Paint tools

Everything you draw with lives in one strip above the canvas. Every tool has a one-key shortcut — the little letter under each icon.

1. Undo — Ctrl+Z
2. Redo — Ctrl+Shift+Z
3. Pencil — B
4. Eraser — E
5. Fill — G
6. Pick colour — I
7. Line — L
8. Rectangle — U
9. Shade — S
10. Dither — D
11. Select — M
12. Brush size
13. Opacity
14. Mirror X
15. Pixel grid
16. Texture areas
17. Import a PNG

Numbers 12 to 17 are covered on the next page, Brush size, mirror and guides.

The nine drawing tools

1. Pencil (B)
2. Eraser (E)
3. Fill (G)
4. Pick colour (I)
5. Line (L)
6. Rectangle (U)
7. Shade (S)
8. Dither (D)
9. Select (M)

1 · Pencil (B)

The one you'll use most. Click or drag to lay down pixels. Size comes from the Brush slider.

2 · Eraser (E)

Rubs pixels out, back to transparent. Same size control as the pencil.

3 · Fill (G)

Click once and it floods a whole area with your colour. It stops at the edges of the part you clicked, so filling an arm won't leak onto the chest. The fastest way to block in a base colour.

4 · Pick colour (I)

Click anything — on the model or the flat sheet — and that colour becomes your current colour.

5 · Line (L)

Press and drag. A straight line follows your mouse; let go to commit it.

6 · Rectangle (U)

Press and drag to pull out a box. While it's selected, two extra buttons appear in the toolbar:

1. Outline only — draws just the border.
2. Filled — draws a solid box.

7 · Shade (S)

Lightens or darkens what's already there instead of painting a new colour. Left-click lightens, right-click darkens. Go over the same spot again to push it further. This is how you get depth without mixing colours by hand.

8 · Dither (D)

Paints a checkerboard instead of a solid block — the classic pixel-art trick for blending two colours into each other.

9 · Select (M)

Drag a box around some pixels to lift them out. Once lifted you can move, rotate and scale them, and the toolbar turns into a Transform bar:

• Rotate 90° left / right
• Scale to fit the canvas
• Pixel snap — keeps the piece landing on whole pixels
• Aspect ratio lock — stops it stretching out of shape
• Whole-multiple scaling — 2×, 3×, ½ only, which keeps pixel art crisp
• Cancel (Esc) or Apply (Enter)

Picking any drawing tool while something is floating drops it in place automatically.

Two colours at once

You always have a primary and a secondary colour. Left-click paints the primary, right-click paints the secondary. Press X to swap them. It saves an enormous amount of clicking.

Every shortcut