Step Two: Cleaning up the sketch

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Next I copy and paste the sketch onto a new canvas with a black background. (The background can be any color, or even transparent- I prefer black because it's easy on my eyes.) Then I use the Eraser tool to erase the empty space around the bird so that the background shows through. (To erase large areas I select them with either the Lasso tool or the Magic Wand tool.)

Now I use the Marquee tool to select the bird (by drawing a Marquee around the bird, then hitting the left arrow key then the right arrow key). This collapses the Marquee around the bird, which allows me to paint the bird without having to worry about staying inside the lines. My actions will only affect the area inside the collapsed Marquee. (Note: The proper way to do this is to create a mask channel, but I've never really figured out mask channels so I cheat and do it this way...) Then I use the Fill command to fill the entire selection with solid white.

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© Melissa Bradshaw, 1999. All rights reserved.