Straight Lines
Drawing straight lines in The Gimp is easy.
- Select any of the drawing tools (paintbrush, pencil, ink pen etc)
- Click once to make a spot on the canvas.
- Move your mouse to the other end of the line, hold the Shift key, and click again.
- If you keep holding shift and clicking, you can get a series of straight lines.
You can get all sorts of interesting effects with straight lines.
Gradient Effects
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Select a large paintbrush |
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Double click the Paintbrush to bring up Tool Options. Choose Gradient. |
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Draw your lines. You should finish up with an effect something like this. |
Pattern Effects
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Choose a large brush size again, and double click the Clone
Tool  This will bring up the Clone Tool options. Choose Pattern Source
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Double click the pattern selector from the main toolbox
This brings up the pattern selection panel. Choose a pattern you like. |
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Draw your lines. You should end up with effects like these. |
Drawing Circles or Boxes
Because The Gimp is primarily an image manipulation package, it does not have the basic drawing tools of MSPaint for drawing circles and boxes. This can be easily overcome.
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To draw a filled box or circle, simply select the area, and then
use the bucket fill tool  to
colour it. |
Circle and Box outlines are treated a bit differently, as this video will show:
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By selecting various brush types and spacing options some interesting effects can be obtained.
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You can select different areas by selecting one circle then:
| 1. Hold Shift key to add on another selected area (after you start drawing the 2nd area, you can let go of Shift) |
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| 2. Hold Ctrl key to remove a selected area (after you start drawing the 2nd area, you can let go of Ctrl) |
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You
should include screen captures in your tutorial to make it easier to understand.
20/20 is a useful program to make annotated screen captures.