GIMP Tutorial: How to Make a Rectangular Pattern

Introduction

One of the definitions of pattern is "an artistic or decorative design". Throughout history humans have created patterns to decorate buildings, objects, and clothing. There are many different types of and structures to patterns. I find patterns that repeat in some form and that can be tiled to cover any size area to be endlessly fascinating.

Making patterns from pieces of photographs can be lots of fun. I'm often surprised at the beautiful images that result. I'm especially fond of making patterns from feathers. In this step by step tutorial I will show you how to cut an image from a photograph and create a basic rectangular tile with it that you can then use to make a repeating pattern.

How to Create a Tile Piece

First, load the picture of your choice into GIMP. (I'm using version 2.6.11.) I've chosen a picture I took of a turkey.

How to Create a Vector Clown Fish with Inkscape

Capturing a Fish

I don't remember when or where the idea of a clown fish in clown makeup came to me, but the idea took hold of me and wouldn't let go until I created one. The first thing I did was fire up Inkscape and use the Bezier Curve tool to draw a vector object for each part of the fish that I wanted to color separately. All of the objects are closed paths. Here's the final set of objects that I came up with.