Torn lines as foreground evergreen trees in Inkscape landscape paintings

One last application for the torn lines filter-effect, this time as foreground evergreen trees in Inkscape landscape paintings. Click the illustrations for the basic steps involved in this example of the technique.

Other related posts:

• torn lines as waves in inkscape

• Torn lines as distant trees in Inscape landscape paintings

Field of Daisies

This painting uses the technique described elsewhere on this blog to draw the pedals of the daisies.



The photograph on which this painting is based may be found on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsmagic/477110217/The photo was published under the following creative commons license.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsmagic/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Drawing stems and leaves with Inkscape 0.47

Occasionally, I try to replicate someone else's painting technique using Inkscape. This is a common technique in oil and watercolor painting in which one turns the brush during the stroke in order to go from a thin line to a wider shape. One application of the technique is for drawing leaves quickly, effortlessly and in perspective. I have found that this too can be accomplished in Inkscape using specific settings for the brush tool and some practice. Try a leaf that extends toward you, the painter, and I think that you will agree that the technique works very well. Click the picture for a larger view of the simple instructions.

Experiments with painting rocks

I left the rocks and cliffs on the mountain painting incomplete. I set down their placement to my satisfaction, but I do not like the contrasts within the rock itself -- that is, the cracked lava filter produced too much sparkle. To the right, I have outlined one technique in its various steps that I plan to try on the painting to achieve several benefits. The benefits that I seek include the ability to draw rocks over larger areas and then to trim them to the actual shapes that I see without having the filter effect change. You will find, as you experiment with Inkscape filters, that moving and resizing an object to which you applied a filter changes the filter's effect. Another benefit that I seek is to use a filter, but to change the contrast of the effect without altering the effect itself. In this case, I wish to lessen the sparkle and but keep the the effects of ridges achieved by using the filter in the first place. Finally, I wish to apply blurs and or gradients to objects which contain filter effects without changing the shape of the effect -- I want to affect only the filter effect's contrast with its surrounding objects. I have complained about ghosting when blurs are applied to filtered objects in another post on this blog (river with newly fallen snow), so I really am using this feature enhancement on one painting to solve a general problem that I have run across in other paintings. Finally, I have used the technique described here before with success with other filters (watercolor-style painting of river), so I wanted to see whether it would work as well on the cracked lava filter. It looks promising. Click on the illustration to see a larger version.

Mountain painting using Inkscape

Some of the quirks in this work in progress are outlined in the composite of four images below. Each of the four images is on a separate, Inkscape 0.47 layer, and they are listed in the following order: the lowest layer is first in the series and the highest layer is last.

The rocks are only partially drawn in the composite on purpose so that you may see that I drew the shadows first, and then in a new, higher layer, I drew the rocks on top of some of the shadows. I have also drawn one set of rocks on the mountain's main vertical ridge in the composite but I have not applied the filter to it so that this stage of drawing is illustrated. Click on the composite of the four images to see more details, including a few instructions related to some of the brushes and filters used in the painting.

The original photo from which I drew inspiration for this painting may be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/christianabe/2267147039/in/set-72157601230921726/ and its parent site and license at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/christianabe/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Watercolor painting of a Pyrex bowl and saucer

There are approximately sixteen gradient shapes in this painting of a Pyrex bowl and saucer. I started with a simple drawing comprised of a couple of partially sketched lines as an outline. Then, beginning with the lowest layer and working forward, I drew various shaped-gradients and applied the vertical motion blur filter effect to each of the shapes. This left translucent and transparent areas in the shapes, through which the lower layer peeked.

The light on the rims and the sides of the bowl and saucer, for example, are merely not shaded at all. The clean edges of the gradient shapes at the top of each gradient shape provide the contrast necessary for the eye to "see" the edges of the bowl and and of the saucer although these are not actually drawn -- merely sketched, and not sketched completely.

The vertical motion blur filter effect simulates a wash, as if the brush stroke began clean at the top and ran out of material near the bottom of the effect. The vertical motion blur filter works really well in Inkscape paintings that are meant to simulate water color shades and materials.

SVG source in XML format is available on Google docs.

Watercolor collection

A collection of my experiments to affect a watercolor painting style using the two-dimensional, Inkscape drawing software.

Iced-coffee

Light on pine forest floor

watercolor-style painting of a river gorge

A river in the mountains of of the American West

Inkscape watercolor violets

More watercolor experiments using Inkscape 0.47 filters and brushes on a rough, quick sketch.

Study of hills and water inlet

The new version above is improved over the original below. This might be close to finished.

The foreground and background still needs work in this study based on a photographic of Akaroa harbour by mollivan_jon on flickr. I have used Inkscape filters new to version 0.47 to paint the light and reflections to my satisfaction.

Akaroa on Wikipedia

If you refer to the original, you will see that I took gross liberties as far as composition of the paitning is concerned, but my intention was to focus on the shapes and the light and shadows on the hills as well as experiment with reflections on the water.

Light on a Pine Forest Floor

Experimenting with light . . . the original source for this painting is a photograph by bcostin available on flickr.

I used various Inkscape 0.47 filters on this adaptation of bcostin's great photo. I did sepearate scans of the photo for brightness cutoff, for colors, and for greys, and then deleted all but the basic colors, and then arranged the remaining scans to focus the eye on the light streaming into the trees and onto the forest floor, and, finally, applied several filters to a cropped image in order to blend the contrasts appropriately.

Inkscape 0.46 oil painting filter-effect by jbrgfx

jbrgfx has designed an oil painting filter-effect using Inkscape .046.

The object of this experiment was to preserve depth while highlighting colors. The settings which produced these "paintings" may be seen in detail by clicking the following screen-shot.

Below are instructions for using the filter-effect, at least as I designed it for my own use.

Iced Coffee

Inkscape 0.46 may be used to simulate oil-painting. The new path tools in version 0.47 will make drawing the paths which hold the gradient-fills and gradient-blends faster and more flexible. More paintings like this one are part this blog's short-term plans.

SVG source in XML format is available on Google Docs.