I have learned, dabbling with visual art that constraints can actually be a good tool towards bringing out your creativity.

To illustrate, consider a blank canvas, or a white paper. You want to draw anything that fancies your mind. I used to get myself into such a situation, and in the end would get quite frustrated with myself. It is when I put myself against challenges (like the Monster A Day challenge) that learned that I can be more creative. I get more subjects to study, more avenues to pursue.

Owing to this realization, I have been putting constraints within which I would work. Consider the field of digital art. It is a sub-category within visual arts, but it definitely cannot be called a niche. So as I worked on it, I though of focusing only on digital paiting and vector illustration. As I was working on different works on those styles (or mediums), certain subjects and underlying techniques seemed to appear.

Some of the subject studies I worked on, grew quite extensive. For example, check out the Dragon Workshop and the Peacock Workshop pages. Considering the subject matter, I have been able to study them in both the styles/mediums of my choice. I know there is quite more I can do, and in pursuit of that, I have realized the underlying principle that would be key to both digital painting and vector illustrations – that is drawing or depiction of forms using lines.

Effectively, by using constraints I have been able to expand to other techniques and styles strategically.

Though I was doing this subconsciously, it was not until recently as I have been discussing these techniques with others, that I realized this.

So, do not think of constraints as hindrance to your creativity. Leverage them effectively and you can use them as a tool to learn more.

It was released quite some time back, and had installed it on my Windows boot. But I had been lazy to install it on my Ubuntu boot where I usually work. The Ubuntu 8.04 did not have a backport of the latest GIMP 2.6 – and since it was not available through Synaptic Package Manager, I just waited a bit for Ubuntu 8.10 to be released on October 30.

Layout

With the upgrade complete, the first thing I did was to check out the new layout. The menu strip from the tool box has been moved to a ‘placeholder’ window. When you select the ‘Keep windows on top’ for utility and dockable windows in the Preferences (Edit > Preferences > Window Management), the setup is quite uncluttered.

Frankly, I was used to the older layout and it does not make much of a difference. But some of you might find it handy if you keep shifting between different tools, to have the tool box always stay on top, and not be cluttered with menu items.

Brush Dynamics

The plesant surprise was when I selected the brush tool. Brush tool is the standard tool that you will use for doing digital paintings.

As you can see in the Brush Dynamics section, there are three sets of check boxes. The Pressure relates to what should vary based on the pressure of your graphics tablet. A usual setting I keep is to have the Opacity and Size of the brush be affected by the pressure. The improvement is the slider, situated at the end of the check boxes. This allows you to specify how much the pressure should effect the ones you have selected.

The next set of check-boxes is for the velocity – or how fast you move the tablet. I guess it would effect even the mouse movements. I see this go into simulating real world mediums like oil and water color.

The Random row, should help a lot while applying texture using custom brushes. The problem I have seen on using custom brushes is that the end result somehow seems unnatural due to repeated patterns. The randomness factor should remedy that issue.

Improved Select Tool

The freehand select tool has undergone major improvement. Do not let the name ‘freehand’ fool you. It allows you to do freehand as well as polygon select in the same selection action.

Allowing the polygon selection alone is a major improvement. Regular readers might remember the post on Path Tool in GIMP. This new feature almost makes the slightly round about method obsolete. You can even save a selection as Path by doing Select > To Path.

Path and selection construction became much easier, and that should allow you to construct those flats layer quite easily now.

Inking

Though, not actually digital ‘painting’, illustration and drawing is a prerequisite to better paintings.

Inking is a technique that you may often need to use to give that illustrative feel, or perhaps be required for inking a comic book.

For this purpose, I earlier used to set the Brush with pressure sensitivity on only size of the brush. Such inking would have lack of flow that you had to fix by going in with a hard-edge eraser. This process too is no more required.

There is this nifty inking tool that lets you create smooth strokes that responds realistically to the tablet pen’s movements. It even has tilt sensor (which I have not yet seemed to master it in Inkscape), that would make calligraphic illustration much more controlled.

There are a lot more ‘under the hood’ changes (like GEGL), that may not seem to make much difference to the end user (us) as of now. But I think, this is that first step GIMP needs to take to deliver more features. There are a lot more minor changes too – check out the GIMP 2.6 release notes.

Quite some time back, I had discussed about Wacom Intuos3 – the graphic tablet I use. During the course of use of the tablet, I have been advocating my friends and those who mail me asking for my advice on graphic tablet to use Wacom products. Some have been asking about it in various comments too (like RedDragon).

My use of the Intuos3 for the past one year along with inputs from others who have bought Graphire, seems to indicate that Wacom knows what it is doing and its product is reliable. Moreover, I have been regularly using the tablet in both environments – Ubuntu as well as Windows Vista.

