Digital arts 21 - Drawing - Portrait

It is easy to draw simple shapes with GIMP. To prepare a complicated figures, I preferred to use  Inkscape. In this practice, a not so simple figure was prepared with Inkscape and then exported as a png file. The file was then used as the base to create different drawing with GIMP. Many combinations of filters were tried and some of the results were presented here.

The base figure

Some results

Digital arts 20 - Drawing - Squares

Using simple shapes, such as squares,  I expected amazing graphics with be produced with different combinations of G'MIC filters.  What graphics can be produced and how do they look like? Who knows? Just try. This time some squares were used.

The very beginning simple drawing.

With filters Raindrop, Anguish and Finger paint applied.

O1

With filters Colored pencils, Morphology painting and Raindrop applied.

O2

With filters Lyleyk;s painting, Finger paint and Graphic novel applied .

O3

With filters Posterized dithering, Kaleidoscope [blended] and Painting applied.

O4

Setting  O1 as Dissolve and 80% opacity with O3, the following was obtained.

By flipping O3 vertically and setting  the layer to Multiply and 40% opacity with O3 itself, the following was obtained.

There are many and many different combinations and the outputs cannot be predicted. In order to obtained a satisfactory graphics wanted, many, many, hard works are needed.

Digital arts 19 - Drawing - Owl

Once, I watched an owl that had an eye blinded in KFBG. I took a photo of it and want to create a drawing about it. I tried, and the result was no good. People always said that were cockroaches when looked at my drawings. No matter that they are cockroaches or owls, it is fun to create them. Many filters from the G'MIC filter collection were used to produce the drawings.

Digital arts 18 - Drawing - Flower man

After learned how to use tools like Gimp, Inkscape and GMIC and etc., I hurried for my ultimate goal. It is to create some drawing with these tools. So I started to make my first creation.  As green to the world of digital arts. I used very simple tools in Inkscape to create simple linear figures to include part token out from my previous work to form the flower man. The background was drawn in Inkscape and brought into Gimp and applied the Fractalize filter of G'MIC on it and then blurred with Guassian blur filter. The outcome looks like drawing of little kid, but I do like it. Drawing is fun.

Digital arts 17 - Attempt to fix wrong focus

It is clear that the photo did not focus on the bird in the center but the leaves above. Of course, it is due to the auto-focusing system selected the object not intended by the photographer.

Attempts were made to correct the wrong focus problem. Most of the bird was selected by using the magic wand and the selection was copy to a new layer. The layer was then turned to gray scale and set to multiply mode with opacity 75%. A modified image was obtained and seemed to be improved.

More attempts were  made to improve it with different filters and layer modes combination. finally, the Drawing filter under the sub-menu Sketch of Script-Fu was use to produce a new layer and set to Multiple with opacity 70% and merged down with the improved layer.

At last, the differences among these photos are not much. 

Digital arts 16 - Playing with blurry photo again

As results of the disappointing auto-focusing of my point-and-shot camera, I have many blurry photos to play with. Practices make perfect. So, I have to practice more in order  to improve my skills. This time, I tried the sharpening filter on the photo and found that the result was satisfactory. Based on the improved image, I applied different artist filters from the Script-Fu collection.

Original

Sharpening filter applied

Color Pencil filter applied

Conte filter applied

Crosshatch filter applied

Cutout filter applied

Inkpen filter applied

Note Paper filter applied

Palette Knife filter applied

Pastel Layer filter applied

Digital arts 15 - Playing with blurry photo

I am using a point-and-shot camera and the auto focusing function of it always disappointing me. So, I always came out with many blurry photos. I googled a lot to look for ways to fix these photos. Of courses, there are tons of ways out there in the Internet, I followed some of them. But,  "Garbage in, garbage out" is the golden rule, the results came out did not look better than the original much. The best solution should be to shot the photo again, but you may not always able to do that. Experimenting different ways to fix the photo is interesting and helps me to enrich my knowledge in using Gimp. Gimp is very powerful but not easy to learn.

The following are results of my experiment.

Original

To fix blurry

High pass filter applied

Unshaped mask applied

Further artistic filter applied

Cartoon

Finger paint

Painting

Pen drawing

Water color

Digital arts 14 - Use the painting filter of G'mic to due with flower photos in Krita

I got Krita for a trial as I noticed that there were a lot of good comments on it in the net. It seems that Krita is easier to use than Gimp, but as text is concerned, Gimp is better. G'mic also came in within Krita. After googled about Krita, it seems that G'mic is native to Krita.

I used the painting filter to due with some flowers photos that I had taken, the results were very good.

Original photo

Painting filter applied

Some other flower photos with painting filter applied

Digital arts 13 - Use G'mic in GIMP to play with flower photos

As my PC running Ubuntu broken down, I stopped to play with digital arts.  I am now coming back to the digital arts world with a new PC, of course, running Ubuntu. I played with flower photos taken by myself with different filters in GIMP, especially those in G'mic. It is amazing, the outcomes seem to be better than the original photo. That's why people need to do after works after taken photos. In the followings, cartoon, paint, blur, auto contrast adjustment and some other filters were used. As I tried too many filters, I can't remember exactly what filters had been applied to achieve the effects. As experimented, it is not an easy job to enhance a photo.

Digital arts 12 - Postage stamps

In the Internet, there are tons of tutorials on Inkscape and GIMP. Among these, Nicu's How-to is the one I like. It covered most features of Inkscape and GIMP and is rather easy to follow. This time, I followed the page Postage stamps with Inkscape, to produce my postage stamps.

In the page, Nicu mainly told you how to draw the perforated paper. There are three ways Nicu suggested in the page, I followed the first one, Pattern along Path. I followed the instructions, but I could not produce the desired result at first. It was because I did not followed the instructions exactly. I drew the circle before the rectangle. To use the Pattern along Path feature of Inkscape, the pattern should be above the path in terms of z-index. After I moved the circle above the rectangle, it worked.  Most tutorials had the same weakness, the writer did not mentioned something he/she supposed to be obvious but learners do not.

Hereafter are my outcomes.