This is my first, basic introduction and tutorial of 'How to start drawing on Paint Shop Pro 9'. This is not very detailed tutorial nor it's going to make you an artist instantaneously. Nevertheless, it gives a basic information that will give you some examples how to draw digital pictures on a PC.

1. When you open Paint Shop Pro 9 at the first time, you'll notice that there are already two toolbars on the upper side and on the right side of the screen. The right toolbar contains the basic tools and it is okey at the moment, but I find the upper toolbar to be impractical. Therefore, I recommend that you make a custom toolbar that could look as the picture above. I find the toolbar of mine to be practical that contains the most important and useful tools and options you may need. It's maybe the best to create a similar toolbar at the begin so you are aware of the possibilities of the program (right click the bar on the left mouse and pick customize. Then create new toolbar and drag-and-drop the right commands onto the newly created toolbar.) After that I recommend that you save the toolbar and the current settings by closing the program and restaring it again.

2. Okey, now it's time to create a "paper" for a picture your are about to draw. Press New button. On the following page there are some selections. Notice the Image Size, Resolution, and Background Color. I recommend that you pick a relatively large width and height (more than a thousand pixels). Normal computer graphics uses resolution of 72, but if you want to have a material that can be published on paper, the resolution should be 300 or higher (that needs a newer computer with lots of memery if you use tens of layers in your work with high resolution). I also recommend that you'll pick transparent background color because you shoundn't draw on a background layer in any case.

3. Open 'Tool Option' window by pressing F4. I find it the most important and useful option window in PSP9. The window changes a bit when you pick a different tool on the right toolbar. You can alter options of a tool and at the same time alter the drawing experience in a major way within the window. The most important options are (from top to down):
- Shape of Brush - changes the shapes of the brush. You can pick one from the regular category or create a brush of your own.
- Size of Brush - This is obvious option that resizes your brush. Larger brush for drawing larger and more vague shapes and smaller brush for detailing.
- Opacity - This is very important option for creating transparent textures. I constantly change opacity levels of tools options while drawing things. I suppose it is at least as important option as Size. Just try it out and look what it does. As I draw a picture, Opacity levels should almost always be something else than 100. I use levels of 1-40 when coloring with using Change to Target and levels of 60-90 when using Smudge/Push tools.
- The other values varies too much from tool to tool to give them even vague notion in here. Just try them and see what happens.

4. The difference of drawing on a real paper and drawing digitally is all about the layers. The basic principle is that you must use layers because it makes everything more or less easier. You should NEVER start drawing on a background, and always create a new layer for the drawing. You realize this sooner or later by yourself as you have had some practice. There are lots of different things that you can alter on a layer window. The most important options are:
- Order of layers - everything you have drawn on the upper layer shows over the other layers. You can change the order by draging them as you see them to fit best.
- The Eye Button - Show or hide a layer. This button comes handy when you want to peak what is under the top layer or after you dont need some layers but you want to save them anyway.
- Opacity - you can alter how a layer blends with the other layers below of it and make the layer more or less transparent.
- Blend Mode - You can create layers of lightning, coloration, shadows, and many more settings with changing the blend mode of a layer. This is very easy tool for editing a whole picture. A simple trick for using this tool is to duplicate (layers->duplicate) your current picture and change blending mode of the upper layer to something else. Just try out on a photo and you'll see how easy basic editing can be.

5. History - This is a very useful window that shows 200 clicks to the past shos what did you do with the picture. You can easily undo or redo some changes that you already have made. You can also undo only a specific point.

6. Colors - This is the window where you pick a color for your brush. There are 3 different color palettes and one of them is for saving the colors you are using. It's very useful some times. There are plenty of options as well. You can pick two colors (primary and secondary color), textures, material shapes, and lots of other cool things as well. I recommend that you don't use the ready materials and other thing - you can create them for yourself after you have learned to draw with PSP9. Dropper is number one tool for picking wanted colors.

7. Parts of 7 to 10 concetrate on introduction of the most important tools that are not obvious or are the tools that I use mostly by myself. There are many submenus under the buttons of the right toolbar, and most of them contain two to three different tools. 'encil' button has 3 subtools: Paint Brush, Air Brush and Warp Brush. I use only paint brush and warp brush so I only introduce them.
- Paint Brush - The basic drawing tool in PSP9. You can alter its options on the tool options window (F4). I use it mostly for sketching and creating basic shapes for further editing. (I usually draw a fast sketch from what I want to draw on a layer that I name Shapes, and after that I create a new layer and start to draw the real picture thatwill based on the Shapes layer. The picture of the succubus above has that white crossbow and jewelry made by this tool and further edited with using Push/Smudge/Warp tools)
- Warp brush - very cool tool appeared in the 9th version of PSP. It allows you to bend shapes that still keep their original shapes very well. This too is good at correcting shapes for example, if I want to widen the succubus's waist, I only need only one click with this tool to make it happen. I recommend that you use bigger Sizes when editing a picture with this tool because the shapes bend more naturally in that way.

