In this lesson we will cover:

• Creating New Shapes

• Drawing, Sizing and Rotating shapes

• Layering shapes

• Duplicating shapes

• Drawing curves

• Editing curves

• Fitting text to a wavy line

Creating A Tear Drop Shape

Create a new image 400 x 400, Raster background, colour white.

Click the View menu, and select "Grid, Guide and Snap Properties"

Change the Horizontal Grids and Vertical Grids to 50 for the Current Image Settings (the bottom pair)

Click the View menu again, select Grid (these are guidelines to help you line things up)

Layer menu, New Vector Layer

Click on the Preset Shapes Tool 

On the colour pallet, set your Foreground colour (left box) to black, and set your Background colour (right box) to white.   Make sure both foreground and background colours are set to be solid colours.

On the Tool Options Pallet, Select the Ellipse (circle), Create as Vector=ticked, anti-alias=ticked, retain style=un-ticked,  width=1

We need to draw a perfect circle (not an oval) so, hold down the SHIFT key on the keyboard, while drawing.  

The  SHIFT keys are the big ones underneath the Caps Lock key and the Enter keys.  They usually have a big up-arrow on them.

Start approximately at point A and hold down the SHIFT key while dragging to point B to draw a circle.

Click the Object Selector (Picker tool in PSP Photo XI)

Point at the spot in the center of the circle and drag it down so that its bottom edge is just above the bottom of the image canvas.

With it still selected, Objects menu, Align, Horz Centre In Canvas.

To change the shape of the object we need to use the pen tool.  Make sure the circle is selected, if not, use the Object Selector to select it.  

Click on the Pen Tool

You should see the 4 nodes on the edge of the circle instead of the Selection box and your pointer changes to a small black triangle.

Drag the top node up to point C.

The node at point C has a horizontal arrow going through it:

Drag the point of the arrow out and down to point D

Drag the spot on blunt end of the arrow out and down to point E.

The arrow ends up bent in an upside-down V shape.

 

 

Click the View menu, Grid  - to turn off the guide lines.

Click the Object Selector Tool (Picker tool in PSP Photo XI)

Click the Properties button  on the Tool Options Pallet.

In the name box, delete the word Ellipse and type in "Tear Drop" and click OK.

Now store the shape to use later:

Click the File menu, Export, Shape...

Enter a filename Tear Drop and click OK.

Now check that the shape has been stored:

Click the Preset Shapes Tool and look on the list of shapes.  Your Tear Drop should be there, probably at the end of the list.

If your Tear Drop is on the list of shapes, then you can close the image and say No to Saving it.

If your Tear Drop is NOT on the list then click on the Object Selector and then click on the the tear drop shape you have drawn.  Then repeat the File, Export, Shape.

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Use the Tear Drop to draw the whale:

Create a new image - 600x400 white background

Layers – New Vector Layer

Click on the Preset Shapes tool.

On the colour pallet, set your Foreground colour (left box) to a dark shade of blue, and set your Background colour (right box) to a light shade blue.   Make sure both foreground and background colours are set to be solid colours.

Draw The Body:

• Select the Preset Shapes tool

• On the Tool Options, make sure Create As Vector is ticked and that Retain Style is NOT ticked

• From the pull down list on the Tool Options pallet, choose the Tear Drop shape tool – you will probably have to scroll a long way down the list to find it.

• Point somewhere in the upper left area of your image and drag diagonally down to the right lower area to draw a large tear drop shape.

• Click on the Object Selector tool (Picker in PSP Photo XI)

• Click on the tear drop (you will know it is selected when there is a fine line around it with handles on the corners and sides)

• Move your mouse pointer over the tear drop’s rotation handle, and when the  pointer changes shape to rounded arrows, drag the rotation handle down and to the left to turn the tear drop on its side, with the point of the tear drop to the right. 

• Adjust the size/shape of this shape (by dragging the handles) so that it fills about ¾ of the space and is nearer the left end of the space than the right.

Draw The Tail:

• Click the Preset Shapes tool – it should still be set to the tear drop shape.

• Click in the clear space at the right of the image and drag diagonally downwards to draw a tear drop shape approx. half the height of the whale’s body.

• Click the Object Selector tool. (Picker tool In PSP Photo XI)

• Click on the shape you have just drawn and rotate it so that it is leaning just to the right of vertical, with its tip pointing downwards.  Then, move it, so that its tip touches the tip of the whale’s body.

• With this object (the small tear drop) still selected, click the copy button on the tool bar or press Ctrl-C on the keyboard.

• Press Ctrl-G and then click the mouse in the clear area in the lower right area of the image.  If the rotation handle is off the side of the image canvass, then stretch the side  of the image window (by dragging it) until you can see it.

• Rotate this 2^nd small tear drop so that it is on its side, with the point to the left, and then move it so that its point meets the point of the whale’s body.

Make The Flippers:

• Press Ctrl-G on the keyboard and click the mouse in clear area below the whale.  Make sure you have the Object Selector tool (Picker in PSP Photo XI), and rotate this shape so that the tip of the tear is pointing diagonally up to the left.  Then, move this shape into position (at the widest part of the whale’s body and overhanging the lower edge) as one of the whale’s flippers.