The pros of Graphire against Intuos is that it has wireless feature (not sure how much use it would be) and also that it would cost you almost $100 less depending on the size you are buying. On the other hand, looking at the specs, it seems like the resolution of the pressure and tilt sensors are halved in Graphire when compared to Intuos3. This may become a problem when you want those fine grained control over your brush strokes.

Disclosure: The Amazon link above is a referral link.

Not sure how I missed it, but poking around a bit, I found that my Ubuntu boot had upgraded my Inkscape to version 0.46. Not sure when it was released, but it seems like it was out more than about two months back.

Be sure to grab/upgrade your copy.

Some time back, I had written an article – Be The Ultimate Open Source Artist. This post is a follow up on it.

I had been upgrading my laptop’s OS, Ubuntu to the latest version (8.04 or Hardy Heron), and that is when I noticed Ubuntu Studio. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution – it is actually a family of distributios. Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Ubuntu Server Editions are the officially supported derivatives. Xubuntu, Gobuntu and Ubuntu Studio are recognized derivatives. It was released sometime at the end of 2007.

Ubuntu Studio is not different than Ubuntu plus some of the packages that are not installed by default. You can infact, go to the package list page of Ubuntu Studio, and install them on your Ubuntu and feel no difference in terms of functionality. Ubuntu Studio is just a distribution along with the set of software packages installed by default that would be required by a studio professional.

The package list basically is grouped into the Audio set, Graphics set and the Video set. So, any kind of artist you may be, Ubunut Studio is the OS of choice (or atleast is making an effort into getting to that point).

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia editing/creation flavor of Ubuntu. It’s built for the GNU/Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional.

Our aim is to make it more accessible for new users to get into the tools that GNU/Linux has to offer for multimedia creation and production. We also want to spotlight what’s out there, and show users tools they might not know to exist.

Here is a subset of the packages included for the ‘graphics professional’:

• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Scribus
• Blender
• FontForge
• Wacom Tools

If you are acquainted with installing the packages through Synaptic Package Manager of Ubuntu, then you just need to install these packages. On the other hand, if you do not want to meddle with the nuances, and would just want it all out of the box, Ubuntu Studio seems to be the choice of OS and Application suite of which is free – both in terms of freedom and funds.

• Software: GIMP or Photoshop
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Peacock

There have been many people coming over to KalaaLog.com searching for articles on drawing/painting a peacock – the only tutorial here until now was on illustrating peacock feather. So, here is a walk-through and screen shots of the peacock painting I did.

Concept And Sketch

Searching for peacock images, and getting a rough idea of its form is quite easy. After that, create a neater sketch in another layer over it and delete (or hide) the concept layer.

Background And Other Details

Since the subject is having cool colors, a warm colored background would be good composition wise.

Before proceeding with painting the peacock, the branch is painted first. I planned to use less number of layers, and wanted to go with a traditional approach. Hence, start painting from objects in the back. In this case, the branch that the peacock is sitting on.

Painting The Peacock

Start out by blocking out the basic colors over the sketch in the same layer taking care of the branch. This gives it a more blended feel. There are only two layer in this painting – one is for the background, and the other is for the branch and the peacock.

Final Peacock Artwork

You can see a larger view at deviantART entry in order to study the details.

Do let me know if you want details on how I did any specific are of this painting. Just use the comment form to ask – I would try to reply.

Subscribe to KalaaLog Feeds for updates to see more artworks and tutorials – you can use the email subscription form too.

It does not matter which software you use – GIMP or Photoshop or something else. They all have keyboard shortcuts for most of the common tasks that you usually access through the menus and other user interface options. We do regularly use the generic [Ctrl]+[c] and [Ctrl]+[v] for copy and paste operations in the other applications, and it translates well to digital painting softwares.

But there are other shortcuts. For example, you can color pick from the painting area, just by holding down [Alt] and clicking on the color on the painting in case of Photoshop – it is [Ctrl]+Click in case of GIMP. Also, for changing the brush size you can use the [ and the ] buttons, in both GIMP and Photoshop.

Before you proceed to go searching for the documents and study all the available shortcuts, do a bit of experiment. Just pick up some subject and do a digital painting as you have been always doing. As you paint, pay attention to your workflow. Do you use the eye dropper tool option often? Or may be you switch between the pencil and the brush tool. Everyone has their own rythym of working on a painting. Each of the rhythm cycle consists of what you do on the canvas before you go and change some option. If you can change that option with some shortcut using the other hand, then it lets you continue in that rhythm. Effectively, you end up doing more painting in lesser time.

Once you figure out which of those option selection makes you get away from the flow, try and see if there is a shortcut for that. Some of the software even allow you to customize the shortcuts the way you need it. Use them. After all, the software you use is just a tool in creating art. But it is digital medium which has advantages. Keyboard shortcuts is one of them, and hence use them to your advantage.

I have been using GIMP for quite some time now and am still using it. I have been telling people to use GIMP when they cannot afford for software like Photoshop CS3 due to high costs. It does not serve to pirate them either. The solution to keep practicing your skills when you cannot afford is to use open source software.

