My Journey with GIMP

I enjoy this class because it is the only class where I can explore an artistic side of creativity. My other classes are standard coding or math, so it is not often that I get to sit down and express my artistic side. But this Photoshop project was the first project that I really struggled with in this course. I think it had something to do with how relatively open the project was and how limited my skills were. I had big ideas that I could not execute. It did not matter how many tutorials I watched; I could not learn all of the professional-level skills in a few weeks. Idea after idea, I continued to click “close without saving” on my attempted projects.

I decided to use GIMP because it seemed simple, but it might have been too simple for my ideas and I think it held me

back in some aspects. I read a couple pages about how GIMP was designed for image manipulation and not drawing. I had a very hard time using it until after the adjustment period – which happened to occur around the 5^th idea. And I still did a lot of googling just to figure out how to make a triangle. It also does not help that if you google “gimp projects”, the picture on the right is what shows up in the mix. I ended up learning a lot for the one that I had to create from scratch. It taught me a lot about how the different layers interact with each other. I tried drawing all of my designs on one layer, but if you erase something, it stays permanently the background color in that area. It taught me how to responsibly use layers. I do not think the icons for the tools represent them very well, which caused a lot of confusion for me.

The thought-provoking image challenged me in a way that I did not think it would. It made me provoke topics that I feel really passionate about. This is where my big ideas came to an abrupt halt. I could visualize the end product, but nothing I did ever came close to it. I had to limit myself and my creativity in order to do this one. Instead of a hindrance, I think it will motivate me to continue working with it and I am very pleased with myself and the things I was able to accomplish with no background knowledge.