Drawing Challenges, Contests, Competitions brynn's challenge #2 (beginner skills) - draw a flag
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Drawing Challenges, Contests, Competitions brynn's challenge #2 (beginner skills) - draw a flag
Hi Friends,
As promised, here's a challenge suitable for beginners and up. Draw a flag. For beginners, it would be a flat flag, rather than one that looks like it's waving in the wind.
It could be a flag that's already existing, such as a country or some geo-political entity. Maybe you would want to go so far as to look up the standard sizes and colors for a specific flag, and make it like real.
Or it could be a little flag like you see at the putting green on a golf course. Or....going back to the generation before mine....what were those things called....varsity flags? (usually triangular, strictly 2 colors, collectible, made of felt, hung on wall or bulletin board rather than on a stick) (although I think originally were on sticks that you'd take to the ball game).
Or you could make up your own flag (which is probably what I will do, because it sounds more fun).
I tried to gather some data to use as a starting place, but just looking through some flag images, it seems there really is no standard size for a flag. I'm seeing them range from twice as wide as tall (2 to 1) to a ratio of 3 to 2 or even less. I saw one flag that was almost square. Then there are triangular flags (like the aforementioned varsity flags).
If you get stuck, please don't hestitate to ask for help. That's the purpose of these drawing challenges in the first place. Learning by doing is a fast way to learn. So we're here if you need help.
(I'll have some examples posted shortly.)
As with all of my challenges, there is no judging and no winners or losers. Just learning, practicing, and having fun with Inkscape!
Ok, this is kind of a quickie. I had the idea to use my first forum avatar (that I made with Inkscape). And my plan was to put fringe around it. But then, besides the fact it's going to take a long time to make the fringe, it's not exactly a good example of a beginner skill. So I'm still working on the fringe. But here's a beginner version of it. And I think I'll make a varsity flag (for those that are too young to know what it is).
Ok, and this is my very quick varsity flag.
Hhmm....maybe they do have 3 colors. I was thinking only 2, but that looks like something is missing.
And here's an example of a super simple flag, for complete novices.
Or even simpler
Here's mine, pretty basic, US flag and a wavy US flag using env deformation.
IImagne that waving in the breeze.
the 3rd Eye is watching you.
wikipedia/flags
It's quite a challenge if you are going for those waving.
Here, found this one as a reference
flag at pixabay
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/12/28/16/12/austria-3045568_960_720.jpg
Tried tweeking that into the aforementioned format and uploaded it to pixabay -now it is under pending... hope this works:
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/09/08/10/42/10-42-40-236_960_720.jpg
download link
Now how to trace that.
Edit: still need to learn how to embed images into this forum.
Also to clarify, the approach is the same as with the previous fusilli challenge -drawing a greyscale copy, then applying the chroma by an overlay.
For this one (Lazur) https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/09/08/10/42/10-42-40-236_960_720.jpg I get error: "Access is Denied....opacity is important"
Wow, very creative, pjschleitwilerfcm ! It looks like your picture/avatar has a 3rd eye too 😛
When I was searching for info, I found this page on Wikimedia Commons. In particular, the SVG files which would be an overlay to create a waving flag. I didn't open to see exactly how it's done, but it looks like it might be either a blur, mask, and/or gradient. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Basic_elements_of_flags
That wiki overlay seems to be a single gradient.
Attaching the base image from the pixabay remix.
Since that's highly Buddhism related, did you browse through some of them?
https://stevenjohnson.me/design/buddhist-flags/
https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-tibetan-style-image13192325
Ok, and here's the version with fringe.
(Oh hey, my quota just went up to 7 out of 21 mb! That's the first time it's changed in a long time. I thought was broken. Apparently it only counts in whole MBs.)
Fringe is Buddism related? Looking at your link, and a little bit of the video, I'm wondering if "fringe" doesn't translate well? Whenever I've seen fringe on a flag, it's usually gold colored. But since this is my personal flag, I thought I could make it unique!
Was referring to the endless knot. Haven't seen too much flags with fringes though.
But as a general observation flags have a strong symbolism and strict colour use through their design.
Oh, you mean the endless knot is Buddism related?
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_knot
Right, official flags always have official colors and sizes and all kinds of rules.
I always thought that was a celtic knot. I'm not sure if I care enough to research which culture created it first. But I don't think I'm doing something wrong by putting it on an imaginary flag.
As far as I could see celtic knots are more rounded and have alot of variations. Out of it's popularity and widespread use it's hard to find a reliable source on them.
https://mythologian.net/celtic-knot-symbol-meaning/
Book of Kells is often referenced as an early example on those knotworks (and Celtic crosses too):
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/a2/8d/42a28d31cf8b5e80863e8bc858616e39.jpg
Tried to look up a matching example of the endless knot but the closest I could find is still looking rather different.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Ccross.svg
So. The contrast was increased on that. Tracing this would need a finetuning on the luminance levels. Assuming the contrasted version uses the wholu range of the 255 luminance values provided by the 32bit truecolor rgb, the final tone adjusting/colormapping will wash out some details.
