[Courses][gimp] Lesson 5: Basic Drawing Tools

Akkana Peck akkana at shallowsky.com
Sun Mar 6 14:17:38 EST 2005


Julie Sloan writes:
> To make a room (for example), you begin with a rectangle, then place a dot 
> ANYWHERE inside that rectangle.  From this spot all your lines will 
[ ... ]
> http://www.bobsloansampler.com/gimp/room.jpg

That's cool!  Neat example!

Gimp has tool called Perspective: in gimp 1.2, it's an option on the
Rotate tool, while in gimp 2 it has its own button in the toolbox.  

The perspective tool is a different sort of thing: it can take existing
images and change them to fit in a "room" like in Julie's example, or
make them into a 3-dimensional object: select the perspective tool,
click on the image, then drag the mouse around, you can take something
that started rectangular and make it look like it's going away or coming
toward you.  It's very useful for doing things like sides of boxes,
like the right side of the box in
http://shallowsky.com/software/pandora/pandora.jpg -- that's just a
rectangular selection, fill with a woodgrain pattern, rotate,
use the perspective tool, and finally darken it a little.

The tool isn't a replacement for making a perspective drawing like
Julie's example: that "lines radiating from points" is a really useful
technique to know, and seeing a "room" like that makes it a lot easier
to understand how perspective works.  They'd work really well together,
too: draw the room first, with the windows and everything else you want
to draw, then paste objects copied from other images and make them look
right in the room using the tool.

The "shear" tool, right next to perspective, is also fun to play
with.  Sometimes you can combine it with perspective and rotate.

Thanks, Julie!

	...Akkana


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