Plain Blogs on Paint

Difficulty:

Requirements: MS Paint and Microsoft Word
Writer: Kathrin
Importance: Definatly a must for a Paint artist
Special Notes: This may not work with all versions of Word

I find it extremely annoying that people use the fact that the only program that they have is paint as an excuse to make disgusting graphics. Its actually quite easy to make some very neat graphics on paint; it just takes a bit of time; which most people are unwilling to spend. However, it can be very worthwhile. Sure, some of the things that you can do in one click on a fancy program take 10 minutes on paint; but then, paint is free and the fancy program isn't o.O. This sniffy little tutorial will show you how to make a complete blog purely on paint. Be warned -- Paint is not for lazy people. Also, you can feel free to skip some of the steps such as the font-stroke; it will just make your result look "paint"y.

The first thing you need to do, is, obviously, prepare everything. I like to get this out of the way and do it before hand. You will need to:

Decide on a Theme
Open up Paint
Be prepared to spend 30 minutes to an hour on your blog
Have some "good" fonts downloaded to escape the "painty" look

I choose the theme "anglepuss". Now, first find a good image (Preferable your "best"/biggest image). Open up paint and get started :). The first thing you will need to do (if you are using a image with a white background you can skip this step) is get rid of the background. This means you will need to zoom in and, using the pencil tool, change everything but the part of the image that you want to white. If your having trouble with the zoom being too far out; simply go to View >> Zoom >> Custom >> %800. This WILL take up to 15 minutes; paint isn't a very up-to-date program. If your too lazy for that, go buy PSP 8 :). Here is the way my image currently looks (it was originally a TCG):

Next, it comes to the time that we create the actual blog. It is very important that your blog is not ontop of your image. You want to give the appearance that the blog is *behind* the image. Here is an example of a blog before the image and one "behind" it. Creating the blog to make it look like its behind your image will take about 5 minutes or so; its extremely easy. Make the blog as close as you can to the image without covering it. Then continue the blog by hand. Its really not that hard. Sorry for the not so great image quality.

Use two colors that appear next to another somewere within the image. Mine are taken from the eyes of the Anglepuss. Never use two extremely seperate colors such as blue for the fill and red for the border. It is almost garunteed to look bad. Now that you have the shape of the blog down, its time to move onto the text. One of the worst things you can do right now is use Arial font or something of the like. Haveing paint is no excuse what so ever for bad fonts. Read my font tutorial for details. However, we are going to add a border to the font to make it even cooler :).

Before getting started with adding your text, make sure you have the second choice selected:
Now use the eyedropper to find a color thats a bit lighter than your blog fill color. Go to "colors" >> "edit colors" to get a good shade. Make sure it is visibly lighter (make sure the font is lighter than the blog-border-font. visibly). Now, when you type your text, make sure that your text is not exactly on the line of the blog, but a tad bit over or cutting into it (I preffer the later). This gives it a looser look. Once you have selected the text icon, simply "select" the area you want to use and then right click >> Text toolbar. There select a font that you like. Make sure the size fits the proportions of your blog. Heres a sample of what not to do:

Now, we come to the point were we need to make a border for our text. Its easiest to make a one pixel border all the way around the text. I advice you use the border color of your blog, but thats completely your choice. You can skip this step, but I preffer to use it. Heres the before and after of my picture:

If thats too much bother for you, Its also adviseable to try and use a border style font. Thats a font like Cheri Liney were when your font color is say red, then you get a red border and a plain center. You can then use the paint bucket to change the center part as needed. Its your choice.

Now your done! Great job. That wasn't so difficult, now was it? A proper font, a clean background and a none-boxy blog can make a huge difference. Here you have my final result (again sorry for image quality):

~Kathrin