Digital Art Notes

I decided to call this page "Digital Art Notes" because the information and tips here aren't pretentious or thorough enough to be called "How-Tos" or "Tutorials". (For one thing, tutorials usually have lots of in-progress snapshots, and I do not intend to dedicate time to making any of these.) They're more like notes to myself so I don't forget how I did whatever I did. Some people might think that showing my art, and then saying how I did it would be a bit like a Magician showing how his tricks were done -- that it takes all the magnificent mystery out of it, the mystique, that it makes it look easy. All I can say to that is, that technique is one thing, and talent is another -- and it isn't as if these are secrets; anyone could look up these things on the web, or in a reference book. This is just something that I hope will be helpful and spark people's imaginations as to the kinds of things that can be done.

All of the notes here are about using The Gimp.

General Notes

• A few terms.
• Before you start, you might want to know how to install brushes.

Generally useful techniques:

• Realistic mass waterdrops on a surface
• Carving Effect
• Spirograph Corner

Notes on Tiles and Backgrounds

We all have desktops, and some of us have websites, and in both cases, we might want to have "tiled" backgrounds, where an image is repeated all over the background in a pleasing way.

Examples of tiles and backgrounds:

• Web Tiles
• Desk Tiles
• Backgrounds

• An effect which can be useful for backgrounds or tiles, is Fun With Differences.
• Fun With Tiles #1
• Fun With Tiles #2
• Fun With Tiles #3
• Fun With Tiles #4
• Fun With Tiles #5

Notes on Photo-Based Art

Most of the photo-based art I've done has been oriented towards fannish things, and thus focused on portraits of people.

Examples of photo-based art can be seen in my gallery:

• Photo-Based and other

• The first step in any work with portraits is Background zapping
• Pseudo-sketching
• Colour sketching
• The following is a list of the steps I took to make a particular piece of digital art. (Tabula Rasa: Daniel)
• And another piece. (Turning To Stone)
• And this piece, Coming To Life, which is assuming you've looked at the others, and is therefore terser in some spots.
• This is a somewhat simpler one (Sapphire, Steel and Stars).
• And a more complicated one based on the same photo (Sapphire & Steel, Elementals).
• Samantha Carter: Astro Geek
• Jack: Anachronism
• Cut Adrift
• Jack Harkness and the Temple of Doom
• TARDIS Dream

Notes on Other Images

This is about digital art-y images which aren't necessarily based on photos.

• Black Sun

Notes on LiveJournal User Icons

LiveJournal is a blogging community; users are allowed to have a certain number of "user icons", which are images 100x100 pixels and no weightier than 40K in filesize. They're kind of the artistic equivalent of haiku. I've been making quite a few of them, you can see them on my livejournal scrapbook.

Techniques for icons have a lot in common with larger digital art, but I'm going to stick all the icon stuff together anyway.

• General Icon techniques
• Icon Fonts
• Icon: Suki
• Jack: Anachronism
• Icon: Rectangles

Notes on Title Images

Most of the Title images on this web-site were done with simple applications of Logos Script-fu plug-ins, and are detailed on the title images page. However some more complicated titles are explained separately.

• First, the title for this very page (Digital Art Notes).
• A more complicated title, used for the WorkStorm page.