For my Draw it assignment, I choose an old picture of my dog Gunther that I took on a camping trip at Westmoreland State Park. This is one of my favorite pictures of Gunther, so I thought it would also look great as a drawing.
This was a great trip that I took my kids on when they were younger. We ate s’mores by the fire, told ghost stories at night, went hiking, and hunted for sharks teeth during the day. The hike to the beach is a little over a mile long and very easy, which was nice because the kids were young at the time. The sharks teeth are generally easy to find. However, the beach was busy when we went and had been picked over pretty well, so we didn’t find much. If you’ve never been, check out this guy’s video below for a good description of the trail and the beach.
I also created a step-by-step turtorial of how I converted the picture to a drawing. Since I can’t download programs on my work computer, I decided to use an iOS app for the editing. I took screenshots of the process, which was very straightforward, and uploaded the screenshots to Flickr. I then gathered all of the images into WordPress to create what will hopefully be a useful tool for others.
Step 1
In the App Store, I searched for and installed an app called Sketch Me!
Step 2
Once the download was complete, I opened the app. It has a built-in tutorial, but I opted to skip that process and jump in head first. If you want to follow the tutorial, it begins with the cartoon pointer finger in the bottom right side of the image below.
Step 3
From here, I tapped the camera icon in the top left corner. A dialog box appeared with the following options: Use Photo from Library, Take Photo with Camera, or More. Since I already knew which picture I wanted to use, I chose Use Photo from Library.
Step 4
Step 4 is two parts for iOS users. I don’t know about androids, so I’m of no help to you folks. Since this was my first time using the app, I had to set the permissions for the app. The first one that came up was a dialog box asking if it was okay for the app to access my photos. Of course, I tapped OK.
The second part of step 4 is setting permissions for which photos the can access. Another dialog box appears with the following options: Select Photos…, Allow Access to All Photos, and Don’t Allow. I selected Allow Access to All Photos.
Step 5
After you tap Allow Access to All Photos, the app will take you directly to your photo folder. For my privacy, I am not sharing this part of the process, but I’m confident that we have all seen a photos folder on a phone and know how to use it. (If not, you’ll need a whole different level of tutorials.) When you find the photo you want to use, tap on it to automatically load it into the app and convert it to a sketch.
Step 6
From here you will have the sketched version of the picture you selected. Now you can tap the icon in the lower right corner to export the drawing.
Step 7
This will give you several options. I chose to save directly to my device, but are a variety of other ways to export and share the media.
Step 8
With this step I’m done and now have a drawing of Gunther on my phone. Yay!
