Reviving an old techno-toy

[altivo]

Spent the last weekend in Michigan, visiting my good friends Imperator ( goldenstallion ) and Bear from Tapestries MUCK. Hoped to enjoy some fall color, but the weather marred that with gloom and rain. Did enjoy some good old talk and companionship and got to meet their horses, finally.

I was also interested in Imperator's computer setup for artwork. A very fine traditional artist, he works in the usual media and has scanner and digital camera to get things online for viewing, but he also uses a drawing tablet to input sketches directly to the PC. Having had some disastrous encounters with trying to draw using a mouse, I wondered if this might really be better.

On the drive home, car loaded with good Michigan apples and cider, I remembered that my own partner had a digitizer tablet gathering dust. He used it while working on his master's thesis in geography, and it's rather dated compared to Imp's nifty Wacom, but the price was right. Partner obligingly dug out the rather insufficient manuals and old (DOS!) driver diskettes for me. This is a SummaSketch II, and it took me quite a while to get it working with Linux and The GIMP, but I think the effort may have been worthwhile. I may well have more drawings to share soon.

Anyone else use The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) for drawing? It's as heavily featured as Photoshop or Illustrator, and like most open source software, kinda short on documentation. I see there are a number of books available though. Recommendations anyone?

Comments

GIMP

[whiffert.livejournal.com]

I have been using GIMP for photomanipulation for some time now. (see my icon) I find that it does just about everything I need. There are a few things that are a little clunky in version 1.2. I think they fixed a lot in version 2, but version 2 does not like to run right under Win98. I need to use my linux more!

Re: GIMP

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I rarely boot Windows any more. My GIMP is version 1.2, so maybe I should have a look for a newer version?

It's very powerful software, I can see that. But the user interface is a bit on the peculiar side when compared to other programs (like Photoshop) that I've used in the past.

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

If you just want to draw stuff on a painting surface thingy... for fun, try artrage

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

My ex bf, who runs http://www.wolfhowl.org/, draws using the mouse and Paint Shop Pro. Check out the logo image past the index, the painted wolf ... he did that in PSP with a mouse. He used an optical mouse, of course (I shudder at the notion of a testicle mouse anymore!) and even I've tried my paw at it though I haven't finished anything and with some practice, it isn't all that difficult. I've seen the same done by artists with PhotoShop and I'm sure, if the GIMP is as fully featured, you could there as well. Its a matter using smudge tools for little tufts of fur ... it takes a bit of practice to get used to, but probably on the order of a couple days if not hours to start to develop the feel for it, not months.