Making a circle

I started drawing a version of the circle of life tree the other day (which I was going to hang colourful tea pots off). The image I'm basing it on was from a google image search of the tree of life.

I was drawing it in pencil and pen but it was incredibly hard! I spoke to Vickie and she said why not make it with my(my boyfriends :p) graphics tablet because it should be much easier.

I kept getting really confused between the black and the white and the branches and the leaves!

I opened photoshop and wanted the start the image with an outlined circle. Which I couldn't make! I could make a solid circle, and a selection of a circle shape but I couldn't make it have any line weight as an outline.

So I seeked google for help! Luckyily someone else had the same problem and posted it on a forum and someone else posted the answer :)

Yay :)

So now I have,

When I was trying to draw this by hand I lightly drew blue lines around where I wanted the leaves to be. Unfortunately I stopped doing this as it didn't rub off very well and annoyed me a lot. So I tried the same thing with this, but the beauty of it being on a computer is that I can make the blue on a separate layer, so when the image is finished I can delete it completely.

I thought the best thing to do would be the solid black areas first, then I can delete the parts that I don't want to be there. However when filling in the area I want with black an annoying white line comes up between my fill area and my outline. The other day my tutor matt showed me how to stop this from happening, and I will have to ask him again because I have completely forgotten!

You can't really see the white lines in this small screen shot but they are there!!!

As there aren't lots of lines to cover I use the paint brush tool to cover them up. This would of been incredibly annoying if I had had to do it for the entire image.

Next I will erase the root spaces. Then start on the branches, and no doubt get confused again!

I already hate this image. The one on the right that I am basing it on looks to fluent and balanced. Mine already looks like the tree is dying. I think I will start again by doing all of the black first, drawing the branches and leaves all together. That way I can think more about the shape of the entire image instead of getting obsessed with all the fiddley bits.

To be continued...