How does art work? It is mostly a mystery. The normal non-artist is imaging that doing art is something which depends from a certain person. That means, he has discovered early his skills to draw images, and over the years he become better and better. So it is a long and demanding journey, right? No it is not. Painting is very easy and can be mastered by everybody.
In a previous blog-post I explained the usage of gimp for tracing the contour of an image. The idea itself was the right direction, but the technique needs a bit improvement. In the previous blogpost I explained, that on the left screen the user should make the original visible, while on the right side he opens up the GIMP drawing software with the purpose to trace the lines according his eyes. There is a feature inside the GIMP tool which is extreme useful, called layers. Here is the tutorial for the absolute beginner.
Step 1 is to ask the google image search for an painting which is already there. That can be a certain motive, and it can be realistic. Step 2 is to open the jpeg file in GIMP. As default it will be opened as layer0. Step 3 is to create a second layer which we call “trace”. With the window menu it is possible to switch between the layer and make it visible or invisible. And now comes the trick. After creating the new layer, the menu asks us if want a transparent background. Sure we want. On step 4 we have both layers above each other and drawing the contour of the original image with the pencil. That is surprisingly simple, even without using advanced input devices. A normal mouse or trackpad is enough. In the last step we are filling the trace with some colors which can be similar to the original and exporting our layer as a new jpeg file.
Let us reflecting the technique a bit. According to the description, painting is equal to drawing contour lines of an image / photo which is already there. And the GIMP layer tool is the perfect choice which allows even for beginners to create his own masterpiece in under 5 minutes of work. No it is not a joke. The image from top of this posting was created in under 5 minutes and without much effort. Is it art? I don't know, probably yes.
Somebody may ask if trace back the contour of an image is not painting it is simple to create a bad copy. So what is the difference between tracing back the lines and making a photo? There is a huge difference, because our copy looks completely different from the original. If we are not telling the public what the template was they will never ever recognize it. And there is a trick available. Suppose, we want not to trace back a real photo or a real image but want to create everything from scratch. There is also a way to go. All what we need is a smaller puppet, made for artists. The puppet gets clothes and a photo is made. Now we are tracing back this photo. And voila, every part of our image was created really from scratch without copying anything. But to be honest, even this painting technique is a copy, because the workflow has always to do with open the original in layer0 and making the trace on layer1.
Impress the non-artist
If we are looking into some art schools and books about painting we will never find a similar explanation about the workflow. That means, the artist who are painting real images are not telling, that they are simple trace back images with the layer-feature of gimp. Question 1 is, are they doing so? And question 2 is, if yes, we they are not telling so? Answering the questions is easy. If everybody is able to create art, nobody will need artists anymore. And it might be also the case, that in former times it was not recognized widely that painting means always copying something. What in most art-schools of the past was teached is a certain type of copying. For example, the students are sitting in room and painting all together a flower which stands on a table. But painting has nothing to do with this situation. Because, in the example are many elements which are not important for the creation of the image itself. At first, it is not important to paint in a group, if somebody is alone in the room with the flower he will get the same result. The second aspect is, that an art school is also not a precondition. And the last point is, that a real flower is also superfluous. What I tried to describe in this blog post is some kind of minimal artist setup. This is a workflow which results into art, but is using a minimal set of ressources. The workflow consists of:
- in gimp layer0 is the original image, which can be a painting or a photograph from a puppet
- in layer1 of gimp, the artist is drawing the contour line and fills the colors with the aim to copying the original. He can add some noise to make the difference more obvious.