Tutorial for Ornaments in GIMP
By learning to make images of ornaments in the free image manipulation program GIMP, you can create illustrations of festive holidays scenes. Since ornaments can take a huge variety of forms, you'll also be able to create an equally large number of other types of images. For example, by learning to paint an ornament of a gnome, you'll be able to paint that character in sword-and-sorcery illustrations. Create spherical ornaments with one of GIMP's "Filter" commands. To paint ornaments with other forms, create a realistic rendering by tracing over a photo reference.
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Instructions
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Spherical Ornaments
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1
Click the "Filter" menu's "Render" sub-menu, and then click the "Sphere designer" command to run a command for making spheres.
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2
Click "OK" to accept the default values for the sphere's parameters and render the sphere.
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3
Right-click the highlighted layer in the "Layers" window, which represents the sphere. This action selects the sphere, which is needed to color it.
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4
Select the "Layer" window's page icon to create a new layer, then select a vibrant color from the upper color swatch of the tool palette. Click the palette's bucket icon to run the fill tool, then choose the selection region you formed in the Step 3 to fill the region with color.
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5
Drag the "Opacity" slider to the left until you see the sphere appear through the colored selection. This action colors the sphere.
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6
Click the paintbrush icon from the tool palette to enter painting mode, and then drag atop the sphere to draw a small rectangle, which represents the cylinder attached to the ornament.
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7
Drag a curve atop the rectangle to represent the hook with which the ornament attaches to a tree limb or other support.
Arbitrary Ornaments
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8
Take a digital photo of an ornament you'd like to paint in GIMP, then follow your camera's instructions for loading the photo onto your hard drive.
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9
Click GIMP's "File" menu, and then click the "Open" command. Navigate to and double-click the photo you imported in Step 1 to load the photo into GIMP.
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10
Select the "Layer" window's page icon to create a new drawing layer, on which you'll trace and paint the image of the ornament.
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11
Drag the "Opacity" slider to the left until you can faintly see the ornament.
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12
Click the eye icon of the currently highlighted item in the "Layers" window to make the current drawing layer temporarily invisible.
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13
Select the tool palette icon shaped like an eyedropper, and then click a shape on the ornament image. This loads the color of the shape, which you'll now paint with.
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14
Click the paintbrush icon from the tool palette to enter painting mode, then use Step 5's instruction to make the tracing layer visible again.
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15
Drag over the shape whose color you just sampled, to apply the shape's color to the canvas. Note that you're not painting on the image directly but on a transparency above it.
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16
Use the instructions from Step 5 through Step 8 to color the remaining shapes of the ornament and complete your rendering of the ornament.
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