How to MS Paint · 3:01am Sep 26th, 2018

I'm going to show you all how to turn this

Into this.

Using only Ms Paint.

Take a picture of your sketch with your phone. Make sure you use a filter on the photo so that there is no black in the picture (this is important later on).
Transfer the photo to your computer and open it in Paint. I use dropbox to do this.
Then just adjust the picture until you get it the size you want.

Use the adjustable line tool to trace your sketch. This tool is located in the shapes bar.
Make sure the lines you use are black.
Using the line tool has a learning curve and will take time to get used to.
After tracing the photo, hit the select all button and right click on the picture. In the menu that pops up, you should click the invert colors option.

Then go to File and click on Properties

In the menu that pops up, switch the color option to black and white.

Then select all again and go back to the Properties menu. Switch the black and white back to color.

Now your original sketch should be gone and only the line work is left.
This next step is very important.
You must copy the picture you have now and paste it onto a brand new Paint page. Save it because that pasted picture is going to be what you're working on from now on.
If you don't save on a new page, then you're picture will be ruined with off white particles. These particles will make it impossible to use the bucket tool.

After saving on the new page, use the bucket tool to make your base color. You can either fill in the colors all at once or you can go piece by piece.
I usually choose the latter.

Make color 2 your base color. Select all and copy. Make sure under Selection you have transparent selection checked.

After this, you are free to shade and highlight the base color. As long as you do not copy or cut anything else, you can be as messy as you want. Dont be afraid to go outside the lines.
As you shade, make sure to paste your picture every once In a while. In order for the paste to stay where it's supposed to, either scroll all the way up or zoom out until you can see the full picture.

Then you can add little details to make textures.

Only after you've pasted your picture and when completely sure with your shading, you can select all and copy. Then you fill a different piece with a base color, keep that color in the color 2 box, and shade.
Keep doing this until you eventually complete your picture.

I will show you how I shaded each of my peices.

The mane was shaded using the adjustable line tool for the darker colors. The colored pencil tool was used to make the smudged highlights. I used the same technique with the apple and tree bark but uses more smudge. I only used the colored pencil tool for the eyes.

I just used circles using the shape tool in order to make the texture of the leaves.

The clouds were made using the crayon tool.

Voila.

That's kinda all there is to it.
I'm sure there are steps I've overlooked or forgot. Stuff was also probably lost in translation considering how bad I am with words and the fact that I'm typing this on my phone .