gimp to draw pictures?

[ZeldaFan]

How exactly do people produce art with GIMP? Do people draw a picture in pencil/pen on paper, scan it to the computer, and manipulate with GIMP from there or do they produce their art through GIMP from scratch? I have some art that I want to produce on my computer with GIMP (which I have rough sketches as a hard copy), so I was wondering how I could approach that. I mean do people really use the pencil/brush/etc tool to physically draw the shapes they want with their mouse because that seems slightly unrealistic.

[legatek]

People who draw with Gimp typically use a tablet rather than a mouse. It's more precise and natural feeling, like drawing on paper.

[kayosiii]

It really depends on what sort of output you are trying to produce... If you are wanting to create precise rectangles and circles etc... Then Inkscape is a much better deal.

Drawing by hand can be done - The first bit that throws most people is moving your hand on the desktop while looking at the screen - this takes a bit of getting used to. As the poster above said - a Pen Tablet (like the ones that Wacom Make) gives you much more control, including pressure and sometimes tilt sensitivity. You can make do with a high quality mouse though.

If you have means of getting your sketches into the computer you can import the sketch into the gimp to paint over. There are two common styles used - the first is to overpaint you put your sketch on the base layer and create a transparent layer on top and paint over your sketch. Doing this right and you will end up with a painting style image.

The other method is to underpaint in which you create a new layer place it below your sketch and set the sketches layer mode to multiply (assuming your sketch is dark markings on white paper) you then work on the layer behind the sketch - this will preserve your line work from the sketch and you will end up with something akin to a coloured sketch.

Finally if you don't have a method of getting images into the computer
I suggest purchasing a Tabletop easel. which can be set up beside your screen and can hold reference material at eye level.

Some sites that have further (non Gimp specific) computer painting information include http://conceptart.org/ and http://www.cgtalk.com

[ZeldaFan]

Thanks for the replies. What I ended up doing was drawing the picture by hand and then scanning it via xsane at the highest resolution. It was pretty clear on the computer.

I didn't really understand what you were saying with the layers but that's primarily because I am complete beginner to GIMP. I just used one layer and filled in my sketch with colors and that worked out for me (as I need more advanced coloring, I'll probably need to utilize the layers more effectively however).

I have one more question, however. If I have a scanned sketch that I imported to GIMP. Is there a way I can make all of my markings on my sketch the same black color? Because some colors are lighter and darker than others due to the differences in darkness on my original sketch, I have different shades of black making up my picture. Is there a way, on GIMP, to make the entire sketch use a solid shade of black (or at the very least the same shade of black), without having to retrace over my sketch with a black brush/pencil?

[kayosiii]

Think of layers like painting on sheets of glass that are on top of your image instead of painting on the image itself.

As for evening up the colour -- of a black and white scan there are a few different ways of doing this. The easiest way to do this is with the brightness/Contrast tool in the colours menu... If you need more control than this offers then the Levels or Curves tools work just as well.