8. There are lots of great tools for basic sketching and shaping behind of this button.
- Dodge and Burn are least useful, but you can make dramatic shadows and lightning with these tools as well.
- Smudge and Push are quite similar tools for spreading and flattening some textures and painted parts. The difference of tools are that Smudge creates more flatten and smooth traces than Push tool that also creates some edges. These are really good and useful tools (I have created all of my drow pictures with mostly these tools only. Nowdays, these tools are good for creating shapes and surfaces that are ready for more detailed texturing.)
- Soften and Sharpen - You may want a surface to be more soften or more sharp. These tools will make that happen.

9. After you have created the shape with the tools of part eight or ten, you can edit the picture more for these tools.
- Lighten/Darken - These tools are for making detailed highlights and shadows. I find it very good tool for creating very detailed parts of a picture like a face of someone. The succubus's face is also created with using carefully these two tools. Use with low opacity!
- Saturation up/down - When you have some colors on the picture, you may want to change the intensity and the amounts of color with this tool. Use with low opacity!
- Hue Up/Down - I didn't find this very good tool at all. You can change the hue better with other tools.
- Change to Target - This is a tool for coloring a black and white picture and I find it very useful. Pick this tool and a color and add some color to your black and white drawing. Use with low opacity!

10. These are artistic tools for drawing that imitates the real-life pencils and tools. If you can master these, you can create even more art-like and lively shapes and textures with these tools. I'm also a beginner with these tools so I really don't have much to tell you. Just try for yourself. In any case I used the Palette Knife and Oil Brush for creating the background for the succubus picture above. The wings and hair are made by these tools as well.

Various notes:
- Do not use eraser when you make a mistake, use undo and redo. Eraser is mainly for erasing traces of drawing to bring out a deeper layer behind the layer you are about to erase.
- Do not use too many Effects (better if you don't use them at all). Try to draw those things by yourself - you surely want to be an artist, not an effect-user. Additionally, complete and ready effects inside PSP9 won't look very good at a picture, or at least the Effects will make your work easily categorized as "it looks a digitally manipulated picture".
- If you have an example of a color that you want to use in your work, use Dropper tool.
- Selection tools can do miracles when you are trying to edit a part of your drawing. Magic wand can make selecting a part of picture far more easier and faster, and used with right Tolerance (on Tool Options (F4)) and Invert button it can easily select almost anything.
- Bezier curves under the Pen tool are for the line arts. You should study Pen tool for couple of hours if you like to draw the line art pictures.
- Be aware of merging layers into one layer or flattening it to a background layer. You may regret it afterwards if you save the picture after merging if you still want to edit it further.
- Notice that resizing a picture will worsen your work. You shouldn't enlarge a picture more than +20% and you should resize only once (use Undo for finding the right size)


Drawing on Paint Shop Pro 9 in a nutshell:

1. Pick a large paper (bigger than 1000x1000 pixels if you use resolution of 72 ppi).

2. Create a layer where to plan your picture. Create only a rough shapes and lines that help you to draw the planned picture.

3. Create another layer where you start to draw based on your plan. You can mainly choose between 3 drawing techniques (I devide it very roughly and there are lots of other techniques as well but this is just an example for a beginner how to begin).

- "Smudge/Push drawing": First you have to decide do you want to draw a picture with colors or a picture with only shades of black & white. You may add the color afterwards if the case is the latter. I recommend that if you are a beginner, start by creating a shapes and lines without using colors first, mainly because you don't have to concentrate on so many things simultaneously. You can easily add the colors afterwards with Chance to Target tool.

- "Art drawing": Use the tools on the part 10 for creating the shapes and colors simultaneously. This is almost as you draw a picture with using on some real tools and equipment.

- "Line drawing": Use Pen tool to create different lines and reshape as you desire. When you have the line art complete, you can create the shadows, lightning and colors with the other two techniques above. Flood Fill tool may come handy when you want to fill space surrounded by lines.

4. After you have created the basic picture maybe with some details, you are ready for editing the picture. I recommend to use different layers for different things for example if you add colors, use blend mode color for that layer. There are some really good editing adjustments that are under 'Brightness and Contrast', 'Color Balance', and 'Hue and Saturation' uppermenus. The best tool menu below the 'Brightness and Contrast' is Levels... 'Hue and Saturation' menu has also good tools after you already have some colors on your picture.

5. When all this is done, I'm pretty sure you have created your first picture with using a drawing program. I warn you, don't expect too much of it. I'm almost certain that you can't make a masterpiece as your first picture. My first digital pictures looked mostly like this: [link] I needed hundreds of hours just to get my drawing skills even as well as they are right now. I'm pretty sure you need that rigorious practise as well or you truly are a great artist of all times.

6. Here's my final and very, very important tip for drawing a digital material - save your works often. Save your incomplete picture as a pspimage-file because it will keep the layers UNMERGED. Afterwards, a file type of your final picture could be jpg or png (png is better because it's non-destructive format).