Tux Paint is a free and fun painting program for kids. You can download a free version for just about any operating system from Linux to Macintosh.
The Tux Paint advantage
Tux Paint has a special advantage for creating matte paintings. Tux Paint was specially designed for doing matte paintings. It has a built in feature called "Starters" which are blank pages for matte paintings.
Master protected pages
Tux Paint allows you to create a master page (called a starter page and a starter page background) which has everything needed for kids to begin painting. With the master page (the two starter pages), part of the picture is protected and the rest is free for the student to create a painting.
Because the kids do not have to worry how they draw, this makes matte painting very fun. Few other programs have this automatic feature built in.
Completed master pages
I have already created the starter pages for you. They are available in three different sizes. All you have to do is put them into Tux Paint's Starter's folder. And if you want to create a custom starter page, go to the next page in this lesson.
Protected
Completely foolproof
Here is the matte painting in Tux Paint. See how part of the picture is protected from paint. This is why drawing a matte painting is extremely easy in Tux Paint (but not in other paint programs). Even kids can do it!!!!
Small
Ready-to-use Starter Pages Window size of 800 wide by 600 tall
Load the two starter files
The background
The first step is to load two picture files into the folder called Starters for Tux Paint. Click on the pictures to the right to see the full size pictures. Both files must have the same name except that one file (the file without the alpha channel mask) ends with "-back".
Set the Window size to 600 by 800. If you use another size window for Tux Paint, you should use different staters which are designed specifically for that window size.
Start Tux Paint and open the template (starter) and begin painting.
Ready-to-use Starter Pages Window size of 1024 wide by 768 tall
A larger window size
The background
If you have a window size of 1024 wide by 768. tall, use these pages instead. The first step is to load two picture files into the folder called Starters for Tux Paint. Click on the pictures to the right to see the full size pictures. Both files must have the same name except that one file (the file without the alpha channel mask) ends with "-back".
Set the Window size to 1024 wide by 768 tall. If you use another size window for Tux Paint, you should use different staters which are designed specifically for that window size.
Start Tux Paint and open the template (starter) and begin painting.
Ready-to-use Starter Pages Window size of 1280 wide by 1024 tall
Very large window size
The background
If you have a window size of 1280 wide by 1024 tall, use these pages instead. Click on the pictures to the right to see the full size pictures. Both files must have the same name except that one file (the file without the alpha channel mask) ends with "-back".
Set the Window size to 1280 wide by 1024 tall. If you use another size window for Tux Paint, you should use different staters which are designed specifically for that window size.
Start Tux Paint and open the template (starter) and begin painting.
Each version of Tux Paint is different so look at the instructions for your version to see where to put starter pages.
Send me your finished matte painting
When you are finished with your matte painting, please email a copy to me.
If you do not like my starter pages (with the movie set in the middle of the frame), you can make your own starter pages with Photoshop, etc. at Building your own starter page set for Tux Paint
