How to edit, print and paint your art templates

Guide

Intro

artysnap.com is a solution for creating your own artwork easily and professionally from ready made, or custom made picture templates from photographs, retaining the necessary detail of the original photograph to form a truly paintable image.

We have printed these on canvas, acrylic paper, watercolour paper, and various other mediums are available for printers, and then painted over using any suitable artist painting or drawing materials.

See freebies, Select a category, then click on a thumbnail, find one of your choice, ( we recommend The Munsters to start) after unzipping it you will see that two bitmap files are contained within a folder like the ones below. Click here for the Munsters download page.

Quick Start

1.Unzip your zipped folder with your favourite archiver, and place pictures in a location of your choice, you will notice 2 .bmp files (bitmaps).

2.Open each by double clicking on them.

3. The second image is the one we shall look at for now, so close the other. We will presume you are using Windows Paint here .If you just wish to proceed and print your image, then go ahead, go into page setup from the file menu, and set scaling, or sizing picture to print 1 page only. Then go into your printing properties and select best possible printing, just greyscale for now and print. But take a look at the palette in the picrure below first. The 'here' is the palette for the colours within this picture, note how the black colour is missing to save printer ink. The palette 'paint' is the palette in picture 1 above, recommended to paint.

It is recommend you test initial printouts using ordinary A4 paper first, you can use the A4 paper for painting practice. Paint all of the missing black areas first, then proceed to the next darkest shade and so on, it is very important to complete the darkest areas first, when painting greyscale. The reason being that where you have two similar tones, if you start lightest shade first, they very easily look very much alike. That is why the colours printed are always lighter than the colours to be painted.

To clear the larger areas of colour, or colour replacement

4.Click the magnifying glass tool, in the top left of the screen.

5. Move the rectangle to Hermans head and click., and you should see the large dark grey area of his forehead like in the left image below.

6. Click the fill tool to select the little fill can mouse painter, and move mouse to the part you wish to delete in the picture, and right click somewhere over the large grey area, and the image should look like the right image below. If an error is made, go into the edit menu and select undo.

Notice how the grey contour line is still there, this is useful for adding and taking away colour. The reason being, it keeps that colours borders seperated from its neighbours colour.

This technique can be applied to image 2 for compiling colour schemes. Notice the redish area, sometimes it maybe necessary to break larger areas into smaller sections to replace your desired colours, simply add a line at your desired break point, and fill the area with colour as shown above.

7. Proceed as in step 3.

Creating a simple paint by numbers format for greyscale.

Open image 2, select the text tool, (see 'paints' help) and type number 1 in an area of the lightest shade of grey within the picture, then proceed to type no.1 in all of the areas you can find for that shade, and assign the no.1 to the relevent palette colour, and then proceed to the next shade of grey and so on until all of the areas possible are filled with numbers. Then when you are happy all of the areas have a number proceed as described in section 6. to delete the colours.

A quick Lesson using a simple method for painting pictures

Of course its all about preferences. Being as this style is based upon signwriters pop art style graphics, I much prefer to use a signwriters type brush for lining or edging, an inexpensive lettering brush no.1 like Windsor and Newton is more than adequate for this task as no blending is required, and just two filling brushes will be just fine to fill in the paint for medium to larger areas. A hand bridge I find is essential to keep the hand steady. I use a homemade version which consists of a length of floorboard 30x10cm with a couple of little thin blocks nailed at either end to raise the underside of the board about 1cm above the painting surface. It is also wise to pad the bottom of the blocks to prevent rubbing and scratches etc.

I start lining the edges of a black area first. Lets suppose you are using acrylic paints, preparing that lining brush is crucial, wet it, then gently pinch it between some absorbant tissure paper, starting at the base of the bristles and keeping it slightly pinched wipe the excess water in a motion to the bristle tops, resulting in your brush being a damp slightly flattened blade. The consistancy of the paint applies to other types too. Dilute the paint slightly depending on your preference, but I find the paint being creamy in texture to produce clean sharp edges. Place your board in reach of your desired area and keep your hand steady to produce even pressure, resulting in an even line thickness. Line the whole area, do not let your brush clog up, clean regularly, then fill it in, and proceed to the next area. I advise you complete all of that shade in the picture before moving on to the next darkest tone.

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