by Del Antonio

Created on: March 26, 2008

Thanks to the freeware GIMP I am able to put together illustrations conveniently with a lot of the same functionality as Adobe Photoshop.

This article is a quick guide to creating illustrations within GIMP with an ink brush or ink pen appearance. It presupposes you have downloaded and installed the latest version of GIMP (I'm using 2.4.1) and that your system meets the minimum system requirements as detailed at their website.

Inking In Gimp

Thought its possible to begin with a new blank document, I generally begin with a hand drawn sketch and scan it inside the GIMP interface. To do this go to:

File > Acquire > Scanner/Camera
or alternately: Alt + F, then U, then arrow down to Scanner/Camera, and then ENTER

Make sure your document to be scanned is in your scanner correctly, and scan the image as a grey scale image if scanning pencil. From there I usually clean up the image with a tip I picked up from Kazu Kabuishi:

With white as your background color, select the dodge tool (Shift + D) then "white out" any unwanted artifacts from your image, such as paper texture, indentations, eraser marks, etc.

The next thing I do, which is also optional, is convert the grey scale image to RGB color mode:

Image > Mode > RGB (or Alt + I, then M, then R)

I copy the background layer (to preserve the original) by either a) pulling up the Layer Dialog Box (Ctrl + L) and clicking the duplicate layer button (third button from the right) or b) hitting Ctrl + Shift + D

I turn the new layer into a blue line sketch by altering the color balance:

Colors > Color Balance (or Alt + C, then B)

How you alter the colors is completely arbitrary, but what works for me is changing the Cyan/Red slider to -60, and the Yellow/Blue slider to + 60 in the midtone category only. I do this to give myself some color contrast to see what I'm inking in the same way traditional illustrators often do rough pencils in blue line.

The next step is to create a new inking layer. Pull up the Layer Dialog Box (Ctrl + L) then click the new layer button (first on the left). Or alternately hit Shift + Ctrl + N. In the create a new layer box (which comes up automatically) change the title to "Inks", and make sure the transparency is selected, then hit OK.

The new thing I learned recently is that you can get some decent line variance from the calligraphy tool. Select the calligraphy tool (K). The easiest way for me to introduce it is from the bottom up.

Your nib, similar to your brush in the paint tool, is selectable at the bottom.

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