Cost

There is also a class of affordable software like full version of ArtRage which costs around $20. And if you can afford a bit more, there is Photoshop Elements. It is sort of a lite version of Photoshop CS3. It costs $99 when you buy it first time, or a $79 for an upgrade.

Did I buy it? Not actually. I got mine, bundled with the Wacom Intuos3 Graphic Tablet I had bought months earlier. I was so facinated in experimenting with the tablet, that I had not realized, I had gotten one with Photoshop Elements bundled along with it – albeit version 4. I just happened to discover it couple of weeks back when I was sorting out the packaging.

So, if you do not yet own a tablet, and plan to buy one, see if you can get a deal that has Photoshop Elements bundled.

Features

As a matter of fact, there is not much that keeps Photoshop Elements unique from GIMP when it comes to simple photo touch ups and digital painting. Though Photoshop Elements is marketed as a photo manipulation product for hobbyists, it still packs enough of the features that can be used to create art from scratch. It has same set of features like GIMP – standard free form painting, cropping, transformations, layers, smudge, burn, dodge, blend and quite a few others. It does not have a CMYK support as I know of – similar to GIMP which is available in Photoshop CS3.

The things that I believe worth spending the money would be the brush engine of Photoshop Elements. I believe it is almost at par with Photoshop CS3. The set of unusual brushes that comes with it is quite useless, but with the engine, creating your own custom brushes would be far powerful than GIMP, even after its recently released features. For photo enthusiasts, the features like red-eye reduction, and straightening tool would come handy.

To buy or not to?

Well that really depends to what extent you want to get into art. Speaking only in terms of professional digital painting, and if you feel you want something more than GIMP, I would say wait and save up until you can buy pro software like Photoshop CS3 or Painter X. If you can get it bundled with some hardware like graphic tablet, then consider it.

If you are a hobbyist when it comes to art and feel GIMP is not sufficient, or if you have too many friends invovled in art and design – and need to share and collaborate, then you can buy Photoshop Elements. It supports PSDs – naturally.

Disclosure: The Amazon link above is a referral link.

The discussions and arguments for and against each of these softwares run pages and pages and seem to have no end. With newer and better versions coming from both the commercial and open source, the argument just continues. Participating in these discussions, and also trying out different softwares, I have come to realize that these are just different tools, and an artist need not be too concerned about what they use as long as they can express their ideas and thoughts.

Many Graphics Software

Let us look at the two different categories that I involve in – raster graphics and vector graphics.

When we come to raster graphics, we have Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements (lite version of Photoshop), Corel Painter, Paint Shop Pro and some others when it comes to commercial software. For free raster graphics software, we have GIMP, Paint.NET and other free lite versions like ArtRage.

For vector graphics, the commercial softwares are Adobe Illustrator, and Corel Draw. There is Macromedia Flash too, which was bought by Adobe in December 2005. Its focus is usually on interactivity and animation; hence the vector capabilities are said to be limited. Some even use Adobe Photoshop to make illustrations that are often called ‘vexels’. In terms of free (and open source) software there is Inkscape.

Tools Of Expression

Participating in all the different discussions, and trying out different softwares (trial versions ofcourse), I have come to realize that all these different graphics software are just tools. A sculptor needs a set of chisels and hammer. It actaully does not matter which blacksmith fabricated them, as long as the sculptor can chip off the stone in the precise placec and precise amount. In the end – the sculpture is done by the sculptor – not the chisels and hammer. He or she just used them to create the sculpture.

It does not matter what software you use. Use the ones that you can afford. Use the ones that is appropriate for the style of your artwork. Use the ones that fits in your workflow.

What do you use?

Not any more. The latest release, GIMP 2.4 has scalable brushes. That means that you just need to create a brush in one size, and as you use it you would be able to scale it to any size on the fly.

The tool options now include a brush size slider that affects both the parametric and bitmap brushes. This has been an oft-requested feature from both digital painters and photo editors.

Unlike previous versions of GIMP, regardless of whether you’re using a bitmap brush, parametric brush or even a picture tube (mutiple bitmaps), you can easily set the brush size with either the tool options dock slider or an external device such as a MIDI slider or knob or a USB device like the Griffin Powermate.

Read about all the other features included in the release notes of GIMP 2.4.

This is a major feature that I am very happy about. I have been experimenting a lot on custom brushes lately for digital painting, and this ’scratches a lot of itches’.This feature will save you the hassle of creating custom brushes at various sizes. For example, if I had to make a leaf brush, I would earlier do it at various sizes like 30 px, 40 px, 50 px, 70 px and up – depending on how large a canvas I was working on. Now, I guess I will just have to make one and sliding the ‘Scale’ option of the brush, I can adjust it to whatever I want during the painting process.

I guess, I would be exploring a bit more on custom brushes – so expect some write up here soon.

(Credit goes to Arun Sasidharan for getting this news to me first).