Drawing Shapes with Bezier Tool
Bezier selection can be used in many creative ways. Maybe the best
thing in it is the smooth, beautiful curves it produces. But you can
also use Bezier to create different polygonal shapes if you don't
'pull out the handles'. Polygonal shapes are especially useful when
painting some geometric objects, as you can draw one side at a time
(into different layers if you want).
Shapes with Bezier!?
This tutorial is about making simple geometrical shapes with The Gimp.
I will concentrate on the Bezier tool since I find it so useful for
this purpose. I hope you get some help and new stuff to put in your
Gimp Tricks Sack :) I personally use this technique for nearly all my
work.
Notice! This is not a 'back to basics' -tutorial. You should be
familiar with Gimp's dialogs and menus. I was thinking about this, and
I did not want to make this an 'entry level' thing, basically to avoid
bloating this too big and duplicating other people's work.
Beziers are covered in my other
tutorial, and I recommend you to read it before
going further if you find the material here confusing. If you are new
to Gimp I suggest you to go to the Gimp homepage in
www.gimp.org and first read through
the Documentation section there.
Let's get started!
First we must create a new image for our creation. Make
the size 256x256 pixels and choose RGB for the type. The
image background should be white.
Open the Layers & Channels -dialog with the right-button-menu:
Dialogs 
Layers Channels
1. Left side
Now create a new transparent layer, and name it
Left_side so you know what layer I'll talk about
later on. Make sure you have the new layer active by checking the
layers-dialog. If it is not selected, click the layer's name in the
dialog.
Imagine the blue cube on the right side into your canvas,
we'll be doing side #1 now.
Choose the Bezier-selection tool and make something
like the side #1 on the blue cube, think about the
perspective. (If this causes you trouble, don't
worry. You will learn by experience).
You can adjust the points' places if you can't get
them right at the first try, see the Bezier tutorial
for more information on that. Your bezier should look
something like the one on the right.
Once you are satisfied with your 'box' click inside it
to make the selection.
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Next we must choose some nice colors for our gradient,
choose white for the foreground color and some
dark-blue for the background (we are making a blue
box, remember?) Something like that on the image
nearby.
Select the gradient-fill tool and, starting from
the top-left of the selection, 'drag' the gradient
quite far down-right (see the arrow in the
image. This way you get a quite light-colored face
for the cube, and it is just what we want here. We
also want the lighter end of the gradient to be
near our imaginative light source. (The light was
coming from the left)
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2. Right side
Now on to the right side, side #2. Create a new transparent
layer and name it Right_side. Use the Bezier Tool
and try to make the right side of the cube and turn it
into a selection.
Take the Gradient Tool again and, still with the same colors,
make a gradient from farther up-left to near the selection's
lower-right corner (see image on right). This way we get a
darker gradient suitable for the shadow-side.
Hint! Be careful with the edges. You don't want to
leave any holes so the background can be seen through...
It's better to overlap the lower layer a bit than leave a
space between them.
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3. Top side
Our final ultimate task is to create the top, side #3.
Again, create a new transparent layer and name it
(who quessed? :) Top_side.
Now you probably know we want to make yet one bezier
selection and this time the gradient has to be even
lighter than in the first side. So I suggest you lighten
the dark blue color a fair amount, it's easier to get a
light gradient that way.
This time you pull the gradient from left to right,
according the arrow in the picture. Once you find the
shading look good, you can flatten the image and our
little tutorial-cube is finished. Now apply for your
'Cube Gimp Licence' from the nearest Gimp Station ;)
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4. Finished Work
Now you have a cool image of a Light-Source-Shaded Cube.
You can choose Layers Flatten Image to merge the
layers togerher so you can save as jpeg or any other format
than xcf. Or, better still, from the layers dialog, make the
background invisible and choose
Layers Merge Visible Layers so you will have the background on a separate layer
and you can work further on it if you like.
The next thing is to start using the geometrical shapes as
building blocks to make things. And you can twist the beziers
to make a bit more fancy stuff...
I have provided the xcf-file
for the image we just created,
if you want to experiment with it, although you should be
perfectly able to do just as good yourself.
Thanks for your interest.
tigert
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