Tutorial 1

	Not a very pretty house, but this tutorial will show you how to draw a gable house in perspective. You'll be looking at it from straight on and seeing the right side.
	This was done in Paint Shop Pro, version 4.0, but the premise can probably be used with any other version. If you get lazy and need selections, download them here. There are only two, so try it without first.
	This tutorial assumes that you have some proficiency with PSP. The two rough parts of this tut are drawing the gable and the roof, but once you grasp the idea, you can draw any house you want in perspective.

Start

Open new image 800 x 600, background color transparent. This gives you a large canvas to create in.

Rename Layer 1 something like Scenery or BG (background). The easiest way is to left double left click on Layer 1 and type in the title of your label.
You can leave the layer blank until you're finished with the remaining layers on a "real house".

Don't forget to save your work after creating each layer!

New Layer: Front

Set your foreground color: none.
Background color: blue, a bright one.

The easiest way to load selection 01Front.

The alternative is to draw a rectangle by double clicking on the rectangular selection icon on the Tool Options toolbar.
Left=100
Top= 300
Right=400
Bottom=500
Antialias=checked
Feather=0 or 1

Don't deselect. (If you do, CTRL+Z, will undo it.)
Holding down the SHIFT key, click once on the rectangular selection tool on the toolbar and choose the triangle selection type.

Draw a triangle from 200 on the left vertical ruler and 100 on the top horizontal ruler, to 300 on the left ruler and 400 on the top ruler. In other words, you start from directly above the left side of the rectangle, then pull down diagonally until you meet the top right side of the rectangle.

The two shapes should intersect. If they don't, undo (CTRL+Z) to get the rectangle selection back and try again.

Flood fill with blue by right clicking.

New Layer: Back

Duplicate the Front layer and select the blue part with the magic wand.
Flood fill with black.
Rename the layer Back.

We'll assume that in the perspective of this house, the back seems smaller than the front.
From the Image menu, choose Resize.
Percentage of original = 85%.
Resize type: Smart size.
Make sure that "Resize all layers" is NOT checked, but that the "Maintain aspect ratio" box IS checked.
Click OK.

Deselect. (CTRL+D.)

Using the Mover tool, move the smaller black triangle right until the middle of the gable top is at about 400.

Move the Back layer under the Front layer.

New Layer: Side.

The easy way is to load selection 02Side from disk. You can also do the following.

Draw a rectangular selection that starts on the right straight side of the blue front to the right side of the black back wall, and down to the bottom of the blue wall

Change the BG color to red or some other color. Flood fill by right clicking.

Deform the side so that the top and bottom walls are even. (Hold the SHIFT key down and move the top right handle down for the top and the bottom right handle down for the bottom.

Deselect.

It doesn't matter where you moved the Back or how much you reduced the Back. This perspective is now based on the correct vanishing point.

New layer: Roof.

Draw a rectangular selection from front peak to over the back peak and down to the red side.

Flood fill the rectangle with green or something equally gaudy. You can also try a pattern or a texture to see if the result comes out correctly.

Deform the roof by holding the SHIFT key and moving the center left handle so that the shape follows the angle of the gable. If you need help with the Deformation Tool. see Jaddell's tutorial.

Then hold the SHIFT key and move the top right handle so that the back peak of the roof just covers the peak of the back of the house.

Experiment with getting all four corners of the roof to cover the front and the back of the house.

You can bring the Back layer to the top to see if the roof covers it correctly. Note the smallest touch of green roof in the picture on the left, which is easily corrected.

There's no selection for the roof because you might need to practice with the Deformation Tool. Since you have the back of the house to guide you, your line of sight can be anywhere, so it seems as if you're looking up or down or straight forward.

Make your own experiments.

	You can also draw the shapes with preset shapes using patterns for the BG fill. (That's why we've been flood filling with the BG color and turned off the FG.)
	Why not use the Lasso Tool to draw to all four points? Because you'd have to experiment with the angle of the pattern when you use roof tiles or whatever, and you wouldn't get the correct perspective.
	Of course, a real roof has an overhang, which is easy to put in by lowering the original roof rectangle below the top of the red side before you deform it. (More on this in Tutorial 02 and Tutorial 3.)
	It would be nice to use a green line to put the other side of the roof on another layer.
	Before deforming the side, you could put in layers for the doors, windows, and anything else on the side. Make those layers the only ones visible and merge visible before deforming. Don't forget to rename the layer from Merged to Side.
	You can see some of my "real houses" using this technique by clicking here.

For an excellent tutorial on PSP perspective, see Prof's Tut at PSPUG.