This guide is meant as an introduction to painting, as well as its less intuitive quirks or less known features.
Go to cargo and order both an arts and crafts crate and a wooden planks crate.
When they arrive, grab the wood use it in-hand and craft a palette, which can be found under the “art supplies” section.
Open the arts and crafts crate, grab the brush, dip it into a paint bucket and then use it on your palette.
Repeat this for every paint color in the crate.
Hang a canvas on the wall.
Hold the brush in one hand and the palette in the other, and use the brush on a canvas. A painting UI will appear.
Click on the color blue, and draw a circle.
Now click on the “Import” section and then the “Export painting as template” button. A bit of weird text will appear in the “Export” box.
Copy-paste the template you just created into the “Import” box and press the “Import template” button. You'll be redirected to the “Template” section.
Select the color red, and use it on one of the “Paint over” buttons.
Now select the color yellow, set “Opacity” to 0.5, and use it on the other “Paint over” button.
Finally, click on the “Info” section and click on the “Save changes” button.
Now select the color black, draw a line crossing the circle, and without saving use the brush on the canvas in-game.
Go to cargo and order an arts and crafts crate.
When it arrives, open the arts and crafts crate, grab a canvas, and hang it on the wall.
Grab the blue crayon and use it on the canvas. A painting UI will appear.
Draw a blue circle.
Click on the “Save changes” button. Grab the black crayon, use it on the canvas and draw a black line crossing the circle.
Without saving, grab a red crayon and use it on the canvas.
Now click on the “Import” section and then the “Export painting as template” button. A bit of weird text will appear in the “Export” box.
Copy-paste the template you just created into the “Import” box and press the “Import template” button. You'll be redirected to the “Template” section.
Find the “Paint over” button next to a white square, and click repeatedly on it. If you don't note any changes, try on a different button with an even whiter square.
Finally, click on the “Info” section and click on the “Save changes” button.
You'll need something to paint on! You can craft a canvas using wood in hand, found under the “art supplies” section, and have the following options available to you:
Small canvas: 14×14 pixels, costs 2 wood blanks. Portrait canvas: 14×24 pixels, costs 3 wood blanks. Landscape canvas: 24×14 pixels, costs 3 wood blanks. Large canvas: 24×24 pixels, costs 5 wood planks. The arts and crafts crate comes with a couple canvases to get you started, but you may also want to stock up on wood if you're planning to make a ton of paintings. You can ask your local botanist to grow some tower caps, request some wooden planks crates through cargo, or salvage the library's bookshelves and turn the place into an art exhibit.
If you're not happy with a painting, you can use soap on it to clean it up and get the bare canvas back.
Displaying your artwork You can hang your paintings on walls and easels, the later of which can be crafted with wood, found under the “art supplies” section. Using wood on a painting will give it a nice wooden frame, and using glass on a framed painting will prevent others from painting on it until the glass is removed. You can remove a glass using a screwdriver, and a frame using a crowbar.
Painting utensils Painting utensils such as pens, crayons and brushes, can be used on a canvas to open the painting menu, allowing you to paint with some list of colors that will be provided by the utensil in question.
Pens and Crayons Pens, crayons, and hair dye spray cans can be used directly on a canvas to start painting, but due to the small size of pens and crayons and due to how weak spray cans are, you are limited to a maximum opacity of 15%, so you'll need multiple passes to properly fill in an area.
As you'd expect, using a pen you'll only be able to paint in that pen's color: Black pens paint black, red paint red, and so on. Best used if you forgot your brush and need to change a painting's title. The hair dye spray is also limited to a single color, but you can change that color before painting using the spray can in hand, allowing you to choose any arbitrary colors. Crayons allow you to paint in two shades, usually a lighter and darker variant of their main color. The rainbow crayon, like the the spray can, can be used in hand to choose any arbitrary colors.
Brushes, palettes and pigments Brushes and palettes can be crafted with wood, also under the “art supplies” section. The arts and crafts crate comes with a brush and a variety of paints (but no palette).
Like pens, brushes can only hold a single color, however they allow you to paint with a full range of opacity, allowing you to either paint whole areas the same consistent color or apply minute and precise amounts of color at will. To use a brush, you'll have to dip it in paint, or any other colored mix of reagents, and it will take on it's color. Arts and crafts crate has no orange paint? Ask the bartender for some orange juice, or get some sulfuric acid off the chemist. Want to decorate your local book club but can't find any “donors” with purple “paint”? Mix some human and vox blood in a glass, dip your brush and paint away!
