Art 6: Astro Geek

On the Importance Of Nice Brushes.

This was done using Gimp 2.2

This is the artwork "Samantha Carter: Astro Geek":

I'm going to be very brief with this one, just describing the different layers and how I got them.

  • We have the main image layer itself, sam1, which has had half its background zapped (as described in Background Zapping).
  • Above it is sam2, which is a duplicate of sam1, desaturated, in overlay mode, at 50% opacity, to make Sam look clearer.
  • Below, we have the background layers. The lowest visible layer is opaque black, normal.
  • Above it is a transparent layer with some lovely star brushes done in white. (I got them from the GIMP Brush section of Deviant Art).
  • The next layer is interesting.
    1. Filters -> Render -> Clouds -> Plasma
    2. Filters -> Distorts -> Whirl and Pinch
    3. But the opacity of the layer is set at 40% so one can see the stars through it.
  • Above that are two "wash" layers; each one has a spiral gradient fill (a gradient I made called DirtySun) of a slightly different diameter, and both are in Overlay mode.
  • And then we have the layers above Sam. Three of these are transparent layers with various "technical" brushes which I also got from Deviant Art. They have varying levels of opacity; some brushes were semi-transparent already, others had to be made more transparent.
  • And on top, there is a transparent layer with a 1-pixel black border (see General Icon Techniques for how to make a transparent 1-pixel border).