Scott Photographics | Free Photography, GIMP & Photoshop Tutorials

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to make a cool swirly Christmas Tree in GIMP. I was given the idea by this Photoshop tutorial here: http://www.adobetutorialz.com/articles/3022/1/Merry-Swirly-Christmas-Tree.

Begin by opening GIMP with the following options:

Create a nice background with the Gradient Tool, I later used Red!

Use the Path Tool to make something like below:

Then select Stroke Path, make sure you’ve selected your FG colour: Green and Brush: Standard.

You might like to increase the saturation and lightness!

Then grab the Brush Tool with the follow settings:

Now, duplicate that layer and move the new layer slightly like below:

Repeat the above step a few times:

And merge the Tree layers down:

You can do the next steps, 1, 2 and 3 or skip them and go to the next set of steps!

1. On the Tree layer and with the Pen Tool selected (might have to click somewhere on the layer), go Select –> To Path:

2. Then select Stroke Path:

3. You might like to change the Hue, lightness,  saturation:

1. Use the Following settings with the Brush Tool, and make a lighting effect:

2. Use the Brush Tool with the settings as shown, and lightly paint over the tree:

Last Step: Add a nice yellow star using this brush set: http://duskblue.deviantart.com/art/GIMP-Brushes-Stars-4225644

Then add a very simple branch structure using the Lasso Tool and a Brown colour! (Optional)

I changed y background colour to Red, you can too if you left the Background layer!

Please comment below if you have any questions and I’ll answer them ASAP!

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Related posts:

1. Christmas Bauble
2. Wave Tutorial
3. Lighting Effect
4. Sticky Note
5. Overlapping Text Effect