That little guy...

As you may recall, my problem was that I didn’t want to redraw the little construction worker man in my original sketch for the cover of the Backstreet Arts &… Zine, so I scanned him and began tweaking the file so I could just drop him into the rest of the sketch when the time came. (For the record, I am using Pixelmator Pro.)

Here were my thoughts:

First, tweak the color adjustments to make the pencil lines as dark as possible.

I began to use the eraser tool to get rid of the “paper” around the sketch, but you will see that that was a little difficult to see and execute clearly.

The solution was to create another layer, fill it with blue, and send it behind the sketch.

You can see where I missed some bits, so the colored background was a great idea.

Have some tips on this strategy:

• First of all, I think we can all agree that this might have been a little easier if I had dragged out my graphics tablet and used a pen to do the erasing rather than my mouse. But here we are.

• If you’re using your mouse, click on the edges, bit by bit, rather than trying to use strokes. It will save you a lot of ‘undo’ actions.

• Once you’ve erased the edges of the sketch, then use your lasso tool to capture chunks of the paper and delete them.

• Any strokes that you choose to make with the eraser tool, remember to make them short and away from the sketch.

• Finally, and this took me one export and trial to realize this, export the file as a .gif, not a .jpg — in a .jpg, that background you so carefully erased just shows up as opaque white. The .gif makes that area transparent. (Hide the blue background first.)

The results so far:

I went back in and, using the Color Adjustments Tool, bumped the Highlights to 100% and took the Brightness down to -50%.

NEXT: Finishing the wall, and then… the ropes. I have until Monday to finish this.