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154 CHAPTER 4 DRAWING I picked the birch-like pattern in Figure 4-34, which GIMP rather vaguely names Wood of some sort. Figure 4-34. The first step in making a wooden box: a rectangular selection filled with a woodgrain pattern Now, the box needs sides. You could try to draw a side using the Free Select tool. But really, the side of the box should be just like the front, except rotated so that it looks like it s receding from you. GIMP has just the tool for that: the Perspective Transform tool. First you need another layer. Make a duplicate layer of the box front, from the button in the Layers dialog. GIMP will name it box front copy ; you ll want to rename this to something like box right side. The GIMP s perspective transformations work best if the layer is no bigger than the object you re trying to transform. (The image can be any size; it s only the size of the layer that matters.) You can crop the layer to eliminate all the extra transparent areas using Layer . Autocrop Layer from the image window menus. Note If you still have your rectangular selection now filled with your pattern, another way to make a new layer containing only the selection is to copy, paste, and click New Layer in the Layers dialog to turn the floating selection into a normal one.
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CHAPTER 4 DRAWING 153 Figure 4-33 shows the effect of the shadow. The tree is no longer flat now it s a three-dee tree! Figure 4-33. The completed tree Making a Box Using Perspective Transformation It s nice to have a tree. But wouldn t it be helpful to have a wooden planter box so you could carry the tree around or take it inside? Make a new image to build your box. You can put the tree and the box together later. As with the tree, it s best to start with a blank image with a white background, and then make new transparent layers for each new piece you add. You ll want separate layers for each of the four sides of the box, so start with a layer called box front for the front face. A box has a rectangular front. So make a selection using the Rectangle Select tool. You can fill that rectangle with a woodgrain pattern. GIMP offers several woodgrain patterns to choose from. Some of them are better suited to a wooden box than others: the ones that look like wood paneling or a parquet floor look somewhat strange if you try to make a box out of them. Just try lots of patterns until you find one you like. You can keep the Patterns dialog up while you choose a pattern, fill inside the image with Edit . Fill with Pattern or Bucket Fill, and then choose another pattern. (If you undo between each step, you won t fill up your Undo stack with all the patterns you tried.)
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152 CHAPTER 4 DRAWING To make a shadow on the trunk, turn off visibility on all the branch and leaf layers so you can see what you re doing. Select the trunk layer and duplicate it to create a new shadow layer called trunk shadow, just above the trunk layer but below the branches. Make this layer semitransparent: try starting at about 35% opacity. You can adjust this later. Select the Paintbrush tool (if it isn t already selected), a medium-sized fuzzy brush, and a dark foreground color. You can use black, but using a different dark color can give your shadow depth, as though it s reflecting light from objects nearby. You re going to draw a dark shadow line up the right side of the tree. But first, a tip: you can make sure the shadow doesn t spill off the side of the tree by using the Keep transparency toggle button in the Layers dialog. With Keep transparency checked, draw a line up the side of the tree trunk (Figure 4-32). Keep the center of the fuzzy brush about at the edge of the trunk you want it to be blackest at the right edge of the tree trunk, and fade away toward the middle. It s okay that the big fuzzy brush hangs off the edge of the trunk; the Keep transparency option will prevent any overhang. You can add shadows to your leaves, too. Since they re too small and numerous for you to draw all the individual leaf shadows like you did with the trunk, you can take a shortcut: make a drop shadow of the leaf layer or layers, using small values for offset and blur radius. Figure 4-32. Drawing the shadow
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CHAPTER 4 DRAWING 151 Figure 4-30. Leaves filled in Figure 4-31. Try using several different leaf colors
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150 CHAPTER 4 DRAWING For pine needles, use the Pencil tool and the smallest brush available, since you ll want to make thin lines. (Remember, the Paintbrush doesn t work well on the smallest brush. Making your drawing quite a bit larger would work around this and would give smoother lines than the Pencil tool.) For leaves, you might want a slightly larger brush (Figure 4-29). Experiment and see what looks right for your tree. Figure 4-29. Different types of leaves Continue putting in leaves, using short strokes, until your tree looks fairly well filled-in (Figure 4-30). Add more branches (switching to the branches layer, of course) if you need to. Real trees have a range of leaf colors. You may want to add some slightly darker leaves, and some slightly lighter ones. Use separate layers for each color, in case the blend of colors doesn t work out and you need to change it (Figure 4-31). The tree looks pretty good now. But that solid brown trunk doesn t look right. It needs a shadow!
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CHAPTER 4 DRAWING 149 Figure 4-27. Using two simultaneous views Figure 4-28. Add branches in a separate layer
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148 CHAPTER 4 DRAWING Figure 4-26. The outline of the trunk Then fill in the trunk by drawing more lines just inside your original outlines until the trunk is a fairly solid brown color. Or just until you like it! If you have trouble filling in small holes in the trunk, you can zoom in, but there s an even better approach: multiple views. View . New View creates another window showing the same image. Any changes you make in one window will be reflected in the other. The advantage? One window can be zoomed way in to see fine detail while the other window is zoomed out so you can see the results at actual size (Figure 4-27). Once your trunk is ready, add some branches. Make a new branch layer. Then use the same click, Shift-click technique with the Paintbrush (Figure 4-28). Now it s time to add the leaves (or needles, if it s a pine tree), so switch to a green foreground color. Use a new layer for this! You may decide later that you don t like your leaves and want to change them. Or you might want to make an autumn or winter version of your tree.
