Pracken's Paint Shop Pro Tutorials

Christmas 2007:
North Pole Christmas Series (pixel)

Santa's House

Well it's that time of year again. I've barely had time to open PSP in 2007, but did want to get at least a few Christmas tutorials done. In this series, you'll make all the individual pieces and then assemble them to make your own North Pole village. You'll find all the other tutorials in this series here.

This tutorial is for Santa's House. It has a lot of pixel coloring to do, most folks should be able to complete it without problems.


For this tutorial, you will need the following:

Paint Shop Pro. This tutorial was written for versions 10 (PSP X) and 9. However, you should have no problems doing the tut in other versions as well. You can download the latest PSP version demo here.

My canvas with the pixel outline. You may download it here.

My color chart. Right click on it and save to your computer.


First, a few notes.....

My image is just a guide. Feel free to change the colors, or add other effects to your liking. I put everything on its own layer (and name each one). That way you can easily go back and change colors later and correct any mistakes you've made. It makes a lot of layers, but it also keeps things organized and will save you a lot of heartache, especially with an image that has as many pixels as this one.

It makes it easier if you enlarge your graphic (use your magnifier tool) so you can see the pixels clearly. Feel free to save my images in this tut too, and enlarge them as necessary to see.

The basic procedure for each piece will be the same. You'll add a new layer. Choose your paintbrush tool and set the size to 1 and paint the outline of the piece and then paint the inside, along with any shading. (Hint: to do the inside coloring, make the outline layer active, choose your magic wand and click inside the section you want to color - then apply the color on your new layer).

Step 1. Open up the pixel outline you downloaded. There are two layers - a background and the outline layer. Make the outline layer visible and add all of your other layers on top of it.

Open up the color chart you saved. Copy and paste it as a new layer onto your image. Move it to the top, out of the way. When you need a color, just click on it with your dropper tool.

In the following steps, I'll show you the colors I used for each section of the graphic - feel free to change these as you wish.

I've divided the house into sections (starting with the left side of the graphic and working toward the right), to make it easier for you.

Step 2. Sections 1 and 5

  • House outline-1, inside-2,shading-3 (go along the inside of the vertical boards)
  • Trim outline-4, inside-white
  • Crisscrossing trim (the "X" shaped bit at the top windows)-white
  • Windows outline-5, inside-6, Window light-7, window shading -8 (go outline the inside of the bottom windows with the color)
  • Roof outline-9, inside-10
  • Chimney outline-11, inside-12, shading inside-1
  • [Note: Use the same colors for section 5, which is on the right side of the house]


Step 3. Section 2.

  • All colors are same as for section 1 except the top pole.
  • Top pole outline-4, inside-1, white, garland-10,2


Step 4. Section 3.

  • All bits are the same as section 1


Step 5. Section 4.

  • All bits are the same as section 1 except for the vertical boards and the horizontal trim
  • Vertical boards on house-1, shading-3 (go down along the side of each board
  • Horizontal trim outline-4, inside-white, shading 3 (around the trim at top where the "SC" is-3
  • SC-white, shading-3
  • Steps outline-11, inside-white


Step 6. Now take a look at your image and tweak anything you'd like to at this point. When you're satisfied with it, delete the color chart, outline, and background layers. Merge visible layers. Save as a PSP file.

Now complete the other tuts in this series. You'll find them all here.

Enjoy the series!


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Screenshots of programs used in this tutorial are copyrighted to their respective authors.
This tutorial was created on December 10, 2007.
All content, graphics, and tutorials on this site are
ŠPracken, 2003-2012