Draw a Country Primitive Clipart House in Photoshop

There's just something irresistible about country clipart or primitive clipart. They have such a home-ish feel to them, soft and comfortable and all earth tones, that they compel me.

Country or primitive clipart can be used in so many ways, too, which makes them even more fun to create. Crafters use them in their many projects, auction sellers adorn their layouts with them (a great touch because the layout looks professional and polished but without the sales pitch), and any number of other things.

In this guide, we'll be drawing an easy little house in the primitive clipart style. You'll only need a copy of Photoshop - version 7 or higher - and a little bit of imagination.

Drawing a Clipart House - The Steps

1. New Canvas - Open a new canvas that is sized about 500 x 500 pixels, in RGB mode, with a white background. More than likely, you'll never use a graphic this large. It's always better to start out quite a bit larger than what you need, though, so that you can size the graphic down later and not lose quality.

2. Set Colors - Decide on two base colors for your house. I'm going to go with a tan for the walls, and a country blue for the roof. So my foreground color is #e3cd9b and my background color is #595b5a.

3. Draw a Wall - In order to have a house, we need to have a wall. Make it more rectangle than square. Also be sure that you are using the shape tool, not the marquee tool. Using the shape tool will cause the wall to go on its own layer, making everything else we'll be doing to it possible. After you draw the shape, right-click its layer and choose "Rasterize Layer".

4. Draw a Roof - Technically, we're only going to be using half of a roof so that it becomes perfectly symmetrical ... but don't panic, we'll get there in a second.

First, create a new layer (Layer, New, Layer) and switch your foreground and background colors. Then, pick up your polygonal lasso tool. Now, draw out a roof shape above your wall. Don't worry about getting both sides identical - it would be a miracle if you could make it happen.