Has anyone ever come across a plugin for generating “flourish” graphics? Inkscape or Gimp.
There’s no end to existing patterns online but I’d prefer to create something over which I have some control for a unique design.
(Think the curvy graphics around the edge of a Jack Daniels bottle label, for example…)
Huh you’re not kidding there, I tried googling and got swamped. The only generator I saw was for text embellishment.
I’ve googled extensively. I’ve also taken things that were close and converted to path then manipulated by hand. That’s probably where I’ll end up but I figured it was worth asking the group if anyone had ever found a tool for the job.
I’ve also drawn by hand (I have a Wacom tablet/stylus) but I’m not an expert and not getting the result I would like.
Damn you, now I can’t stop thinking about how one would go about such a thing.
Fortunately I have no graphics programming skills so this is unlikely to drag me too far into actually trying to do it.
Getting the paths right isn’t too difficult, but getting the stroke thickness (that would eventually be converted to inner/outer paths) to look “natural” is hard.
My tablet works with stroke pressure but nothing I can draw by hand comes out looking as elegant as I would like. There’s a skill there I simply don’t have.
….yet?
Inkscape does that as its main thing I thought? At least that was the first thing I learned about it.
Hard to do that in Autocad!
Not a fan of video tutorials, but mercifully short:
Maybe a good technique to explore.
I’d be curious what technique you used for that.
yeah, I’d seen that and that’s how I’ve tried to create them with the bezier tool but when you’re doing long stretches with loops and such, they look “unnatural”…
Simple corner embellishments work fine but when you get into long strips (think picture frames) I struggle…
I’m probably just being too much of a perfectionist, and getting hung up on the details.
@timjedwards has the technique noted. Poetry in motion…
“Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity
and little whirls have smaller whirls and so on to viscosity!”
This is what separates “fine” from “wow”. Keep getting hung up.
I feel like this previously-shared software would be useful in generating certain kinds of flourishes.
Some fonts have these, you could use the font to get one that is kind of similar to what you want, outline the path and then adjust from there…
Is there a ‘Smooth’ tool in Inkscape or Gimp? I don’t use these apps so I don’t know, but I have found that in the tool I use I can choose how much to smooth a path I draw in the first place and putting that on a high setting makes it easier for the shape in my head to land on the screen. Also once the path is drawn the smooth tool can be used over and over to make adjustments.
Hi there,
I am a calligrapher and do hand lettering too. Alas, I am not a programmer… so no help on that front. Tho, I am happy to help with some simple custom flourishes if you would like some help.
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