I thought I’d write this as I liked to draw in Microsoft Paint, and a lot of people seem surprised at the possibilities you can achieve with such a simple program!

First off what you do is find a picture of what you’re drawing, either use a website link…or a picture on your computer… Print Screen it (Prt Sc) and paste it into a New File in Paint, then select what part of the image you need – a person, their face, a background etc.

Next, select your tool. I prefer the little Pencil icon rather than the Paintbrush icon as it’s thinner. Drawing with a mouse is very tricky, so use the Magnifying Glass to zoom in – 2 times zoom – works for me. The picture now looks like pixels, which is what you then use to recreate with the pencil. Try and draw/copy as close to the pixels as possible for accuracy. This is really useful for drawing eyes and facial features. You may prefer to just draw in whatever style you want though, so I’ll cover effects down the page.

This is a drawing where I used the zoom. Once you draw each bit, zoom out to see if it looks fine, if not rub it out and re-draw. You can use the selection tool to move the drawing about the page also. No need to worry about keeping it in the same place. Once you’ve got you drawing completed. Save you drawing. Save as you go along (CTRL +S), as sometimes it’s possible Paint my crash. Save as a Bitmap, this won’t distort any quality (if you saved as a .jpeg, you cant open the file and fill in colours as the quality has decreased)…

It’s time to add colour, for this I like to use the Pick Colour tool, go to the original image and select the skin tone (if you’re drawing a person). This way you have their exact skin/hair/eye/clothing tone which creates a realistic effect. Then Flood-fill tool (the paint can spilling over) to paste that section that colour.

Play about different shades if you like. The background – again you can copy from a picture or create your own. There are many easy ways to achieve this, if you wanted to suggest a floor or window use Line tool to put straight lines in. I find it’s easy to just put it straight over the people then use the Eraser to wipe out any over lines.