates you the most (drawing) so that you can gain confidence (painting). Once you gain confidence you can then work on improving your drawing and painting skills.
(An alternate use for this technique is to use family photos to make a children’s coloring book.)
In this demo, I will be showing you step by step how to turn this photo I took of a carousel horse into a line drawing that can then be traced onto paper and ready for painting.
I’ve used a free software program called Dogwaffle to turn a photo into a line drawing.
Dogwaffle is a digital drawing/painting program so with practice it can be used for that. But here we will just use it to manipulate the photo.
This transformation is done in 4 easy steps which I illustrate below.
There are probably simpler ways to create a line drawing from a photo but I wanted to show how to do it with free software.
Free digital art painting program
Choose a photo that is a .bmp file. If the file does not end in .bmp (bitmap), open it in your regular photo viewing software and Save As a .bmp
Now open Dogwaffle and open your photo. If your photo opens too large for the screen, zoom to fit as shown below.
Step 1
Sharpen the edges.
Step 2
Detect Edges
Step 3
Change to white background.
Step 4
Clean the image up a little.
You may need to play with the settings in this step to get the best image.
And here is my final outline drawing ready for tracing onto my painting surface.
The majority of the lines you need to sketch are here and fairly easy to see. For any lines that are missing or that you are unsure about, look back at the original photo and just “connect the dots”.
Trace this onto a medium to heavy paper. I like to use Strathmore Bristol Vellum.
After you have the lines on your painting surface, you can spray it with a workable fixative like Krylon Workable Spray Fixative.
This keeps the lines from smudging and muddying your painting.
Now pick up your oil pastels and start painting. It’s easier than you think. And before you know it, you’ll be starting to think about doing the drawing without using this computer generated outline.
Have fun!
Comments