GIMP mosaics and rainbow pencils

I'm proud of this one because it opens up a whole new world of cool ideas.  One useful GIMP filter is distort/mosaic.  You can take your selection (the whole image or a selected portion) and break it up into mosaic tiles of various sizes, distances, shapes (squares, triangles, hexagons, octagons and squares), you can make the colors speckled or smooth.  I made a gradient rainbow, then broke it up into mosaics, first keeping the colors plain

and then making them speckled.

Next I used the fuzzy select tool, holding down the shift key for multiple selections, and selected certain shapes from the multicolored mosaics to use as stamps in other images.  What results is rather informal tiled patterns, based on flowers, triangles, lines, whatever you have chosen from the base image.
You can vary the size and transparency of each stamp.  I enjoyed fitting them in around each other, making blocks of repeat colors and shapes.

I started with a black background, later selected it, shrank it to preserve it around the colors, and made a blue swirled background.  Then i reversed my selection, re-shrank it to just include the colored bits and applied bevels several times.

Here I started experimenting with larger, faded shapes in amongst the smaller, well-defined shapes, and I added on top of some of the orange mosaic tiles tiny versions of the blue flowers.

Another version with a plain background:

Here I added both smooth and speckled flower shapes on top of a circular background.  This is really like potato stamping or something....simple shapes, bold, colorful results.

Here are daisies on a gradient background, with further gradients surrounding the flowers.

and alternating rows of flowers, slid halfway over on the sides.  The inner dividing lines are filled with orange to brown gradients and the outer background is a reversed, having been selected separately by selecting all and shrinking from the edges.

I don't have some of the earlier steps on this one, but it is a partial repeat of a rectangle that was filled with interlocking mosaic bits, in different colors and densities.

When this strip in turn was multiplied by three and flipped to match you get a complex, formal garden shape.  The color tints were achieved by using color to alpha and pasting the images over gradients that showed through.

This is a new mosaic base.  I did something that let the background colors show through around the mosaic bits, rather than having them be surrounded by black.  Due to the color variations, and depending upon the selection threshold I chose, entire selections are chosen using fuzzy select.

This is great for creating "grunge" textures.  Here I selected a string of blue mosaics from the top image and stamped them at different sizes and intensities.

Here is a more varied grunge pattern.

This pattern is from just the pink tiles, which selected in a line.  I repeatedly stamped this honeycomb design on a black background.

Here is that same selection, color to alpha to make some portions translucent, repeated and reversed.  They look like little cartoon men, holding up mirrors and dancing, with their reflections showing on the bottom half.

More grunge, a sort of tropical liana effect.

This is a new, darker, fuzzy colored background with white "grout" in between, to use in future mosaic experiments.

And here are some results from varying tile type, size, spacing, colors, etc.  Below are fuzzy colored octagons and squares, actually fuzziness is achieved by selecting "pitted surfaces"

Here are triangles selected with a fair amount of color variation and solid black grout.

Here are more pitted surfaces, fairly irregular hexagons.  Many of these form natural daisy shapes.  Look at any one mosaic and you will find some variation of 6 other mosaics surrounding it.  These can be selected and used, with or without the center mosaic.

Highly distorted squares, fairly high (creating shadows on each tile), smooth surface.

Here is the whole image.  Now the image is filled with variations of squares, with sides bulging in different directions.

And this is a mosaic on top of a mosaic.  The above image was used, "mosaic" reselected.  The tiles above were further subdivided into irregular triangles.  The whole image becomes considerably darker as well.

While I was in the mode for distortion Valentine's day came along.  Here is a mosaic-filled, semi-transparent, rather warped heart.

Here is the result, presented on FB with the grumpiness of a long-term single person.  Glad that holiday is passed, some are more difficult than others....

Another concept that has been floating around in the back of my mind is what would happen if I created a GIMP brush from shapes that are separated from each other by transparent space.  Here is one example, with semi-translucent rainbow gradients.

What you get from this when you draw the brush across an image is a kind of wash effect.  The circles are full-strength so you can see them enclosing the wash on either side.  If you keep the scale small and loop the brush strokes it looks like ribbon.  Here in this not-too-pretty demo I have also used the brush as a single stamp, as an eraser and as a dodge/burn tool.

Here is another example, this time all full-strength colors.

I've tried the same techniques as the top sample.  It's nice to make the largest shapes transparent so you can stamp and draw more intensely colored smaller versions on top of them.

Here is a screen-shot of an earlier experiment, with color to alpha applied.

And another version with the shapes stamped over a wash background.

The colors here are full-strength, the background made up of smaller versions of the stamp.  This time it looks like thick paint or gesso, with a fork run through it for texture.  The tiny white stamps are from using the shape as an eraser to the original white background.

Here I took the above image, applied color to alpha, put it in the middle of a long gradient and put smaller, re-scaled versions on either side.  I used the original stamp to decorate the gradient strips that showed through.

This one is the same technique, with long strips of rainbow colors used in the stamp.  The mottled effect is from using them large scale, as dodge/burn tools.

This last one is the above image, with color to alpha applied, pasted repeatedly over  a long gradient.

And thereby ends my tail for this session.  I still haven't figured out how I made those bowl shapes.  Still thinking about it.....

x