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.
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:
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| The shape is an open heart brush I designed. Then I flood filled it with the pattern which I also designed. |
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| The two above and below, were repeated taps with settings on a gradient with numerous colors and random size settings. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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.
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