Would need to separate the overall shading from the bumpy texture of the textile. It'd add a bit to the realism but would look a mess as a drawing.
Needs some abstraction keeping the focus only on the overall geometry.
If approached by a drawing artist, only a few tones would be enough to represent the draperie.
The standard method is colouring the darkest areas and adjusting the rest relative to that -assumably drawing the lighter areas one after another.
Hence it is the complete opposite of the built in trace bitmap option.
On top of that, the few tones would be the following for example
-darkest, semi-dark, midtone, semi-light, highlight.
So tracing with 5 scans might give a good outcome.
Problem: The tracing catches each shade at even distances over the whole luminance range. It is unlikely to match those scans with the five desired lightness levels automatically.
Other issue is, that the automatic tracing doesn't get the concept of sudden changes in luminance, i.e. highlight next to shade would appear blurry.
(Un)fortunately this image doesn't have too much of those. The real problem would appear though around the shape's edges, so some blurring&smudging of the original image,
then clipping the traced version can solve that.
This leads to a generic solution of tweaking the original image into five separate one matching with each tone of choice.
Tracing those images, stacking them atop eachother and clipping the result.
After that it's a matter of smoothing out the colour transitions along the path edges -preferably all by using mesh gradients.
Lazur, that was over my head, but I'd love to see the wave put in action (by you).
ok, so here's my imaginary flag, a new US flag - the T pays omage to England Union Jack (without the X part), (from wince the US was born), plus my english ancestors were some of the first (non native) people on US soil on the east coast, fought in the Civil and Revolutinary wars. Also pays omage to the first 13 colonies (13 stars), and the single star is for ALL of the states and territories, now and to be, because we are supposed to behave as one united group (not much of that going on right now, cough cough...). Every time we add a new state, the flag has to change, and with this it would eliminate that need. Placing the stars was the hardest part, angles, rotation decisions, etc. So that's my imaginary flag!
brynn, re: "pjschleitwilerfcm ! It looks like your picture/avatar has a 3rd eye too "
That's me, Swami Onandonandonananda, known for the length of his sermons.
Flamingolady, I like the new USA flag. Could this be for an alternate history?
pjschleitwilerfcm. Wow, I would love to hear how you pronounce your Swami name! That would take up much of the sermon length! (just kidding). I would never have thought of a flag with a third eye, so that's creative. or maybe you'all have them in your temples, but I've not seen one.
And oh yes, may I please at least imagine an alternate history, one with love and tolerance for all...
Tried to trace by 6 shades. Didn't work out. Too much grunge of the texture to be cleabed up, and losing all the data on how to interpolate between those flat fills; what shape the gradient should follow. So instead limiting the original to 5-6 flat filled areas, trying to at least mark in which direction the gradient should go.
Which lead to the realisation the problem could follow a rather specific geometric approach.
The greyscale image is built up by stacked scans atop eachother. Similarly as how isolines represent a terrain on a topographic map.
The gradient transitions are following the slopes -which probably could be simulated by generating that 3D terrain and adding in physics -marking the slopes by paint drops, going to the lowest parts.
These "slope marks" are always perpendicular to the isolines by definition. Thus these can also be helpful for gradient mesh node placement.
However the grunge still needs to be removed.
ok, well my eyes crossed over trying to igure that one out Lazur, lol. Sounds like you have a grasp on it. It'd be nice there was something similar to the mesh gradient, but instead of color it picked up the crinkles, if that makes any sense, sort of an overlay maybe.
When I was first trying to come up with a new avatar that I could make with Inkscape (12 years ago!), I was looking at some simple celtic knots. Indeed, they were all very round and curvy. Most of them looked like freehand drawings. But I wanted it to be very symmetrical. Plus being so new to Inkscape, it was going to be too hard to make it symmetrical and round at the same time. So once I found a simple one that I liked, I just gave it straight lines and 90 degree angles, and I used a grid to help. At the time, I had no idea that was some other symbol entirely.
Distorted original flag of the 3rd eye in GIMP and created shadow image fromm distortion.
Copied both to Inkscape on diferent layers and traced flag in colors and shadow in greys, then trimmed tracings.
Aligned shadow image over flag and blended layer via multiply.
Blurred shadow image.
https://inkscape.org/~pjschleitwilerfcm/%E2%98%85flag-of-the-3rd-eye-wavy
I've done Iceland just for fun.
Done for a contest about two years ago.
https://inkscape.org/~pjschleitwilerfcm/%E2%98%85united-state-of-winslow-flag-1-by-pjschleitwilerfcm
Here, Flag of my Country #patriotism
Today played around with the filter editor for a flag waving filter.
Can't help some parts of it, there are hard-wired limitations ofthe render, but it came out better than I expected.
Here is a demo:
https://youtu.be/xTEwnvoQrSo