I prefer to make my own clip art and have found PowerPoint to be the easiest to use to create them.
POWERPOINT????? Yep, that's right, you don't need fancy computer software to create simple and cute clip art for any of your projects.
Today I am going to share a few tips with you for getting started.
Step 1: Think of the clip art you wish to make as simple shapes. Start off with the big shapes first.
Step 2: Change the colour of the fill and border as needed.
Step 2: As your add smaller details you may want to hide parts of the shape. For example, in the picture below the penguins arm is made from an oval but you don't want to see the entire oval. Use the send backwards button to send it behind all the other shapes. You may need to press it a few times as each click will only send it behind one of the shapes behind it.
Step 3: For symmetrical items copy and paste them and then use the flip button.
Step 4: Grouping items can be really useful if you want to use multiple shapes to make one item on your clip art and then flip it or copy that item. Hold down crlt and then click on each of the shapes you would like to group (hint: wait until a little cross appears before clicking to ensure you are selecting the right item other wise you might click the background and have to start again.) Once you have the items selected, right click the new shape and select group and then group again. You can ungroup the shapes at any time if you need to make alterations.
Step 5: You have two options for saving you picture. For the first method go to save as you usually would. Type the file name but before you click save, change the file type to JPEG or PNG. This saves it as a picture. A pop up window will ask you if you want to do all the slides or just that one page.
Step 5b: I prefer saving it as a PNG file which deletes white spaces so you add it into your other products without having to have a border around the picture. While you can use the method above to save it as a PNG file I prefer to group all my shapes involved in the clip art and then right click and save the picture.
PowerPoint is so easy to create pictures, you don't need to be good at drawing to use it.
Some extra tips:
Hold shift down while clicking and dragging to create shapes to make perfect circles, squares or just to maintain the aspect ratio of something you have already created.
For most of my clip art I add a black border with a line weight of 3 for continuity.
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