Getting Started



This is all done electronically, so there are two basic essentials. You need a drawing application, and you need a starting image. I'm, ahem, 'frugal', so I use what's free. Most Windoze packages include MS Paint. That's all I've used. There are much better packages out there, but the capabilities of MS Paint are so limited that they're easy to learn. (How's that for turning a liability into an asset? *lol*) Since my heroines are typically babelicious (why dream about, um, 'plain' women?), I've gathered my starting images from online archives of pinups or models.

A note on copyrights and web ethics: When I started out, I just 'borrowed' images and used them. That's really not appropriate, and I've tried to add proper credit where I can. If you use an image unmodified (or only slightly modified) then you should certainly credit the original artist. If you end up redrawing every pixel, as I usually do now, then I think it's still appropriate to credit the original artist for paintings, but I don't always do that if I started from a photograph. (Often, that's the only choice since most archives don't credit photographs, even if they identify the model.) Do what you think is best, but it doesn't hurt to be fair. After all, maybe someone will want to copy one of YOUR sketches one day.

A good place to look for images is ImageNETion. There are popup adds (lots of them *sigh*) but that's a reasonable price to pay for access to the huge number of beautiful images maintained there. Paulo Paulisto Goncalves does all the work and I'm truly grateful.

One last getting started note: I usually work in .gif format. Most online art is stored in .jpg format, which has a lot more colors. However, the jpeg storage algorithm blends colors, and loses a little sharpness every time it is applied. Gifs are unblended, which means you can save as you go without losing anything. You can blend the last time you file if you want the smooth look of jpegs without cumulative distortion. However, with jpegs you still get blends even where you want crisp transitions (make every eyelash stand out) so I often use .gif for finished sketches as well.

Enough of all that. Let's look at some images.


On the left is an original image by Olivia De Berardini found at ImageNETion. It's always easier to cover something up than to create what's not shown, so starting with a 'natural' look can be helpful. (The, ahem, 'hidden' areas are quite 'natural' in the original, but geocities isn't happy with that sort of thing.) This particular image had a mask which had to be removed and a few other areas that needed to be imagined, but the basic pose and lighting were good (okay, GREAT!, but that's Olivia).

This sketch was intended for the second Xora story, and this is how it ended up. First off, you can see that what I have done is very minor. The basic pose is the same, and much of the gown is merely a color transformation from flesh tones to blue. The following pages show how to get from one sketch to the other, but as I said, there's little need for any artistic talent. The real problem is finding the right starting image. Of course, browsing the pinup galleries to find them is a dirty little job, but . . . . (you know the rest).

Now, on to Face and Hair.