Since GIMP 2.8 has just been released! I started my drawing with GIMP, but since in the default brushes I did not find a suitable brush for sketching, I moved quickly to MyPaint, by the way I really like the infinite canvas of MyPaint, I think it gives you a more clear mind to focus in your drawing.

To make my drawings I like to start with the “artpen” (top right) brush from the Deevad4 set of brushes by David Revoy. Then for the color painting, I use the “digital” (bottom left) brush. The “mixbrush” (just to the right of the digital brush) is also really useful for me.

For the final touches, a little bit of shading, I moved back to GIMP to use layer modes (multiply) to achieve this.

I said at the beginning that it was a quick painting, but it really took me like an hour to complete the above drawing (I need to improve my time).

Have a nice weekend and hopefully I can post a tutorial soon

Best regards,
Coche

From the MGM cartoon – Cellbound, here it is one of my recent works with GIMP:

Directed by Tex Avery, Cellbound is one of my favorite cartoons of all time (I wish I could buy it, but I couldn’t find it in Amazon), it really gives me a lots of laughs

The other day I was reading the Bible, and I found this passage: Psalm 79:11, immediately I remembered the Cellbound cartoon, and with that, a new motive for drawing and painting!

Let me tell you in a brief, how I did it:

For painting the walls, I used the Acrylic brushes by Rene Jensen (aka centipede). I also used his Bark brushes to achieve the texture on the floor. The text on the wall was made using the rock brushes and then applying the perspective tool, to accommodate the text on the side wall.

I’ve noticed that the Centipede brushes are no longer available in the vaults – cornucopia website where I downloaded it for the first time, but don’t worry, you can download it from here:

I hope you enjoyed this short how-to article. Thanks for reading.

God bless,
Coche

Step 1

You will need a picture you like, to put the frame on it, for me it’s a scan of one of my old certificates (when I used to study networking ). Well, when you have decided on the picture, just open it with GIMP (in Windows just right click and Edit with GIMP).

Step 2

The next step is to add the border, just go to Filters > Decor > Add Border… and choose a color and size for the border width, the important thing here is to apply the same width for the X and Y sizes.

After this, you’ll have something like this:

Step 3

GIMP’s border filter is pretty good, but we can further improve it! by adding a wood texture to the frame. To do this, just create a new layer and drag the “Pine” texture from the Patterns dialog and drop it on the canvas.

Step 4

Like in my previous Gold Medal tutorial, we’ll use a Bump Map to apply the wood texture into the frame. So, make sure the Border layer is selected and go to Filters > Map > Bump Map… and apply the settings that appear in the following picture:

The important thing in this step, is to select the “Pine” layer as our Bump map.

Step 5

We’re almost done, for the final step we’ll apply a drop shadow to our textured frame. To do this, just make sure the Border layer is selected and go to Filters > Light and Shadow > Drop Shadow… and apply the settings that appear in the following picture:

And that’s it, our picture frame is complete! pretty easy, huh?
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks for reading.

God bless

Let me show you the cup of coffee that I did for my dad in his birthday, using watercolors

I’ve tried many techniques like oil, acrylics, pastels, and watercolors, of those, I like the most oil and watercolors

With watercolors (contrary from oils) you start with light values, or light “washes”. So in the cup example above, I started with a light beige for most of the surface of the cup, then a medium beige near the ear of the cup to give it more volume. After this I added the colorful stripes of orange, green, brown, and yellow colors.

At the top of the cup, use a brush stroke from left to right and stop at the middle. The brush stroke would be losing strength as you arrive to the middle, and this is good because I wanted to have a medium-dark brown (or “Burnt sienna”) color on the left.

The actual coffee liquid is painted using the same “graded wash” technique described at the beginning.

Note you can achieve darker versions of colors, combining the color with burnt sienna or a little bit (but very little) of black. Be careful of using too much black, because you can screw up your painting like I did in my first try of the cup of coffee: (like my friend Rore once said, there is no CTRL + Z in watercolors)

Finally and optionally you can add a contour line using a pen and you’re done!

Stay tuned this weekend for a new GIMP tutorial

God Bless,
Coche

I hope you liked my last tutorial, but while I prepare the next one, I leave you with this nice tutorial, is not mine, and it explains in a easy and clear way how layer masks works!

Thanks to Akkana Peck and Apress for this.

Best Regards,
Coche