My Very First Sketch

I love creating layouts from sketches.  Using a sketch designed by someone else sparks my creativity, challenges me to go beyond my comfort zone, and helps push me to try new things.  They often serve as a jumping-off point for me to make something totally unique.

I've wanted to try making sketches of my own for awhile now.  But I had no idea how to go about translating my pen-on-paper sketches into the 'real' sketches that actual sketch artists make.  So I asked the ladies what software they use to make their sketches.  I learned that Cathy uses Photoshop CS4.  Dolores uses Photoshop CS5.  Pam and Heather both use Photoshop Elements.  I don't have any of those.  Is it possible, I wondered, to make a sketch using an ordinary program everyone already has?  Fortunately, the answer is yes. 

I started with the OpenOffice version of Word (Writer).  At the bottom left of the screen, there is a nice assortment of shapes.

In a short amount of time, it was fairly easy to translate my pen/paper sketch into something that looked more professional.  I printed out my sketch- it looked good!  But when I went to blog about it, I ran into trouble.  There was no way to export the document into the jpg, gif, or png that Blogger requires.  I tried a variety of things before deciding that the amount of effort I was putting into changing a .doc into a .jpg was exceeding the amount of time I'd spent making the sketch!  Unacceptable.   

So I ditched Writer and tried the OpenOffice version of Paint (Draw).  The control panel looks similar to the one in Writer but with a few extras.

 

I set about recreating the sketch I'd already made in Writer.  It wasn't too difficult.  Best of all, it just took one click to export the file as a .png, which I was then able to upload to Blogger.

And here it is- my very first sketch!

It's nothing fancy, but I like it.  For those of you who don't have Photoshop, you can create a perfectly acceptable sketch using Microsoft Paint or OpenOffice Draw.  I'd encourage you to give it a try!