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Parametric Brushes
by Americo Gobbo

A fast sample made in 2013 by Americo Gobbo with Dry Media paint
dynamics and parametric brushes.

GIMP Brushes
GIMP provides two very different types of brushes: the parametric (.vbr)
and raster (.gbr and .gih). The scope of this article mainly demonstrates
the quality and possibility of parametric brushes. I am writing a
dedicated article about the GIMP brushes and I have pasted the short
intro about them:

“ The parametric brush is a vector brush and it has the great

possibilities and flexibility for many different tasks and branches (graphic
design, photography, digital painting, etc…) The raster brush is also
versatile and has great pictorial qualities, but is more complex to build
because it is managed as an image. Probably the choice, between raster
and/or parametric brush, is done by the kind of task, the painter’s style
and of his/her artistic background/knowledge/taste, etc.

The Parametric Brush and Painting Techniques

It seems artists haven’t yet realized the full usefulness and versatility of
GIMP’s parametric brushes, especially when paired with the proper
dynamics. This article shows how to use parametric brushes to make
convincing emulations of dry media such as pencil, color pencil, charcoal,
chalk and pastel.

Brush set and Parametric Editor (.vbr).

The default shapes are round, square and diamond. It’s also possible
create a great variation of the shapes using the different parameters to
control the shape and its aspect (radius, spikes, hardness, aspect ratio,
angle and spacing).

Some of the advantages of parametric brushes are:

The stroke of the parametric brush is sharpest and hardest when

we use hardness equal to 1 than with the raster brushes,
It’s easy to increase/decrease the hardness, applied correctly, via
own editor or via Tool Options. The .gbr and .gih brushes, when
we increase/decrease the hardness, is deformed by a blur
algorithm: Comparison test between hardness and Force with .gbr
and .vbr brushes

Dry Media Experiments

In 2013, I began to study emulating dry media with parametric brushes,
they are essentially the drawing tools such as pencil, crayon, charcoal
and pastel. I have also invited Gustavo Deveze and Elle Stone to use my
parametric brush set with 2 paint dynamics dedicated exclusively to
dry media.

Gustavo Deveze drawing with the Dry Media paint dynamics with the brush set of parametric brushes.

Paintbrush and Airbrush Tool

To explore the dry media effects with parametric brushes, I have revised
initially in 2013, the Pencil Generic Paint Dynamics to adapt better it to
other dry media. After working with the variations of Pencil Generic, I
have found a good compromise, but the methodology was complex and
based only on trial and error.

‘ I have thought it interesting to understand better real media and to

try a way of modeling the effects via paint dynamic making a good
attempt of real variables on these media. The first steps have
demonstrated good results, and I will describe this methodology in
another article.

I have also verified that it’s possible to use different tools, pencil,
paintbrush and airbrush. Effectively the airbrush is most interesting
mainly due to the Rate and Flow controls.

Samples using round parametric brushes of the set with my paint dynamic Dry Media.

In general, all brush sizes are working well, but mainly between 8 ~ 64
pixels seems the best compromise. The large brushes are interesting for
covering large areas but it’s not possible to have a good shape (they are
appearing a bit soft).

Parametric Basic Brush Set and Paint Dynamics |

Download

Samples using round parametric brushes with different shapes with Airbrush tool. Tool.

The brush set, in the ‘B0’ folder, contains the .vbr basic brushes, round
and block (hard and soft versions). There are two paint dynamics: one for
graphics tablet’s stylus with tilt and not. The version with tilt is fun to use
and it’s possible to emulate well the effect when you are inclining the
tool in real cases.

‘ In general, it seems that users prefer to pick the brushes directly on

the dialog palette. The parametric brush is so easy to modify and create
our own set… but many people don’t have time and ‘energy’ to build own
our brushes. To those, that they think that is a large set they could delete
the brushes not usable for them.

Download Brush Set + Paint Dynamics.

Tool Options Settings

To emulate better the dry media I recommend using the Airbrush Tool
with these settings on Tool Options:

Opacity 75 ~ 100
Enable the Jitter and use values between 0.5 ~ 0.75 circa.

Force¹ at 100% (normally is 50% by default).

Rate between 75 to 125

Flow around 50
Motion Only, read this excerpt of The Book of GIMP: A Complete
Guide to Nearly Everything. By Olivier Lecarme, Karine Delvare.

¹ Only in GIMP 2.10 and 2.99 Devel.

Airbrush, my proposal of the

settings for the dry media effects.

We have tested on GIMP 2.10, 2.99 and 2.8 with good results.

Acknowledgements
To Elle Stone and Gustavo Deveze who helped me with paint dynamics
tests and images to illustrate this document. Also, thanks to Pat David
for giving me support with GitLab and formatting of the article
for www.gimp.org.

Author, License (Brush Set and Paint Dynamics)

GIMP Tutorial - Parametric Brushes (text, images, brushes) by Americo Gobbo is
licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

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