• With the first flipper still selected, press Ctrl-C then Ctrl-G to make a copy of it.

• Move the 2^nd flipper shape to the left of the 1^st and rotate it so that the tip of the tear is pointing diagonally up to the right.  It’s bottom half should overhang the whale’s body.

• Click the Objects menu, Arrange – Send To Bottom.  This pushes the flipper behind the whale’s body

Draw the mouth:

With the Object Selector too, click somewhere in the white space around the whale, so that none of the shapes are selected.

Click on the Pen tool

Set the materials pallet so that the background colour is turned off (click thesymbol) and the foreground colour is black.

Set the Tool Options for the Pen tool as shown below.  Settings to choose are shown with red boxes around them.

Release the mouse button and move the pointer to Point B

Hold down the left mouse button at Point B and drag the mouse up and to the right, at the angle needed to shape the curve.

Make The Whale’s Eye:

• Click the Preset Shapes tool

• On the Tool Options, select the Ellipse (circle) shape

• Drag diagonally to draw a small oval.

• Click the Object Selector tool (Picker tool in PSP Photo XI)

• Click the Properties button on the Tool Options

• Change the Fill colour to black

• Click the OK button

• Adjust the size/position of the eye if necessary

• With the eye selected, press Ctrl-C and then Ctrl-G to duplicate it.

• Click at the top of the whale’s head to place the duplicate there as the whale’s blow hole.

• Click in the white space around the whale so that none of the shapes are selected.

The Spouting Water:

• Click on the Pen Tool

• On the Materials Pallet, set your foreground colour to dark blue and your background colour to white.  Turn off the background colour , and set the foreground colour to gradient.

• Click the Foreground material swatch and set the gradient to Foreground - Background with settings as shown.

• Start at point A.  Hold down the left mouse button and drag down and to the left.

• Release the mouse button and move the pointer to B. 

• Hold down the left mouse button and drag down and to the left.

• Click the Object Selector tool  . Picker tool in PSP Photo XI)

• Click the Properties button on the Tool Options pallet.

• Click on the Stroke gradient swatch, and click the Edit button to modify the gradient.  Move the slider on top of the colour bar so that it is slightly nearer to the blue end than the white end.

• Click on OK to exit the gradient edit, click OK again to exit the gradient settings.

• Change the Stroke width to 3

• Click OK on the properties box.

• Move the ‘S’ shape into position so that its bottom tip just overlaps the blow-hole.

• Press Ctrl-C then Ctrl-G to duplicate it.  Position the duplicate near the original and rotate it slightly, so that the tops of the lines are further apart than the bottoms.  

• Repeat Ctrl-G, position and rotate twice more.   You can make some of the ‘S’ shape lines slightly smaller than the others if you wish.

Text on a Wavy Line:

• Click in the white space around the whale - so that none of your shapes are selected.

• Click on the Pen Tool

• Turn off your background colour and make sure your foreground colour is turned on (it doesn’t matter what colour it is)

• Start pointing to A and, holding the left mouse button down, drag to point B and release the button.  

• Move to point C and again, holding down the left mouse button, drag to point D.

• Click the Object Selector Tool (Picker in PSP Photo XI)

• Drag the bottom, right corner of the image window down and to the right to make the window bigger than the image (make it as big as you can).

• Use the handles on the sides or corners of the box around the wavy line, to make it long as long as the whale and wide enough so that it curves down a similar amount to the whales body (as shown below)

• Click on the Text Tool

• For the text, set your background colour to the Fill colour you want for your text and the foreground colour to the line colour you want to use, if any.  I used a dark blue for my foreground, and white for my background and set my background to gradient (Foreground - Background, as used for the spouting water). 

• On the Text Tool Options, set as shown below - use a different font if you wish.

• Click between the wavy line and the whale.  Enter your text in the box and adjust your font and size if necessary (the text should be roughly the same length as the line.  When you are happy with the font and size click the Apply button.

• Click on the Object Selector (Picker tool in PSP Photo XI)

• Use the handles on the text object to adjust its size so it is just slightly longer than the wavy line.

Make The Text Follow The Line:

• Hold down the shift key while clicking on the wavy line.  You should now have a selection box around both the text and the wavy line.

• Click the Objects menu and select Fit Text To Path

• Move the text so it is in position underneath the whale – or wherever you want it to be.

Make The Line Invisible:

• Turn on your layer pallet.

• Click the + sign next to the vector layer symbol. 

• The top item should be the text, and the one below it should say "New Shape".  Click on words "New Shape"  just below the text.  You should see the selection box move to be around the wavy line.   Click the eye symbol to turn off the line.

• Finally, adjust the position of the text up or down a bit if you need to.

Resize the image if you want to - there will be almost no loss of sharpness because it is drawn with Vectors.

Saving The Image

That’s the whale drawn.  If you want to keep the vector objects when you save (so you can change the text or the colours etc), then save as a pspimage file.  Or, for use on the web, save as Compuserve .gif or .jpg format.

To convert the whale into a tube, first go to Layers menu and choose Convert To Raster Layer, then delete the background layer - this should leave you with the whale on a transparent background, so you can export as a tube (File, Export, Picture Tube).