gimping it out

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend! My kids were off of school today and we spent the afternoon with friends, enjoying the hot, sunny weather. It went from being chilly here to being like summer. I hope spring comes back. 

I have just been beside myself with joy at finding Gimp which is a free downloadable program, very much like Photoshop (which is very expensive). Caroline has used it at school and then my friend Silvia told me about it during our last class together. I figured out how to scan my drawings in and color them! I've been experimenting with some pictures I already did (I'm sure you recognize them). The first one was a pencil drawing and I was able to change the color of the pencil to brown and then add in the color in layers...

 In this one, I added color, texturized the skin and the green shirt, and then I added in a photo of gingham fabric to use in the boy's shirt! I'm trying to figure out how to keep a more traditional look but still use this program which works well with my Wacom tablet. The good news is that I can use this for my book illustrations since I send computer files to the printer anyways. I was having trouble scanning the colored pencil and the watercolor to come out correctly.

I know this isn't really big news to anyone else but it just made my life ten times easier and I actually can't wait to sit down and work now!  If anyone needs to know how to do this too, there is an online tutorial.