Step-by-Step - Make a Custom Pin for your blog!

Remember this post here? I said I was using PicMonkey to make Pins for one of my mom's blogs. Well, before you get all excited, no this is not me saying you can order these from me. This is a step-by-step post. A post that will show you how to make these pins for your own blog!

So Step One; Make sure you have a PicMonkey account, the site requires an account for usage, and Step Two; make sure you have Flash enabled on whatever Internet browser you are going to be using.
Step Three, pic a color pallet. My mom uses a bright green, and a bright pink.

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Ain't that pretty?

You can use whatever colors you want, but remember to stick to them, and if you change them, to change all your previous ones, that way people recognize them later on, and say  "Hey, I know that blog!" and click on the links, thus getting your posts read quickly, and by more people, because the people that clicked on the pintrest pins are likely to re-pin, and then their followers will read it and well, you get the idea.

PicMonkey offers a ton of editing options, so I'm going to have to stop the step by step here, as I can't tell you how to customize. Will you use hearts? Stars, maybe a checkerboard patter?
It's all up to you!

What design did you choose for your pins?

How to Create a Style

When you look at images other people have drawn, you can sometimes recognize a picture by their style.
Look at this image.

Can you tell me who it is? I sure hope you can. In case you can't, this is younger Simba, from the movie Lion King. Note the style of the art. Study it really closely, and then look at this picture of younger Kovu, from the second movie

See the similarities? If not, take a real close look at the ears, eyebrows, jaws, and eyes.
Now do you see them?
Even if you couldn't, you could recognize these as Disney characters from the movie Lion King. Unless of course you've never seen any of the movies, in which case I suggest you go do right away, as it is an amazing movie.

The artists for Lion King developed a style, a pattern for their characters. That's what the topic of this post is today.
When you draw, do you do something specific to mark it as your drawing?? And I don't mean signing it. I mean drawing hands a certain way, or maybe doing the face in a certain design. If you are having trouble coming up with your own way of drawing, draw up a quick picture in the same design as the original, then look at the places you feel could use some improvement. Maybe you didn't draw the eyes just so, or maybe the hands, paws, talons, or wings turned out horribly. Draw the picture again, but leave out the parts where you messed up. Unless of course the entire image was ruined by some accident, in which case simply just re-draw it completely before doing this step.

Now, in the parts you left out, take a new piece of paper, and experiment drawing them in different ways until you come up with a way you like. When you are positive you can draw the way repetitively, draw it onto your image.  Repeat this step, until your picture is once again complete. And hey...what do you know? You've created a style for those parts!

I once had issues drawing feet, they were just super hard for me! Then I started drawing them a more cartoon-like way, shorter and more round, and suddenly they looked....right.

So keep experimenting with your images, until they feel right to you.

In what ways have you improved your art?
Do you have a specific style you can show off?
I'd love to see it!

PicMonkey for Pintrest

Lately, my mom has been having me make images for one of her blogs, that she can use on pintrest to gather more attention, and more clients. Once I get most of them done, I'll be offering a service here on my blog, that will allow you readers to hire me to make them for you if you wish.

I've been using PicMonkey to do this, and I would recommend you check it out! It can be a little tricky to figure out, but once you've got the basics down, it's quite easy!
I'll likely be adding PicMonkey pictures to these posts as well later down the road.


Do you use PicMonkey? If so, could you show an example of what you've made? And if not, do you have a site you like to use for this sort of thing? Could you share the link?