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CHAPTER 4 DRAWING 147 A Drawing Project It s time to put all these techniques together and create a drawing. So bring up a blank canvas, whatever size you like, with File . New. If you already have a canvas you ve been scribbling in, Edit . Clear (the Delete key in GIMP 2.3, Control+K in earlier versions) will clear out everything and leave you with an empty canvas. Drawing a Tree For a first drawing project, how about a tree? A tree is fairly simple and doesn t require a lot of art experience. What s the first rule of drawing? Right create a new layer. Name it trunk. Choose a brown foreground color. It s not always obvious where to find brown in a computer s color chooser. Try setting the hue to orange, then drag left and down to make the color darker (Figure 4-25). Figure 4-25. Where to find brown You can make the trunk a straight vertical line, if you like. But a real tree has a trunk that tapers a little, narrow at the top and wide at the base. You can accomplish this by using a narrow brush and drawing several near-vertical lines. Click where you want the top of the tree to be, and then click to the left side of the base and Shift-click. Now click again at the top, and Shift- click at the bottom-right (Figure 4-26).
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146 CHAPTER 4 DRAWING Even if you drag over only a small distance, the Gradient tool will fill the whole selection (or image, if there s no selection active). Repeat gives you control over what happens outside of the region you dragged. The default setting, None, will simply use the beginning and ending colors of the gradient. If you select Sawtooth wave, GIMP will repeat the gradient, starting again at the beginning color; with Triangle wave, the gradient will be repeated in reverse. Dithering offers higher precision in the way the gradient s color is calculated. Most of the time you won t notice a difference, but under some circumstances, you might see color-banding with this option disabled, especially on very large images. Adaptive supersampling is another way of getting higher precision, at the cost of more computational work. Most of the time you probably don t need it, but if you notice unevenness or a stair-step effect, try it. WHEN THE GIMP WON T DRAW The GIMP is a great drawing program, but it can be frustrating too. Sometimes, you pick a drawing tool, try to draw, and nothing happens. What s up? There are a lot of reasons that this can happen. Here are some of them: If you have a selection, GIMP will only draw inside it. When you try to draw outside the selection, nothing happens. Usually, it s obvious when you have a selection, because you can see the marching ants selection outline. But it s possible to have a selection and not know it. You might have done View . Toggle Selection at some point to hide the selection boundaries, and then forgotten to turn them back on. The selection might be there but too small to see. Or, it might be scrolled off the visible part of the page, if your image is large or you re zoomed way in. When the GIMP won t draw, try a Select . None to make sure you don t have a selection in the image. The GIMP will only draw to the current layer. Do you have the right layer selected in the Layers dialog? Is the layer visible? Is the opacity set to something more than 0%, so that the layer isn t completely transparent? Do the layer s boundaries extend to where you re trying to draw? It s also possible you ve pasted recently and still have a floating selection. GIMP won t draw normally to a floating selection. You ll have to click the New button to make it a new layer, or the Anchor button to merge it into the previous active layer. While you re looking at the Layers dialog, check the Keep Transparency button on the layer (the one to the right of Mode, with the checkerboard square next to it). If that s checked, then GIMP won t let you draw on currently transparent parts of the layer. Check the opacity of the tool in its tool options: make sure it s at 100%. Layers each have a mode, and some of the modes do strange things in combination with the layer beneath. Make sure the current layer s mode is Normal (unless you re deliberately creating an effect using a different layer mode, of course). Check the Mode in the tool options for the drawing tool you re using. If it s not Normal, unexpected things can happen. And usually will.
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CHAPTER 4 DRAWING 145 Your call! But the basic gradient, FG to BG (RGB), is useful for all kinds of effects, as you ll see in later chapters. The Gradients dialog has buttons at the bottom similar to the ones in the Brushes dialog: Edit, New, Duplicate, Delete, and Refresh. As with Brushes, you can create new gradients and save them to use later. Other Gradient Options The usual drawing tool options, Opacity and Mode, are available in the Gradient tool options you saw back in Figure 4-22. Mode is more interesting here than in most of the other tools, as it can create some wild effects. For instance, try using Difference mode and applying the same gradient repeatedly (with a colored gradient; it s not very interesting in black and white). Then try it on a gradient of a different shape (see Shape, described in this section). What Mode actually does will be explored in more detail in Chapter 9. For now, just play around and see what you can make. Reverse reverses the colors of the gradient. Instead of starting with the foreground color and blending into the background color, it will start with the background color. Of course, you could just drag in the other direction to get the same effect; but some of the other gradient shapes only draw in one direction. With them you will need the Reverse button. Offset controls where the gradient actually starts, as a percentage of the total distance you drag. If it s 0 (the default), then GIMP will create a gradient from your start point to your end point. If Offset is 40, then GIMP will draw the foreground color as a solid color for the first 40% of the distance, and only then will start the gradient. You can accomplish the same effect by simply starting your drag in a different place, so this option isn t usually needed. Shape offers a wealth of other ways GIMP can orient the gradient. Linear is the default, but GIMP can also make gradients that look like circles, cones, spirals, or (the most fun) it can make a gradient following any shaped selection you make. Try making a shaped selection using the Lasso tool; then set the gradient to Shaped (Spherical) and drag inside the image (Figure 4-24A). Then change the gradient to Reverse and drag again (Figure 4-24B). Figure 4-24. Shaped gradients (spherical) on a free selection
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