I've been asked several times now about my images on the blog and where I get them. So here is the post to explain how I use Excalidraw to create my images.
Note: Just realised the icon is a pen and a sword! Brilliant!
What is Excalidraw?
A shared whiteboard for sketching and typing. It's useful for drawing diagrams and sketching out ideas. Here is the link to the web page, it doesn't take long to get going, give it a try. I use it for a range of things and find it very versatile. What I'm talking about here is, creating the clipart/sketch drawings I use on my blog.
Below I list some steps I take to create the images and then some hints on enhancing and getting the best from Exclaidraw:
Step 1:
Fire up Excalidraw and think of a few pictures I might want to add to my post. Let's say I was writing a post about the analysis of a coffee shop. The pictures I would want are a coffee cup (obviously), a coffee bean, a spoon and a graph.
Step 2:
Draw some initial drawings.
Where is the coffee bean I hear you ask? Well, I didn't know what a coffee bean looked like, not to draw anyway.
Step 3:
Research, and find an image on Google that you want to draw, for instance, you might search "Coffee Bean Line Drawing Clipart"
This helps you see how other artists have shown them, so I would choose the image I think would work best, copy it and paste it into Excalisdraw. This allows you to get some rough dimensions and gauge how your diagram should look.
Step 4:
Draw your version, you are just trying to get a version of the picture, not copy it exactly
. Then you end up with the images you want to use.
Step 5:
Exporting the images is simple, highlight your image, right clip and then copy it to the clipboard as a PNG:
And that's how simple it is, I think I have a few more tips you can use so I'm calling them hints and here they are:
Hint 1 - Opacity:
A little trick I learned recently was how to use the opacity tool to add shading and colouring without losing the colour scheme.
In this picture of a coffee, I think reducing the opacity makes the image a little better.
Then you can use it for different effects in your image or shadow of your text.
Hint 2 - Using Shapes:
Building up a picture with shapes and then either overlaying them or tracing them is a quick way to get a good outline. Here I have created a quick example (not my best).
Hint 3 - Edit the line:
Getting your picture to look how you want when you are not an artist like myself is annoying, but there is a feature called "Edit Line" which adds points to a drawn shape and allows you to tweak it.
Each time you diverge off a straight line, it creates a new point, great for wavey lines and creating new shapes. This method also comes in handy if you ever wanted to create a shape with a hole in it like a doughnut.
Hint 4 - Powerpoint/Google Slides:
A final hint is something that is missing from Excalidraw and is the crop tool. The reason I mention this is that it's something I use. So when I create the header image for this blog, I will use this method.
First I add all the images I want to a Slide (it doesn't have to be these tools, it's just what I use), I arrange the images as I want. Save the arrangement as an image or screen grab it, paste it back into another slide and crop the picture, this way you cut off all the side bits giving a nice clean look.
So that is my guide to drawing on Excalidraw, hope you got something from it do let me know if you are a fan of Excalidraw and what you use it for. Is there something I missed that would be a good addition?
Thanks for reading.
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