I'm new to making art. Tips? Help?

[Trashed]

I'm /alright/ at drawing, but I'm clueless as to how I go about fixing it up using a program.

Right now all I have is Paint Shop Pro 8.

What do I need to download and do you know of any good tutorials for me?

[Viridis]

Your question is really vague and general, but I'll try to offer some advice.

I'm unfamiliar with Paint Shop Pro, so I'm afraid I can't give any help on that program. If you need a digital imaging program and you have no way to get a cheap copy of Photoshop, download GIMP. It's freeware and has most of the same capabilities of Photoshop, although I personally don't think it's quite as good.

For cleaning up images in Photoshop/GIMP, it's really going to depend on what kind of drawing you're doing. If you search "line art photoshop tutorial" or something on Google or Deviantart, though, you will pull up a TON of results that can help you. Just searching some of the many many tutorials on dA could probably help a lot.

However, I wouldn't jump into digital painting until you've got solid traditional media skills, or at least a tablet.

But essentially, unless you ask a more detailed question, Google Is Your Friend.

[Bushido]

The best TIP that i can say is draw as much as you can!

[Bill]

The best TIP that i can say is draw as much as you can!

Word.

[Fallout]

Live art, breathe art. In other words - make it your lifestyle, not something where you go 'ohh i have to practice now'.

[Brightdreamer]

I don't have much standing to post on the "art" side of things, being a floundering amateur of indeterminate talent and discipline myself, but I have some experience with PSP 8. (I only recently jumped to PSP X.) In my experience, pretty much everything Photoshop can do, PSP can do if you poke around it enough, plus it's significantly cheaper. Then again, I'm not a professional pushing the program to the max...

In any event, there should be no reason in the world you can't get your feet wet in digital art using Paint Shop Pro, and in my experience learning PSP has only helped when I dabbled in other art programs. if you want to learn PSP 8 better, there are a few options:

1 - Poke around it a while. Open new canvases. Scribble things. Try the filters. Mess with layers. Remember, the Undo button is your friend.

2 - Find a book. Since I got into PSP with version 7, I personally got the most out of SAMS Teach Yourself Paint Shop Pro 7 in 24 Hours, which breaks the program down into 24 hour-long lessons that take you from figuring out what the heck you're looking at in the toolbar to fairly advanced photo editing techniques; much of it still translated to PSP 8. Unfortunately, it's out of print, but if you dig around hard enough on the internet, in the library, or in used book stores, you might strike gold. There's also Paint Shop Pro 8 for Dummies, which isn't bad and is still available through Amazon when I just checked about ten minutes ago.

3 - Check the internet. A lot of people, last I looked, still clung to PSP 8 because that was before the Paint Shop Pro franchise "jumped" to a more Photoshop-like look and feel, and entering "Paint Shop Pro 8 Tutorials" still gets some live links on Google.

Hope that helps...

[Rist]

lol thread is priceless. I'll leave this to the more qualified and patient of us.