Paint Tool Sai Tutorial

[Keith Cogswell]

InPaint Tool SAI you have two main panels to work with: the Color and Tool Panel on the right and the Layer Panel on the left. You can change their location in the Window (W). Further controls are available through the Quick Bar at the top.

Step back can assist when you want to go back from the recent action. You can use this step more than 10 times, so you'll have no worries when something goes wrong. Rotating the canvas can help when you're drawing from some difficult angles. The Reset button returns the view and rotation to default. Flipping the canvas gives you a fresh view of your artwork and helps you to find possible mistakes.

Color Wheel is an organization of color hues around acircle that shows how colors relate to each other. Using this palette you caneasily work with primary, complement and other color combinations. You can find out more about colorcombinations in color theory. Inside the wheel is an area withdifferent shades of a single color.

Swatches are a place where you can save all your favoritecolors. To do that, first make sure that you've selected the desired color, and thenright click on a swatch and choose Set, and this color will be saved in thePalette. I usually save colors I use the most and skin tone colors.

Edge Shape makes your lines soft or hard, which can have an interesting impact on your drawing. Using Size you can make your brush very small for detail or very big for color blocks and solid color areas. Min Size means how much of the color will fill the edges of the stroke. Density in this case controls the opacity of your drawing tool.

Besides, with every version of Paint Tool SAI comes some built-in textures. They will add detailing to your art, making it more visually appealing. However, you can also make these textures on your own or download them, and then add them to the Paint Tool SAI texture folder.

First is our Navigator Panel, which can also be used for quick preview. The preview window is helpful for quick navigation or rough overview. It's a good habit to switch between a small part of an artwork and the overall picture. Canvas zoom and rotation are controlled by moving sliders or buttons.

In Paint Tool SAI you can find some built-in textures, or make them by yourself. These textures are applied to the whole layer, and you can add only one texture on each layer. Besides, changing the scale and opacity of the texture you can achieve slightly different results. So again, don't be afraid of experimenting.

Moreover, Fringe Effect (in some versions of the program called Wet Edges) gives your artwork an almost watercolor feel! It's like an imitation of the real-life painting which makes your drawings even more interesting.

Preserve Opacity makes all lines and fills of a layer locked, so you won't get away from its edges and always paint inside the lines. It's very useful when you want to change the color of your line art or change blocks of color without affecting other colors and areas.

Clipping Group acts like a mask, and when you paint on the top layer with Clipping Group turned on, your strokes will always be just inside the painted area of the layer beneath.

New Layer creates a new usual layer, while New Linework Layer opens its vector tools for you. New Layer Set acts like a group of layers, so when working you can organise your layers and won't get lost.

Transfer Down Layer basically sends the content of the layer to the layer beneath it, while clearing the top layer. Merge Down Layer combines the content of two layers together and deletes the top layer.

I hope now you know a lot more about Paint Tool SAI and this guide was useful for you. Once again, if you don't feel comfortable working in this program yet, just spend some more time and practice in it, and you'll see how easy it is. Try to experiment with settings, discover something new, and you'll be inspired to find your way with Paint Tool SAI. Good luck!

Once you choose a brush, such as Wispy Light Wash, you can change the nib size by holding the Shift key and dragging the mouse. Note that when any brush property is changed from the default, the brush becomes a custom brush.

To add a different type of brush stroke, select a new category and brush from the Brush dropdown. We are using the Square Chalk brush from the Chalk category. Set the nib size, and you can hold the Alt key while dragging to add transparency. On the Property bar you can switch to a round shape instead of square.

This would be an ideal use of a tablet and stylus, but you can get great results with a mouse as well. For stylus users, enabling these four icons in the Property bar means that pressure, tilt, bearing, and rotation of the pen will affect paint strokes.

You can use the Effects tools to add extra effects to whatever you create with the Paint tool. For example, we used the Smear tool to add some motion to the fog, and the Twirl tool to add effects to the orange halo around the lights. Just make sure that you select the correct object in the Objects docker before applying the effects.

Further down in the Brush Settings docker, click on the arrow beside Dab Attributes to expand this section. Here we can increase the number of dabs per click as well as the spread between dabs.

You can also create your own brush nib. In a new document, with a new object, activate the Paint tool with a round opaque nib, and a bit of feathering around the edges, and dab some circles to create a flower pattern.

To modify this brush before you use it, open Brush Settings. In Nib Properties, add some transparency and enable nib rotation. Under Dab Attributes, increase the spacing between dabs.

Finally, under Color Variation, increase the Hue Range so that the color will deviate from the color you start with. Also increase the Hue Speed, which is the speed at which the hue changes.

This is a video tutorial of how I painted "Better Tomorrow" using a 3D model made in Sketchup as a base. I use similar methods for making Fisheye Placebo and I'll post more tutorials in the future on how to do that.

You will start with your basecoat. This is where I like to use a flat edged tool so I can just gently push it where I want it to go. The roller tools also work, however this glue can be tough to clean out of those ridges. It will take 3-4 coats, and be sure to do very thin layers. The first coat will basically just soak in to your vinyl and create a barrier. Layer 2 will just begin to even everything out. Whether you do 3 or 4 layers is personal preference, but these layers will build that perfectly even base. Lightly sand between layers as needed.

For the paint, I like to use a paint roller tool. Typically 3 coats is a good amount to completely cover the edge. Be sure to wait until it is completely dry between coats or you chance making marks in it. Sand gently between coats.

The topcoat is all we have left! I like 2 coats to make it super smooth and shiny. For this step, I just use the cheap kids watercolor paint brushes! I buy a multi pack so I can replace them often. Once again, thin layers and wait until dry between coats...you are probably so sick of hearing me say that, but it's seriously THAT important!

I watched another tutorial recently by Rick at IronEcho Design. He has done several tutorials about making landscape scenes. In another tutorial, he shows us how to make "brushes" to use with the spray paint tool, and makes trees. Actually, the spray paint tool allows you to use any object you want as a brush. Since it's close to the holidays, let's make some trees. First, let's look at the tool we're going to use.

If you open Inkscape and choose the spray paint tool, you'll see that there are many settings. The first three on the left are the modes of the tool. You can set it so it paints copies, clones or paths.

When you hover your mouse over them, the first one on the left says "Spray copies of the initial selection", which means that every object created is a copy of the one you started with. The one in the center says "Spray clones of the initial selection", and that means that each object created is a clone of the original. That opens up possibilities that the others don't have, like being able to change color and size of the original and having it change all the clones. The one on the right says "Spray objects in a single path". This means that everything you create with one click is a single path which can be edited. To the right of those is an eraser, which lets you delete some of the objects you painted. To the right of those tool settings are changeable settings to change size, amount, rotation and scale of the paint spray.

All right, let's start an evergreen tree. Since we're going to paint it, let's just create one branch to stamp with. Here I created one shape that could make the branch. I just used the bezier tool and drew it. We're going to end up making it really small so a great deal of detail isn't necessary, but at least give it some shape.

In the video, he suggests duplicating and resizing the branches to three different sizes, then making a set for each side of the tree. You should also put a trunk in your tree, using the bezier tool with the setting "Triangle Out" so that when you draw the line from top to bottom, it's wider at the bottom, like a tree trunk.

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