If you want to start scrapbooking (digitally or traditionally), you might wonder if you will need some drawing skills. If you are like me, you have a hard time drawing a perfect circle or a straight line. Doodling more than stick figures is a stretch. So, can you do scrapbooking without advanced drawing skills?
Supplies used in scrapbooking
A lot of times, you won't create a scrapbook page completely from scratch. In fact, you will often use premade elements, like ribbons, stickers, alphabets, fasteners, etc. Those are already drawn and colored for you so you have no need for drawing skills to use them. You will layer elements and arrange them in your page, but you don't have to draw anything. Many elements in digital scrapbooking will be extracted from photos to resemble real objects.
Using shapes
If you are scrapbooking using traditional supplies, you might have some stencils to help you draw basic shapes like circles, ovals, stars, etc. If you are using a graphic program, those shapes are also available for you and you simply have to make a selection or add a vector shape. Here again, you have no need to draw anything. Whether you use a stencil or a graphic program, those shapes will be easy to add, and they will be perfectly even too.
Text and title
Although you could draw titles yourself, manually, in most cases, you will want to use premade alphabets. Those alphas have the advantage of being perfectly even as far as size is concerned but if they have any colors or designs, they will also match. If you are doing scrapbook pages digitally, you can also use alphas, or the regular fonts available in your program. You can then colorize all the letters together and add various effects like textures, bevels, and shadows.
If you want more information on fonts and alphas, you can check out this article.
Doodling
Depending on your preferred style of scrapbooking, you might want to add some doodling. Although you can doodle yourself, you can also use ready-made doodles (yes, you can find some), or you can use dingbat fonts that offer just the type of doodles you want. Here is an example where a dingbat font was used for the doodles.
However, at times, you might want to hand-doodle too, whether it is for a particular design, or just for some accent lines. In that case, you probably need some very basic skills in doodling.
Cliparts are available
If you want more decorative elements on your page, you can always use clipart. They are available in scrapbook kits or on other sites like Freepik. There, even with a free account, you can search and download a variety of clipart for whatever theme you are working on. Here is an example of fun holiday cliparts you can get here.
Very often, those clipart elements are available in EPS format, which might not be opened directly in your graphic program, but they always have a very large JPG preview so you can easily extract the elements.
Do you need to draw?
Generally speaking, you don't need drawing skills to do scrapbooking. Of course, if you are skilled, you will be able to draw your own titles, paint your own cliparts, and doodle as much as you want, but that is just a bonus. You can complete pages after pages without having to draw anything on your own. Don't let your "lack of drawing skills" stop you from scrapbooking. It is not a requirement!
1 thought on “Are drawing skills required?”
I was drawn to Paint Shop Pro because I wanted to be able to do original cards and pictures but I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. I tried Photoshop and while it was intriguing, it was over my skill level. I tried 3D (Poser and the like) but it is an expensive hobby over time and was more than what I needed for the little items I like to do. Cassel provides a cost effective outlet for creativity with great tutorials and tips for how to use the program in new ways. Cassel’s scripts and and tubes are first rate and I almost always buy something every month even though I don’t do as much as I used to. I’m not a scrapbooker. I do very small items that are just me entertaining myself as I deal with health problems. I’m so glad to have this outlet. I think everyone has creativity in them, but some have special gifts for expression and others of us need helpful tools. I’ve found Paint Shop Pro to be perfect for me, especially once I discovered Cassel’s site. So put me in the “lack of drawing skills” group.