I have been doing a series of articles about line art. In my first article, I spoke about how to use the graphics editing software to convert a photo into line art. The second article gave you a list of programs and techinques that would save you literally hundreds of dollars in licensing fees while simultaneously giving you the power of professional graphics programs. Now, I would like to show you step by step how I used the GIMP to create a line art drawing of my grandparents.

First, as I took the portrait and scanned it, creating a digited version. To do this, I selected TWAIN from the GIMP menu (File…Acquire).

After the picture was scanned, I used Vidar Madsen’s method described in the GIMPy high pass filter sketch effect tutorial. Vidar shows you how to use the gaussian blur filter, merge opacity, desaturate the colors, then clean up the lines using desaturation. The results were ok, but nothing to write home about. I found a Photoshop plugin called Cleanup which might have made it more useable; however, I could not get it to work with the GIMP.

Next, decided to start from scratch and try to render the line art by hand by “tracing” it from the photo. Melissa Clifton wrote an excellent tutorial about this technique on her website. I created a blank layer (Layer…Duplicate Layer), set the opacity at 50% (Dialogs…Layer…Opacity slider bar), and started drawing using mostly the pencil brush to draw the graphic. Once the drawing was done, I had a little fun and colored it in, making look as though it came from a graphic novel.

I wasn’t happy with the initial results because the details of the face were very unrefined. For example, in my initial drawing, Pa looked like he had alien eyes, and his mouth was all wrong. Granny’s eyes were roughly drawn as well. To fix it, I erase the insides of the faces and started over again. The second time, I experimented with different brushes. For example, I found the pressure brush with a medium or small splatter point worked best for the details. I also took my time. The first go around, I finished in a couple of nights, but when I started over again, I went took approximately a month just to redo the faces. It was worth the wait, though, as I am much more pleased with the results.

All in all, I would consider this a pleasant experience. When I was very little, I remember sitting on my grandparents’ laps, touching their faces and looking into their eyes. Nothing short of having them back could replace that memory, but this was the next best thing. Staring at the photograph, I was able to capture all of the lines of wisdom, all of the smiles, all of the worries, all of the love that gave charactor to two people who will forever hold a special place in my heart.

Now, go enjoy your family and make the world a better place by working on some photo family memories of your own.
Your Fellow “Creative Genius ” ,
Texaiano

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When I was young, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, especially before I was old enough to go to school. Staying with Pa and Granny was the start of my love of photography. Since the family was spread out, Granny loved getting pictures, so much so that she put every single picture on her front wall. It was covered with pictures, most without frames. Granny used whatever was handy to pin or tack the pictures on the wall. I would sit and stare at the pictures and ask questions about the relatives, as well as seeking out the ones that I was in. It became a kind of game to see if I could point to the pictures and tell each person, where they lived and my relationship to them.

One year, Granny and Pa had their picture taken at one of the local photography studios. I don’t know how many pictures they bought for the family, but I do remember the framed 8X10 portrait that hung in the top left hand corner of the living room, between the gas heater and a small end table. I don’t have any good pictures of them so when I saw it hanging in a relative’s house, I asked if I could scan it. Now, here it is digitized for the world to enjoy.

How I cherish those times when I was a boy. I remember my Granny, a short farm woman, would get up every morning and make my Grandpa and me a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, buttermilk, orange juice, biscuits and gravy - for Pa, it was sweet-milk gravy (known to some people as Red-Eye gravy or white gravy), but for me, the house specialty - chocolate gravy! Yumm! It makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

After breakfast, we would go outside and I would play while my grandparents did yard work. Granny and Pa, having moved to the “city” from the country, remained true to their upbringing and turned their yard into a veritable Eden. There were peach and apricot trees, rose bushes, green onion plants, holleyhocks, honeysuckle, grapes, and raspberry vines. When they moved to town, Pa brought along a large sandstone rock that he placed in his yard and filled every day with water for the cats. Sometimes they would sit on the porch and watch the cars go by while I made mudpies. I would take water from the rock and mix it with dirt in Granny’s old butter bowls which I would then put in the trees to “bake”. In the afternoon, we would all take a nap then go back outside for more playing and car watching. Sometimes Pa and I would go out back to his tool shed. I’m never sure what he did in there, because he never made anything that I remember, but he had a bunch of old tools and nails and stuff that he would arrange and clean. While he did that, I would play with my Tonka tractors. Once in a while, Granny would get out her “marble board” and dice and we would play a game of “Wahoo.” (The board wasn’t made of marble, rather it was made of wood and used to play a game of marbles.) In the evening, it was back to the porch for car watching, and sometimes a snack of cookies and milk or biscuits soaked in buttermilk.

