Many of the clip art programs are not that easy to use, in my rookie opinion. I would have to spend hours upon hours playing with the software just to learn how it works, and that means hours upon hours of frustration for me. And the tutorials on Youtube for these types of software are geared toward the people who are already somewhat familiar with them, they are not for techno challenged beginners. If you don't know this already, dear reader, let me tell you, everything in this world takes a measure of skill and know how --everything! I didn't want to take months to learn how to be a graphic artist, I just wanted to quickly make some clip art, and on the cheap too, but how?
To help dust off my drawing skills, I spent a few moments doodling, and then I set out to work. After I went through several pencil erasers, many pieces of paper, and had suffered a pencil sharpener mishap when the lid of the sharpener came off, spilling its mixture of wood and graphite debris all over me and the floor, I finally was able to get what was in my mind onto that blank piece of paper a few hours later - I was triumphant! Not bad considering the many years I've neglected my drawing skills, even if I do say so myself!
The next day, which was yesterday, I went to Walmart and chose some scrapbooking paper that I liked. I just wanted about 3 or 4 sheets, but apparently they come in tablets these days. Just as well, knowing my penchant for making mistakes, it was probably a good idea to have more than one piece of paper per color. Back at home, I used my drawing as a template. I held my original drawing up to the window and put another piece of paper over it so I could trace it, basically I made a copy, well, I made two copies. Then it dawned on me that I had gone a little too far with my 'old school' approach, because I could have used my printer to make the copies- ha ha ha - oh well. Why make two copies anyway? Well, I wanted to keep my original drawing, that's why I made two copies. One copy was so I could cut out the shapes to use as templates for my pretty scrapbooking paper, and the other was so I could paste on the clipped pieces for the final product. I guess you could say I was making a paper doll. I suppose I could have used markers and colored pencil to color in my dress, but I would not have been able to achieve the intensity of color without marker lines, and the patterns of the colored paper easily gave me a measure of detail that I like.
After I glued my paper doll onto the second copy of the line drawing, I then colored in my skin, hair, and frying pan, using colored pencils and markers. Then I outlined the picture with a black ink pen, and colored in other details, then I finally scanned it onto my computer. After that, I was able to easily put the digitized photo it into my computer's picture file, and I was then finally able to paste it onto my website, and voila! I like the finished product because it is simple like vector, but also has some realistic details without being too realistic. There you have it, I finally made my own clip art, literally, without using any clip art programs. Perhaps someday I will sit down and force myself learn how use at least one of the myriads of clip art programs out there, but for now, this works for me! Going through this process made me think that perhaps I do have a measure of that homesteading spirit in me after all!