My Mini-GIMP-Cation and Gradients

yeah, right, instead of that over-used word, "staycation".  Though this was that as well, as I only got as far as Berkeley.  Anyway,  I house-sat and cat-sat for a couple of days and found time to do art, but couldn't post it much because I only had internet connection on my smart phone.  I managed to make a couple of lino-cut stamps (will show them when I actually get around to stamping something with them), went to Lacis in Berkeley and took a lot of second rate photos of a lot of first rate lace.  And made a bunch of new images, based on an inspiration I had a couple of days ago.

I started out with a passion to create a color gradient based on graffiti that my friend Eric was designing.  Here is his original: I loved the soft yet intense colors....

So I started playing around with gradients. Unfortunately, the little color dropper that you can see in the gradient choice menu doesn't seem to work to let you choose and use nearby colors.  So I had to eyeball it.  This was my first effort, just moving from one color to the other.

Next I tried splitting it up into several sections.  Finally I learned that if you don't want a sharp line in between gradient colors you need to make extra sections and fade the right side of one into the left side of the previous.  You can also choose to make any color semi-transparent, as below:

 Or keep them all solid, as in this example.  Here I did a better job of matching the original graffiti colors.

 Here is this version with parts of the colors faded.

I got to wondering what would happen if you made a lot of subdivisions and just left them at black to gray.  Some of them I kept the left side darker than others.

 I tried the same thing with a rainbow of colors fading to clear:

And here's another bright to faded one.

Here's the whole collection of them:

Now that we have our gradients, let the fun begin! This is what the basic two color gradient looks like, in several different GIMP gradient variations.

 And this is what the semi-translucent second version looks like, on top of a regularly patterned background:

This is the black shaded gradient, criss-crossed in two directions.  No fading was necessary because half of each section is already faded.  You get an off-kilter grid pattern with the diamonds looking raised.

When you invert the colors the diamonds look like a set of open boxes:

While it's not possible to add color to black and white by using color: hue/saturation, you can change to new color shades by using colorize.  Here I made a rectangular gradient below and a circular one above, then changed the colors.  This was the first of several op-art images:

 Here is a criss-crossed grid, colorized aqua:

 And the inverted color version:

 Here are both versions, with portions selected and colors value-inverted as well.

Here is an earlier one, with both layers gently twisted using i-warp:

 And a faded version of the same over a repeat image background.

Here are the bright stripes, criss-crossed over a turquoise background

 And with two additional directions, top to bottom, left to right, added:

 This is the bright colored striiped gradient, over a complex background image:

And the same colors in a spiral gradient, over a patterned background:

The bottom is comprised of a set of 4 matching images that i didn't like all that much.  They look much better half-hidden under a circular gradient with clear portions to reveal part of the back:

 These next images originate from two layers of square gradients, with a bright background showing through.  I moved the gradients around for a different color emphasis and warped them in various ways.

Ahhh, that was fun and I got to play with a lot of saturated colors and smoky effects.  On that happy note, I will post what I've done so far so I can go back to active things while the light is good.  Like cleaning the back porch and my bedroom a bit.  It's good to be home after several days away.  $18 for two meals which I stretched a lot of ways is a pretty good mini-vacation.  :-)

Thank you Eric, for the color inspiration!