Palettes, while not entirely necessary are very much recommended, as they allow you to store, duplicate and mix an arbitrary number of colors which will be added to the list of colors available to you while painting if held in hand while painting. To store a color in a palette, you only need to use a painting utensil on it, whether it be a brush with paint on it, a pen, or a crayon. You can use a palette in hand to see the list of colors stored, through which you can duplicate, delete and (using a brush) mix them. To mix colors:
Wash your brush (or skip to step 3) Click “Apply” on the first color to dip your brush in it (Optional) Duplicate the second color to preserve the original Click “Apply” on the second color and select an opacity Note that your brush will end up dipped with the color you just mixed, so you might want to clean it up again before mixing a different set of colors.
Tips and tricks Using a painting utensil on a canvas will refresh the painting window, causing you to lose any progress you have not saved! While this can be a tragedy, it can also be used as a handy “undo button”. Make sure whenever you're happy with your painting's progress Another reason to save often is for role play purposes: for those watching you, seeing a painting come to life bit by bit is more interesting than seeing a painting suddenly pop into existence. Refreshing the painting window is necessary to refresh the list of colors you have available. So if you add a color to a palette, change the colors of a rainbow crayon, or switch to a different crayon while already painting, it will be necessary to click on the canvas again with your painting utensil for those new colors to appear. Make sure to save before refreshing! Due to the crayons' limited opacity, most paintings made with crayons will result in templates containing way too many near-identical colors to feasibly reproduce. If you intend to make a painting to export as a template, try to stick to brushes with max opacity. The template import/export system can be used as a bucket fill, so don't be afraid to use it often if you're painting with a brush. This is also extremely useful in order to mix colors into a proper shade right on the canvas instead of having to mix it on a palette beforehand. Taking the previous tip into account, palettes are best used to store a list of base colors you intend to use often and which you can gradually mix into any other shade right on the canvas. The fact that brushes take onto the color that they just mixed can be useful in creating a gradient between two colors. Dip your brush on a color, then make six or so duplicates of a different color, and apply the brush on every duplicate sequentially without washing in-between. Delete any shades you're not happy with once you're done Painting from life Hello and welcome to another episode of the Joy of Painting, with Bob Ross' great-great-great-grandson. Today we're going to paint a symbol of drunk spessmen everywhere: The Jukebox.
Setup PaintingAJuke-Setup.png I've brought the jukebox to my studio, and selected a canvas large enough to fit the subject matter. I've also prepared my palette with every color that comes in your standard Arts and Crafts crate: red, green, blue, magenta, cyan, yellow, black and white; as well as a darker and lighter shade from mixing every color with 50% black or 50% white, and a gray from mixing black and white together. You can setup your palette however you wish, though it is helpful to have base colors you expect to use often handy.
Separating color regions PaintingAJuke-First draft.png Now, I've focused my attention onto the juke and looked reeeal close at it (display set to 128×128(4x)), and painted out the regions that seem to have roughly the same color. We're not really looking for color accuracy here, we're only looking to get the shape right. Using the grid can be helpful here. You'll notice how I've color coded the brown to a dark red, and the really dark brown to a dark magenta to differentiate the two, as my palette doesn't have a suitably dark brown. The same goes for the slightly orange yellow being color coded to dark yellow, or the darker grays being color coded to dark green and light blue (not to be confused with cyan!)
PaintingAJuke-Templated.png After getting my shapes right, I've exported my draft as a template, which I've imported after. Things should go quite smoothly after this.
Recoloring PaintingAJuke-Base color.png Now that we've got a painting we can start striving for color accuracy! The grays become grays, yellows become yellows and browns become dark reds. I'm already happy with the red, black, white and yellow, so I've moved them out of the way.
PaintingAJuke-Shading.png Using the templates, I've applied some black on the grays to darken them. For the dark reds, I've applied bits of gray to bring them closer to the shade I'm seeing on the actual juke, and then darkened them a bit with black.
PaintingAJuke-Recoloring.png Now's the turn to apply a tinge of red to that yellow region so it turns a bit more orange. I've also added some blue to the cyan areas and some cyan to the blue areas, bringing them closer together. Now that each color is it's own separate shade again, I've exported and re-imported the painting as a template to avoid any confusions over which color is which. It's already starting to look close to the real thing!
PaintingAJuke-Finishing touches.png Sadly the black that comes with the arts and crafts crate is not particularly dark, which can make some paintings look a bit muddy… So I've grabbed a black crayon and used it to darken the outline and the dark grays to heighten the contrast, it really pops out now!
We could still tweak the colors a bit, I know the more perfectionist out there will, but personally I'm already fine with our happy little juke. Have fun!