DRAWING TINY IMAGES
for cell phone graphics, emoticons or icons

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OF MICE AND PENS

DRAWING MINIATURE COMPUTER IMAGES
using that old-fashioned stuff called paper

Even if you've already made the switch from drawing with a mouse to drawing with a tablet and stylus, there are times when you'll prefer to make your computer images the old fashioned way, on paper. Simply sketch your picture out, and scan it into your computer.

Once again, drawing very tiny images is an exception. You can plan out a really small graphic on graph paper, but it isn't worth the trouble of scanning it in. There are so few pixels it's quicker to copy them by hand. Try it.

Here's a grid to help you draw an expressive emoticon face. 15 x 15 pixels are all you have to work with for the usual size of an emoticon.

Copy the graph paper image and print it out. Make your drawing on top of the grid, then fill in the squares behind the lines to make a mosaic.

Now open up a 15 x 15 pixel canvas in Photoshop Elements or another art editor. Magnify it at least 400 times so you can see what you're doing. Take a one-pixel pencil and dab in the pixels from your mosaic.

Keep checking your image at 100% so that you can see what your emoticon looks like at tiny size. As it would be, say, in a newsletter comment.

You'll probably come to the conclusion it would have been better to do your drawing on the computer in the first place. Even at this size, the pixel plotting would have been easier with a stylus than a mouse.

If your destined size is slightly larger, say for a buddy icon, scanning a drawing in may work a little better. But beware...

...THE GHOST OF THE BUDDY ICON

Owl Junior started life on paper as a black and white line drawing. He scanned in at only 303 pixels wide, but had to be further reduced to a regulation buddy icon size of 48 pixels square.

This what I got with a straight size reduction in Photoshop of a scanned black-and-white drawing. The drawing was fairly bold, but the bird was a mere wraith of his former self.

I had to redraw the outline at the smaller size. I also joined up the dotted lines to add a colour fill. I was glad I had a stylus.

It really is a good idea to get a graphics tablet. Wacom are best known and undoubtedly the best. I use one all the time. You'll be glad you did, even if it's only for editing after you've scanned your drawing into your computer.

For digital drawing that's even more direct, you can even draw on a touch-screen phone or PDA.

PS Last time I looked, even the cheapest, smallest Wacom Graphire tablet came with Photoshop Elements 4 and Corel Painter Essentials 3. Not to mention a matching mouse as well as a stylus. Wow!