GIMP and Graphic Arts
Contents
Ways To Use GIMP
Traditional
Many graphic artists, such as painters, illustrators, concept artists, game illustrators and graphic designers are accustomed to using painting applications with conventional tools. Many times, these artists use, mainly, only the classical tools to paint, such as paintbrush, pencil, airbrush, ink, smudge and eraser... without tool presets. These artists have found a way to use the standard options to resolve any part of their style and tasks. In some cases, because the style of painting is classical and well-formed these tools and features present on Tool Options are sufficient to render easily and efficiently this style or way of painting. GIMP is an excellent application for digital painting mainly to haven't need presets or an asset library large, and in this sense, it is the reason that I consider GIMP ready for many artists with traditional painting or well-formed style.
Style & GIMP
GIMP can adapt very well to many styles and ways of painting from well-formed to personal and/or customized styles. When I talk with digital artists is evident that each artist is doing paintings with our styles (or unawares are considered as theirs) or using some traditional manner of the painting. So, any kind of software for digital painting has a UI that creates the conditions, many times not specifically and/or purposely, to superpose the 'inner' style of tools painting in our style. This is more common when the apps are deeply based upon tool presets... and where the application is viewed more as presets ready for the painting.
To explain it better I think this metaphor:
- All language's a kind UI software, that's the feature that permits us to exchange/experience/practice/make/learn/teach things with thoughts /talk/see/show and write things;
- As any language or any UI software, it has a strong relationship with the environment where is moulded;
- The 'style' or 'our way' of expressing sensations, and ideas in the art form is moulded by the UI;
- The language is moulded by the influences and relations with UI;
- So, different languages or UI software imprinting naturally the our styles in an unaware way;
- If we have languages or UI software where the capabilities are related to a 'style', that is not our own... _
all things, that I will do with this software also will be influenced by this.
When we are using a tool preset to paint anything, is important to know the designer of the preset and his style... so, is probable that the way and how the preset is working/showing the results are more aligned with the designer's style than that of the user that using it. So, is possible that by using different applications our 'style' could be influenced by them. I intend to discuss this better on the next point on Prêt-à-porter.
Tool Preset as Prêt-à-porter
Since it introduced the Tool Presets on GIMP (when I began to utilize them, on the 2.6+ release, they were already present), it becomes an application capable to record the our way painting's style... and is possible also to share them with other painters and common users. In this sense, the French term Prêt-à-porter (Ready-to-use) from the fashion is significant to understanding why reason the presets have an inner way of understanding the painting and therefore have their style. In many situations, the user can, if he wants, customize a prêt-a-porter the tool preset, but it all depends if the application has an easier way to do this... many times the approach is very complex and hard to understand for the artists. Is possible that certain rules these presets could cause in our styles... mainly if this fact is not clear to the users, in this sense, I think it very important to know well these aspects during the design of presets, mainly if we have the intention to share them. So, is very important for the default presets on the painting applications, to have an approach more classical for the painting techniques, which must be more possibly 'basics'. As advice, I read today a quote very interesting wrote by Brian Eno that is useful in this issue about Tool Presets as Prêt-à-porter:
"Stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences."
Works using GIMP
Since 2008 I am using GIMP for my illustration works and painting experiments, mainly how to improve or emulate traditional painting and graphical techniques in digital (printmaking, painting, drawing, collage, etc.). These approaches are focused always on experimenting with new ways to solve these issues... mainly searching for emerging features or discovering new methods how to improve:
- The Brush Basic Design (rasters, mainly the dynamic brushes > .gih);
- the usage and knowledge of the Paint Dynamics;
- Paint tools settings on Tool Options dialog and;
- The Layers in two ways:
- Horizontally (inner along) with:
- Masks,
- Channels,
- Filters,
- and Vertically (more common) with:
- Layers Stack:
- Blend Modes on,
- Blend Modes on Paint Tools,
- Composite Modes on,
- Composite Modes on Paint Tools.
- Layers Stack:
- Horizontally (inner along) with:
Library of the Experiments
These libraries are very important in how the process of documenting evolved during that time. Many of my insights began with the experiments around digital painting and, this material is important to consolidate ideas and ways to realize them.
- Americo Gobbo Pinterest Gallery: This is my gallery to collect the works, yet it is in progress with a short number of samples.
- Forks And Drills Project on Pinterest Gallery: This is the gallery to collect the works and images on the Forks And Drills project.
- Forks And Drills Project: Forks and Drills Project is a project funded in 2012 with an initial Mozart Couto collaboration. Forks and Drills is a kind of "kitchen workshop" for digital painting and graphic arts that uses free software: to discuss creation tools, methods and painting techniques for digital painting and graphic arts in general. The main collaborators were Mozart Couto and L'ubomir Zabadal of the Nitra University in Slovakia. The main discussions were primarily about Paint Dynamics and Asset Brushes. Is my intention to migrate the articles more interesting to GIMP.org Website.
Artistic Visions
I think that many issues shared on the current Vision Briefing are in continuous changing or evolution... all evolve :-). In this sense, I have collected some impressions of some of my colleagues Mozart Couto, Gustavo Deveze and Elias Silveira, digital painters, about various themes about GIMP and as is viewed in this branch.
Painting Issues & Around
This is the main chapter of all this documentation ;-). In the chapter, I will organize many topics with different scopes: discussing and suggesting alternatives to improve existing features or to implement new features and paint tools.
Digital Painting Issues
Usability Issues
Paint Tools and Techniques
In this chapter, I introduce improvements to emerging features in different paint tools.
- Clipboard asset to paint
- Texture with Clone Tool
- Impasto with Clone Tool
- Smudge Tool Issues
- MyPaint Issues
- Related Bugs with Paint Tools
Assets Issues
The assets Issues chapter has a myriad of Proposals for presets and assets in general.
