psp10

Final Update

Hello Everyone - this is the last Update for the PSP/Paint workshop.

1. Question: "Do you use the mouse for drawing?"
Yes, I do - exclusively.....The secret is to move it slowly at first and watch how it responds to hand movement. I work under magnification and move between the Line tool and Paintbrush and the RMB for simple erasing. For large scale removal - select and Crtl+x Paint is easy for combined drawing with text. The Expressions for the Magic Formula I did entirely in Paint.

2 .Entering diagrams directly from the computer into DAK - The Pflower chart is a good one for you to try since it is entirely in black. Then try a scan from Mary Louise Norman's books if you have them or indeed any charted pattern you like from a magazine. Save as TIF for best detail.

3. "Please explain more clearly how you offset a pattern - brick fashion!" Look at the Pflower. The second repeat above the first was done by selecting the right half of the first repeat and placing it in the left half space above, while the left half of the pattern was selected (and copied) into the right hand space above. You can select the whole pattern and place it half in and half out of the pattern space. Do this at the left then at the right and then clean off the halves you don't want.

4. Graphics Workshop - you may like to try this alongside PSP since it will reduce colours to 8 and 4, but do most of the work in PSP first. Another (easy and protected) download site for GWS is the Shareware site http://www.bhs.com/downloadsarea/590.

5. Before you use any of my empty drawn models, please check for any breaks in the lines. A break of one pixel is sufficient to let a colour fill escape to fill the whole screen.

6. "How did you get the pattern fill at an angle on the sleeve?" Start in Paint, with the model wearing an "empty" sweater. In Chinese and PFlower, measure with a school protractor the underarm angle at which the arm is outstretched. Answer: 35º. Take a copy of this sleeved arm (Select and Ctrl, draw away).Put it in the Clipboard and load in PSP. See that you are on 16 m cols or 256 grey scale. Choose Image/Rotate/Free 35º to left. That will put the sleeve into a perpendicular position. Pattern fill on this position and then rotate to the right 35º. Put it in the Clipboard, load it in Paint and fix into place on the model. You can then pattern fill the rest of the garment in PSP.

7. When you draw your own models to display a representation of sweaters/jackets, make them large enough to give the impression of at least 144 sts - an adult garment (proportionately for children). Study Iris Bishop's drawn patterned garments in Machine Knitting Monthly. Iris usually has her sweaters displaying patterns of 6-7 x 24st pattern repeats across.

8."How do you pattern-fill when there is more than one pattern?". First, I prepare the patterns with one repeat of the motif and background colour complete. I do not clothe a "human" figure in this situation. The garment is best drawn flat, Iris Bishop fashion, with one sleeve extended at right-angles to the body while the other also extended from the shoulder, is folded down to be parallel with the main back/front side seam. If the garment has borders, say, above the welt and on the shoulder line of back/front and sleeves, then I could stamp the borders in first, or I could pattern-fill in PSP if I'd drawn a temporary line in a contrast colour between border and the rest of the area. There are usually 2 plain rows anyway for separation.

A traditional Shetland FI garment composed of a number of borders takes time to illustrate, but yet it is a valuable exercise to help you decide which borders/colours to choose and how/where to arrange them. You can bring, for example, various patterns from DAK via the Clipboard into Paint, where you can arrange them, one repeat above the other, if they are the same size. You can then pattern-fill a garment shape which ought to be the size you want in pixels. Alternatively sent the multiple pattern back to DAK to do there the integration of pattern and shape.

I've just done a child's sweater with a border above back, front and sleeve welts and a single motif on the front. The single motif is placed a little too highly. I could have seen where best to put it if I had illustrated the garment first.

I hope you have enjoyed the series.

Feel free to make copies of the Graphic Lessons for your personal use. The following copyright notice must appear on all copies
Copyright (c)Kathleen Kinder, 1997, 1998.