Country Church - PSP 8 Tutorial
 

                                                               
This tutorial was done using PSP 8. It is a long tutorial and you will learn how to shape and perspection using vectors. This is not a beginner tutorial but I included many screen shots so I encourage the beginner to try it. It is intended to serve as a learning tool. I encourage you to make it uniquely your own creation. The images on this page are reduced for space. You will need:          
** Paint Shop Pro - download a trial version here   
** A good working knowledge of psp tools, vector nodes and layers.
** My glass pattern you can get here and unzip into your patterns folder.

Getting started
Open a new file 400 x 400 and save it as "church". You may flood fill it with a color if you want to make it easier to see just make sure you keep it on a separate layer so you can delete it later.
Please make sure you save often.

Make the Church Steeple.
This tutorial is a long one and for visual purposes, I have shown my images on a white background. This is just one example of shaping a building and can be done many ways. I did it this way to make it as easy as possible to create a church that you can embelish on later.

IMPORTANT: Please do not convert any vector layers until I tell you to. We will be drawing parts of the church and will need to modify some as our image grows.

I will give you right steeple directions then illustrations to guide you.
* Make a new vector layer and name it "rightsteeple".
* Make your foreground color #B09A78 and your background color #F6E9D4.
* Select your preset shapes, rectangle, create as vector checked and Anti-alias checked, line style solid, width 1.
* Draw a long vertical rectangle and move it to the lower right hand corner to give us room to draw.
* Select your pen tool and by holding down your Ctrl key and left clicking,  add 2 nodes on the right hand side about 1/4 of the way down from the top node. (Ok so I'm not good at math!)
* Grab the top new node of the two that you added and pull it to the right and down even and close to the bottom new node.
* Grab the very top node and move it in to be even with the 2 new nodes. (Whew ... this is hard to word lol!)
* Now grab the very bottom right hand node and pull it up a little.
                    TIP ... Zoom in when aligning your lines. They may look straight but you will be surprised that they are often not. And always view your vector lines at 100% or larger because when you view it smaller than 100% the lines may look off.
Looks like a church already! OK I promise ... no more attempts at jokes.

* Make a new vector layer and name it "leftsteeple".
* Select your preset shapes, rectangle, create as vector checked and Anti-alias checked, line style solid. TIP ... Always select your preset shapes tool before you change your colors. Otherwise the vector you already drew, will change to the new color if it is still a vector layer.

* Leave your foreground the same color and change your background color to #DECDB2.
* Draw a long vertical rectangle next to the rightsteeple. Make this side a little more narrow than the rightsteeple. Move it next to and even with the rightsteeple layer.  TIP ... Use your object tool to adjust the height and width.

* Now we are going to repeat the steps we did when we added nodes to the rightsteeple layer, only we will add the nodes to the left hand side. Make sure they are even with the rightsteeple layers nodes.
Your image should now look like this.
                                  


Make the Top of the Steeple.
* Select your preset shapes, triangle, create as vector checked and Anti-alias checked, line style solid.
* Make a new vector layer and name it "steepletop".
* Make your foreground color #B09A78 and your background color #6E4C0A.

* Draw a triangle at the top of the steeples leaving it overlap on the sides a little and using your object selection tool, line it up even. TIP ... I use the move tool instead of the object selection tool so that I don't see all the vector lines. This makes it easier to see when aligning the image evenly. If you do that then just select your pen tool after to continue modifying the vector shape.

* Using the dark outline between the 2 layers as a guild, add a node to the triangle.
* Select your pen tool and push the node up a little and then move the layer down a little to line it up evenly with the outline.

                          
* Change your preset selection tool to the rectangle.
* Make a new vector layer and name it "steepleledge". 
* Starting at the indented part, draw a small horizontal rectangle allowing it to overlap the edges just a little.
                           
* Grab the top 2 nodes and move then in to just touch the steeple. See the image below.
                          
Now see the part of the steeple on both sides that should not be showing? This is why we did not convert to a raster layer yet.

Select the rightsteeple layer by clicking on the plus sign on the rightsteeple layer and then clicking on the rectangle layer that now shows. Add a node between the 2 nodes (refer to the image below) and then pull the node in behind the steepleledge layer so that it does not show. Do the same for the leftsteeple layer.
                    
* Select the steepleledge layer again by clicking on the plus sign like you did with the other layer.
* Now, again using the dark outline as a guide, add a node to the top and bottom. Grab each node and push up a little. Keep both even with each other and centered in the middle of the outline.
                            
* Sorry, this was so hard to put into words so I hope I have not confused you. When you are happy with the way this looks, take a break, sweep up the hairs you have been pulling out of your head, and continue on to page 2 when your are ready. Common ... don't quit on me now! Have you been saving your file?