Pages of Repeats/Backgrounds

Last post, I showed patterns I made from color and pattern filling some brushes, or by making repeats of brushes. Now I can use them in turn as brushes or patterns for flood fill, and make pages of patterns, like fabric or backgrounds.
    
                                             THIS:

TO THIS

THIS:

TO THIS:

 

THIS:

 

AND THIS:

 

 

From simple repeats of brushes.

 

The pattern above becomes a card background, while the diamond brush repeat

becomes the flood fill pattern for the open heart brush.

I used the same diamond repeat to flood fill the right lower half of this square,
and my curled flourish pattern for the upper left corner, and let it bleed over the
ribbon brush dividing the page diagonally.

My new Scalloped Circles Brush makes a great repeat for a border at the top of a page:

but works well on a card with the plaid counterpart both repeated small,

and 1 1/2 times large:

 

I am surprised how simply the fill patterns can be made once the
original pattern is made into a brush. And it's only the beginning of how
they can be used.

I am loving journaling some ideas.  And as I work with the brushes and patterns I am
learning tricks on how to make them seamless, overlapping, or interactive.

Next post: using the patterns to flood fill brushes creating even more layers
and design ideas.

A Few Brushes

These are a few of the solid brushes I designed.  I design them on transparent squares, and I also crop to image to make sure there is no extra space around them.  Well at least now that I learned the need for that step.  

 

It might be possible to notice that a couple of these are merely made by repeating a more basic brush. In fact, I try to think about that when I make the brush. I wonder how it will repeat, and if a reasonable pattern or border can be produced by repeating it? An easy one to see is the double heart with rings. The "bracelet" band I made with it is in the bottom center of this pic. The s link repeated vertically instead of horizontally made the upright border, but the one on the left has butterflies included in the repeat.  I also have a combination of it using the dragonfly. Here the dragonfly is tapped several times to darken it.  It is actually very sheer unless I tap it in place until it darkens. The bird and the lily are actual pictures converted to brushes. I cropped a mask out and filled the shape solid with black. I have used the same heart over and over by using the perspective and shearing tools, flipping and scaling the altered shape. Why draw it again and again? I often draw 1/2 or 1/4 of the shape or pattern, and then flip merge and flip again to form a whole.

 

But lately, I have used the simple shapes to come up with a page of brushes that make a pleasing pattern, changing up the colors, to make a pleasing color scheme from the block:

Repeating a page of these will form a flood fill pattern, which I save in the patterns folder.

Next blog: some of the pages of repeats I use for pattern fill.

 

It's Been a While...

I have not posted to this blog regularly for quite some time.  One of the things I hate most is how quickly the technology moves on, and if I try to keep up my blogs, I have to spend far too much time doing the technical stuff.  I tried to enter some new work to my website at Wix, and they have changed things, so now for some reason I can no longer add pictures. I had wanted to do a slide show of some of my new patterns and brushes.
 One of the things I have expanded in my Gimp experience is using the brushes to make pages of patterns, which I may in turn make new brushes from. Then using that page pattern, I will do a page of repeats, as many as will fit evenly on a new page, making a repeating pattern to add to my patterns. Then I will flood fill shapes, words, and backgrounds, with the resulting patterns.  I have come to realize how immense the possibilities are to patterning. But also how professional the finished products can be.

The uses are indeed endless, but experimenting with them has brought up some issues as well.  I love making most with transparent backgrounds, but occasionally I have found it is best to reload the individual PNG and give it a background.  Many of my patterns and brushes are very flowery.  But I have found a new love for plaids, angled shapes with repeats, and simple shadings. I have found many of the patterns loaded into Gimp already are too small for most of my work.  But, occasionally they are perfect for flood fills.  Rather than talking about it, I can show some examples.

NEW BRUSHES:

A simple brush, tapped a couple of times, with the settings for the brush change to random color, and size makes and airy simple design. But this simple design becomes an amazing set of overlays, when tapped over and over, stopping only when I like the design.

 Blue and purple are the foreground and back ground colors on the color selector. I selected only the two tone gradient setting here, or used the random selection in the brush menu.

Below, I merely changed the colors, and possibly selected a narrow range gradient.

 

Below: I Used a combination of open and solid hearts with random size selection:

The shape is an open heart brush I designed. Then I flood filled it with the pattern which I also designed.

The two above and below, were repeated taps with settings on a gradient with numerous colors and random size settings.

The Open heart brush was used below, but I changed its color in the options menu, selecting the color I wanted it to print.  The flood fill was a repeating diamond pattern I designed. It's possible to see the square repeats of the pattern by the fine white lines.  this occurs anytime the open area being filled exceeds the size of the single square.

These last two are repeats like above but of only two colors. The pink and the background black.  The size was set to random. On the first, I filled the center heart with a dot pattern I designed, but then I went back and put a few color changes on the dots. This can be done 2 ways. Either, I tap on a similar size dot over the picture, changing the color of each. Or more simply, I can flood fill each dot, choosing colors.

I then initially filled the other 3 spaces  between the hearts with a lime green. I often do this on a separate layer so I can change the fill color at will. Then I filled once again with the curly floral pattern, which already contains shades of pink.

On this one, I filled the outside brush with lime color and overlaid a flood fill of pattern. I left the second heart pink, and flood filled the center with the dot pattern which I colorized as above.  Only 2 clicks of the brush, here. I could have left it black, clicked twice. I would have two black hearts of two separate sizes. I would have colored both. and possibly filled the center with black to prevent bleed.. Then I could do the flood fill. on the outside heart and inner solid heart.  This same thing could be achieved by filling 3 sizes of solid hearts on 3 layers.  That is handy sometimes for separating the work and moving it around.  But for something quick and easy.  2 clicks of a brush and quick fills and done.

 

Next blog:

More about brushes, patterns and fills. It gets more and more fascinating when I discuss how I made the fill patterns.