PatOv technique

PatOv comes from Pattern Overlay and is the awkward name I chose for a GIMP technique I came up with some time ago. Well it can't be worst than SAPALO anyway (sample and paint at low opacity) :)

It basically means using GIMP Clone Tool and patterns for painting details and textures over an existing image. The "overlay" in the name means that we will use a layer blending mode for adding those details, and since Overlay is the one I use the most, I also used it for the name of the technique.

This is how I usually work, from the creation of the pattern to its usage.

NOTE: the images are showing the link to my previous blog on Blogger.

1. Texture Hunting
Looking for textures is a very interesting activity; nowadays there are some cell phones with cameras being good enough for shooting great macro photos, and since we always bring our cell phone with us we can always capture an interesting texture. Here is an interesting texture I discovered this morning, resized to 1280px in width :

2. Creating the pattern
This image has many parts that could become a great pattern, and I'll very likely create more than one pattern from it. For this little tutorial I choose a part of the image and I crop it in a square format, saving the image with a new name. Note: your pattern doesn't need to be square, this is just a personal preference.

The next step is using Colors > Desaturate for getting rid of colors (because we want to use our pattern for adding details, not for altering the colors of our painting) and Filters > Map > Make Seamless for making the pattern tileable and avoid having ugly cuts where the pattern copy finishes and a new one starts. This is what we got so far :

Choosing the size for the pattern is important, since while we can change the scale of the Clone Tool brush we have no control on the scale of the pattern itself. I usually create various sizes for the the same pattern (something like 512px, 256px, 128px) and I choose the one I prefer depending on the resolution I'm working with etc.

The final step is to save the pattern in the pattern folder, which in Windows 7 (for instance) is something like C:\Users\YOUR-USER-NAME\.gimp-2.6\patterns. Now you can hit Refresh Patterns in the patterns tab and start using your new pattern.

3. Using the pattern
Here you can see a short video of the patterns in use :

I prefer to apply them using a fuzzy round brush, but you can use whatever brush you like. You can also use selections for applying the brush only in the zone you want, and so on. In the video you can see that I often change size of the pattern, mixing their textures to create new details, and I also change the blending mode to manage the values : the big drawback of this technique is that it will alter the values of you painting, so you need to choose the blending mode carefully and generally pay attention to what you are doing :) I usually choose Overlay for a basic usage, Multiply for bringing down the value, Screen or Hard Light for raising it -- but it's all depending on the image I'm working on.

4. Conclusion
That's it, I hope you found my technique interesting and that you'll use it for creating amazing art to share with us all! I often listen to people asking how can you make Gimp behave like Painter, Painter behave like Photoshop or Photoshop behave like ArtRage : I think sometimes it's much better to try to develop unique techniques for each software and use it at its best :)

Link to the 3 patterns I created in this tutorial (ZIP file, 202KB) : link.