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Using tubes as paint brushes
Tubes can be used to "paint" parts of images.
To see the final image, see the end of page two.

I started using these because I wanted the advantage of having many colors on my "brush" at one time.
I was just experimenting and found that it could be a lot of fun and resulted in some interesting effects.
Just like the results of the wood tutorial, your results here will not be exactly like mine.  Each tree or sky
you make will be different.  No two alike.  So you will be using this just as a guide...your results on each step
will be different from mine.  On each instruction, you have to play around with the settings to make a result that you like, so I won't always give my settings.  The one setting you have to have pretty much like mine is in the very first step.


Getting Started
Open your Picture Tube to the nuts tube.  Set the step setting to #1 and the scale to 25.  Use those settings this time. Next time you can change them if you want, but the step setting has to be low.  [If you close the picture tube dialog box and reopen it later, the scale will not have changed but the step setting will have to be set back down to #1 all over again.] The #1 setting makes the tubes appear in rapid fire progression, each one overlapping.  That is the key to doing this painting.  Now go ahead and paint a shape that resembles a gnarled tree trunk.
With your magic Wand selection tool, click on an area of the tree trunk.  If you like the area it has selected, continue on.  If you don't like it, click on another area or change the tolerance setting.  After making this selection with the magic wand, I outer beveled with the bead preset adjusting the other settings until I liked the result.  Then, keeping the selection in place, I added a drop shadow.  If the shadow area spills over you can just erase it.  Try doing each of these effects and see if you like the results.
[Hints...did you know?  1) If you want to add more area to the selection, hold down on the shift key while you click another area with the wand.  2) To get rid of a whole area selected with the wand, use ctrl d.]

 
After more beveling and shadowing, try a warp.


After selecting with the magic wand again toward the base of the tree on the left I inner beveled resulting in raised areas.
I darkened that area where a whole nut was showing. Then I wanted to warp an area that included that, so I used the freehand selection and circled the area.  Then I used the warp deformation.  I warped it twice.  My settings were 0 and 0 on the center settings and size 50 strength 56.

 
Do more effects and then add branches


This is the trunk after the above warp and after more beveling, etc..  Also I selected a round area below the warp and outer beveled it making a raise area around the very dark "hole".   So just play around with doing more effects to your trunk before going on to make branches in the next section.		 Add your branches by doing each one on a new layer on top of the tree trunk.  That way you can move the branch anywhere you want to on the tree and you can add shadows under them if you need to

With the selection tool on freehand, "draw" a branch outline.  Then fill the branch with the nuts tube.

Then open your retouch tool and darken one side of the branch and lighten the other side.

Continue to page 2

 


Email me at:
glhold@ameritech.net

 


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© 2002 by Susie Holderfield (aka Holder), USA
http://www.glhold.com/tut/tubepaint/painttubetutorial.html
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I use Paint Shop Pro 6
with Animation Shop 2