PLAY THE FACE GAME

DIGITAL DRAWING

There are two ways of making an image on a computer - or come to that, an ipad, ipod, iphone or other smartphone. Bitmap painting and vector drawing.

When you're painting, you lay down the pixels one by one like a tapestry. When you're vector drawing, you click and drag to make lines, shapes and fills

Digital painting and drawing are two quite different experiences

With vector drawing, instead of tracing a fine line, you're dotting down points and pushing and pulling at little handles to alter angles.

Vector drawing feels more like sculpture than painting.

The images below were made some while ago in Notes on a Pocket PC. Pocket PCs are pretty thin on the ground these days, but you can make images the same way in many word processors, as well as advanced drawing applications like Adobe Illustrator.

MAKING FACES

The faces below were all made from just one circle and a line.

By duplicating, rotating and distorting these two simple shapes, you can make the eyes, ears and nose and give them all kinds of expressions. It's an addictive pastime to see how different you can make your faces.

You won't have any difficulty making a face. Almost any shape with two dots and a line in the right place can be seen as a face. In fact the earliest smileys didn't even have the two dots for eyes.

Creating facial expressions can be trickier. The tiniest alteration can completely alter an expression.

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HOW DID THE OWL LOSE HIS FEATHERS?

He went to the desktop and back.

I had a bit of a surprise when I made these drawings on my old Pocket PC. I found that black and white Pocket Notepad drawings could be opened in Pocket Word where I could add some colour. However, results could not be guaranteed to stick.

This owl was coloured purple all over in Pocket Word. Then of course it was synchronised to the desktop and back, along with everything else. It acquired an off-the-shoulder outfit in the process.

On making the round trip again, the bird acquired an even more trendy costume - and exchanged his contact lenses for a pair of designer sunglasses!

Capturing your vector screen will convert your drawing to a bitmap and preserve it as intended.