I count myself to be the luckiest of the grandkids. My dad was the youngest in his family, so all of my cousins were older. My siblings, who came along after my Dad remarried, didn’t have very many years with Granny and Pa before Pa died and Granny’s alzheimers made her into a different person. I don’t know if any of the older cousins got to know then the same way that I did because they all lived in different towns and didn’t get so see them as much. My Grandpa had a heart problem that caused him to be hospitalized over Christmas vacation my freshman year in high school. Since I was old enough to stay with him and since I was out of school, I was choosen to keep him company all week. I don’t think anyone else of my generation was ever able to spend such quality time with him.

Many pictures. Many memories. If you don’t have a good picture of your family, I encourage you to go get one. In the very least, get someone to take a snapshot. Years from now, your family will thank you for it.

-Texaiano

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Have you ever thought about what you could do with your photographs? There are so many possibilities. For example, you could reduce down your photo to black and white, color it in, add a few thought bubbles and make your own comic strip. Or, you could create a clay caricature of the subject of your photo. You could transfer the image onto a square block of fabric and sew it into a heirloom quilt. You could turn it into a wood plaque carved with a scroll saw or a table top make with marquetry inlay techniques. You could create a 3D hologram, Warhol style pop-art print, or ascii art poster. Or you could turn your photo into a wire sculpture, ceramic mosaic or etched glass goblet. The possibilities are endless.

A key step in producing many of these object’s d art is to reduce the photograph down to a black and white line drawing. Graphic editing programs, such as Adobe’s Photoshop, provides automated ways to do this; however, unless you’re willing to drop $700 for a legal copy of Photoshop, you may think you are out of luck. The truth is, you can achieve most of the same effects, including the photo-to-sketch function, using the GNU Image Manipulation program, or GIMP. With GIMP, you can manipulate colors, reduce noise, selectively cut and paste objects within a photograph, work in layers, shrink or enlarge your image, and export your photo in a variety of file formats. GIMP even runs most Photoshop functions. Combine GIMP with other free software, like ImageMagick, a tool that lets you quickly manipulate graphics files, and Inkscape, which lets you convert to/from vector graphics formats, and you have a fully functioning graphics suite.

You can find tutorials on GIMP.org detailing how to turn a photo into a sketch. The resulting sketch is, in my opinion, very busy when this method. A similar method on Spoono.com produces cleaner results, though still too many lines for my taste. I prefer to use the method described by Vidar Madsen in his GIMPy high pass filter sketch effect tutorial. Using this method produces a drawing that is clean and simple, though I have to admit that sometimes, I prefer the old fashioned way…I fire up GIMP, create a blank layer and trace my image to create the line art.

Depending upon your project, I am sure that all of these methods will produce satisfactory results for you. Give them a try and let me know what you think.

Until next time,
-Texaiano

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In my last article about producing line art to use in your photo projects, I introduced you to the suite of programs that I use in my photographic endeavors, namely, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP as it is more commonly known, Inkscape, a vector graphics program, and ImageMagick, an all around grapic toolkit with many uses. Both GIMP and ImageMagick can be used ran in batch from the command line.

One of my readers suggested that I provide a resource list to help my subscribers obtain and learn how to use those programs, so here it is.

GIMP
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GIMP.ORG - The Official site for GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP is a fully functional free graphic editing software with functionality similar to Adobe’s Photoshop(C), but without the price.
GIMP - Tutorials

GIMP - Books about GIMP

The Book: Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional … by Akkana Peck
The Book: Grokking the GIMP
This is an excellent resource, and the best thing is, you can download the entire book for free.
Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional

Mono Conversion workflow and editing

Inkscape
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Inkscape - a free graphic editing and drawing program which lets you create vector graphics and diagrams. You can also import existing photos or graphics and convert them into vector diagrams. Inkscape is similar to Adobe’s Illustrator(C)

Screenshots of Inkscape

Inkscape Documentation

Download Inkscape

FAQ - Inkscape Wiki

Inkscape - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How to draw a diagram with Inkscape

ImageMagick
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ImageMagick - ImageMagick® is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (about 100) …
ImageMagick: Downloads

ImageMagick: Command-line Tools

ImageMagick: Command-line Options

ImageMagick: Command-line Processing

ImageMagick v6 Examples

ImageMagick: Examples of ImageMagick Usage

ImageMagick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia Articles
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Photo manipulation

Image Editing

Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics or SVGs

Until next time,
-Texaiano

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