Dogwood Branch

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©2001 Designs By Astro

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Growing up in the south dogwoods have always been a favorite of mine. I hope
you will enjoy this tutorial.

Yes, you will be using vectors, but nothing to hard. *L*
All images have been resized and compressed to save on load time.
Save Often!

Items needed...

PSP 6 or 7.

Drift Wood pattern

Center for dogwood

Unzip Drift wood to your patterns folder in PSP.
Unzip center for dogwood and open in PSP.

Let's get started...

Open a 400x400 transparent 16 million colors.

Set you background color to white, foreground Null, click on your preset tools.
Ellipse, Antialias and create as a vector both checked. Solid line.

Draw out a circle about the size of a quarter. Hum, not sure what size to say for
those that aren't familiar with US currency *L* take your index finger and your thumb
and touch them together to form sort of a circle, that would be about the size unless
you have really long fingers *L*

Click on the object selector then right click on you palette and click node edit.
What we want is to turn our circle in to is sort of a heart but not as heart shaped
defined as a true heart would be.  Add two nodes, one on each side of the top
node. Pull the middle top node down just a little to get a hump in the center. Pull the
bottom node down. You should have something that looks like this

Convert to raster layer.

Go to Selections, Select All, Sections Float. You know have the ants marching around your petals.
Click on the paint brush, with these settings draw just a small line at the hump in your petal.
Like this...

Do not deselect.
Add a new layer, go to Effects, 3D Effects, Cutout with these settings apply..

Deselect. Hide layer1 and merge visible.

Go to Layers, Layer Duplicate, Image, Flip. Place petals end to end.

Go to Layers, Duplicate, Image Rotate, Set Rotation to 90 degrees, right.
Move into position so that it over laps slightly the other two petals.
Layer Duplicate, Image, Mirror. Move into position as you did the other.
You should now have something that looks like this...

Hide Layer 1 and merge all layers Visible.
Remember the center for the dogwood I had you open?
Make it active then go to Edit, Copy. Make your dogwood active then go to Edit, Paste, Paste
as New Layer. Move into position so that it is in the center of your petals. You may need
to use the deformation tool to resize. If you do remember to sharpen once resized.
Here is mine at this stage...

Hide layer one and merge visible, rename if you wish. I recommend that you now copy the layer
with your dogwood bloom, paste as new IMAGE and export as a tube. It makes it easier to add
the blooms once we have our branch made.

Now on to making the branch....

Open New Image 600x400 transparent. Add a New Layer.
Set your foreground color to the Drift wood you put in your patterns folder at the start.
Set Scale to 65 percent, angle 343. Background Null.
Click on the Draw tool using these settings...

Yep, that's set to freehand! *L* Don't panic it's not that hard!

About 3 or 4 of the squares(the transparent ones on your palette) up from the left bottom
Draw a line angling up till you reach about 3/4 of the palette. Something like this...

See it doesn't have to be straight, you actually want it crooked.

Now change the size of your Draw tool to 14 and lets draw 2 branches off our
main branch. (Look at the pic below.) Once you have those two drawn change the
size of the draw tool again to 9 and draw 3 or 4 smaller branches off those
and off the larger main branch at the top.
I have color coded the sizes in the image below so that you can better see the
size you will be drawing the different branches with. Yours of course will be in
the draft wood pattern....

Once you are happy with your branches, go to Selections, Select All, Selections, Float.
Go to Effects, 3D Effects, Inner Bevel with these settings...

Deselect.
Add a New Layer and lets start placing our blooms on our branch.
Click on your tubes and find the dogwood bloom you tubes earlier. Size
it to around 20 or so depending on how large your original was. Place several
on different parts of the branch at that angle. Add new Layers as you go and
use your deformation tool to change the angle and perspective on the bloom,
(remember to put a few blooms behind the branches also) until you have your
branch filled up like you want it.
 

You're finished. You can merge all Layers Visible copy and paste as new layer to remove
any excess. If you want to save as transparent it is best to save as an export gif.
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Until next time, God Bless,
Connie
 

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All images are the sole property of ©Designs By Astro
Do not copy or reproduce in any manner without
prior written permission. ©2001 Designs By Astro
All rights reserved!