Thread: Make coastlines look more artistic in GIMP

In both cases you are selecting your land mass shape and then enlarging it. In the case of the rings you are doing a grow selection (from the selection menu) and then stroke selection ( from the edit menu) most likely with a 1px solid line. Repeat that a couple of times and voila, rings. For the line version you could grow it or fuzzy select (or color select) with a larger threshold to get the shape you want and then fill with you lined pattern. It goes without saying (perhaps) that you would do these on their own layer (just in case).

Okay...

Land Selection
Select the "land" of your map. Increase selection by a bit (probably 10-15px). Subtract the original land selection. Then create a new transparent layer. Fill the "ring" selection with black (or whatever other colouring you're using for coastlines). Gaussian Blur (probably 3-5px).

Repeat and create a new layer for each ring. Merge all of the "ring layers" together and keep it separate from your coastline. Experience tells me this is a good thing to do until you're absolutely done.

This should result in you having a number of rings that nicely blur to form that "wave" pattern of gradient darkness.

As an alternative, do all the rings in black, pull back on the opacity, make sure the ring layer is immediately above the ocean/land layers and set the Ring Layer to multiply. Then it doesn't matter what tinkering you do with your land or sea colours. Of course you need to restart if you change the shape of your land.

For one way to amke woodcut effect in Gimp, check out this post.

-Rob A>

Thanks for your help everyone!