and starting back up with a bit of GIMP

If your brain runs aground in one direction, take it temporarily in another direction.....

In the fall I was highly motivated by my classes and felt that I learned a lot of things about web design and writing that I would apply in the future.  Now the future is here and I'm just putzing around....  I would waste a lot of energy being critical of myself for this, but it seems my energy would be better spent working on something else, while laying plans to return to my fall projects.  Maybe some time this long three day weekend I will take stock of my project and make a new "to do" list, as lists seem to help.  Err, I guess it's called "project management" in the business world.  I think I will happily keep my most useful business skills when I retire, but I will enjoy them more because I will be self-directed and not following someone else's orders.

Sooo, back to GIMP.  I started with this, which is pretty much where I left off a couple of months ago, making lines and warping them to be larger and smaller.  This one made me think of the backs of watches, for some reason, along with a linked band to hold them on your arm.....yes, a novelty to the younger generation, heh, heh.

Here is a more warped version of the same stamp, converted to a "threshold" black and white version.  It looks like a microscopic slide of some kind of specialized tissue.

Random play with daisy stamps:

 Next I started playing with triangle mosaics that allowed a swirled background gradient to show through between the triangles.  I then warped the triangles as well as the background.

I next used the lasso tool, with the shift key held down, to choose a triangle shape.  Interestingly enough, it did not capture the background colors, only the warped mosaics on top.  I captured a couple of interesting patterns and stamped them over and over.  I like how the overlapped parts create darker triangles.

A similar effort, with an ornate swirled pattern used as background, in various sizes.

I next used the lasso tool to make star selections, drawing the same kind of crossing lines that kids use when they make stars.  It left a hexagon in the middle.  Note to self: make more lasso tool shapes and use as erasers.  

This pattern is an old friend: selecting small portions of a large mosaic and using them as stamps.  I made a rainbow gradient background that shows through the mesh of the small scale mosaic and I emphasized the stepping stones on top with beveling. 

 The bottom layer is a swirled mosaic with a complex gradient swirled underneath it.  Next came a layer of solid black.  I used the same stepping stone pattern as above, to erase the black top layer, then I faded the black layer so the remainder of the swirly background also showed through.  Dizzy making.

 I took a plain 4 knobbed shape and used i-warp to make pinwheels.  The pinwheels then have a gold shaded gradient applied and faded.  This process left a bit of white along the edges when I copied it to make a stamp out of it, leaving the stamp looking like dabs of thick poster paint.

 The background is made by the same stamp, swinging it back and forth to cover the image; again it looks like thick finger-paints.

I made a black to clear gradient spiral and combined it with translucent rectangle shapes used to erase a lower level.  I think.....

Here I added two or three circular, faded gradients to get a lot of subtle color shades under the black swirls.

 And here I took the colored level and made an irregular mosaic, showing through to a blue background.  I used a lighting effects filter to make parts of it seem highlighted.

 Here I played with a black to clear gradient, swirling it first with i-warp, covering it in triangle mosaics with black showing through, and then swirling the mosaics further.

I used a semitransparent version of the above image over a blue-green gradient, and stamped a bunch of V. Day hearts on top in my annual Valentine's Day artistic angsty statement.  Second annual, at least.  The heart crackles were made with very irregular mosaics.  I selected circles, put them on a clear background, and used erasers and warping tools to convert them into heart shapes.  Beveling and drop shadows bring them to the front.

 Same hearts, with a background made from dragging the heart stamps back and forth and turning them green.  It looks more grasslike because I used the cartoon filter on it.

More hearts chained by black swirly mosaics.

 And a final S shape that I used as a stamp.  It was fun to vary the color and size and to overlap the small white erased shapes.

Well, there are a couple of things I want to play with more, and that is the whole point of GIMPing, to find new directions to explore.  Not quite ready to re-start the lessons, but lessons were another good way of causing me to reflect on how to create new variations.

ahhhh, my blog writing is as leaden as it ever was.  I guess it just needs to be descriptive prose, with the main goal that I remember how I got the effects that I ended up with.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I doubt anyone reads my descriptions but maybe people enjoy the images now and then.....