Use a picture of a car to create a pixel drawing.
If you want to make a digital graphic of a car, with bright colors with a cartoon-like feel, you can try drawing a car using individual pixels. Pixel art can be very detailed or very basic, so that part is up to you. The easiest way to make anything in pixel art is to trace it from an actual photograph in a graphic editing program. Pixel art is created by drawing one or a few pixels at a time, so all you need is a simple program.
Instructions
1. Open a simple graphic editing program like Microsoft Paint, Apple Paintbrush, or any advanced program like GIMP (see Resources). Open a picture of the car that you would like to draw in pixels in the program. Click on the "Selection" tool and select the car by drawing a rectangle around it. Go to "Image," "Crop" to isolate the car.
2. Choose a color from the color palette to use as the outline. If you want to use the colors that already exist in the picture, select the color picker tool (looks like a dropper) and click on the color in the picture. The color will appear in the palette. Choose the "Pencil" or "Paintbrush" tool and make sure it is set to 1 pixel. Click on the "Line" tool if you need to draw a straight line.
3. Select the "Eraser" tool and clean up the area around the car so you have a plain white background. If you accidentally erase part of the car, go to "Edit," "Undo".
4. Trace the details of the car by using the same technique that you used for the outline. Fill the color in with the Pencil tool or the "Fill With Color" tool (looks like a paint bucket).
5. Go to the color palette and double-click on one of the colors to open the "Edit Colors" box. Click on "Define Custom Colors" and slide the arrow down to select a darker color of any of the filled-in colors of your car to do some shading. Use the Pencil tool and add shading around the inside of the lower edges of the outline. Consider where the light is hitting the car and place the shadows on the opposite side and the highlights (lighter color) on the surface where the light is hitting.
6. Save the your pixel art car with a .GIF or .BPM or .PNG file extension when you are done. Saving as a .JPG will cause the image to lose detail and become blurry.
Tags: color palette, editing program, graphic editing, graphic editing program, light hitting, looks like