I was trying to think of ways to create textures in Inkscape (v .47) and here is a way I came up with (I got tied of going to GIMP for textures). It's so simple, uses the spirogram filter and air spray filter. One word of caution, size your spiro to the end size before applying the filters, for some reason, if you resize after, it will skew the results and end up mostly all black.
The trick is to fill with a color and use black (or a dark color) as the stoke, then, manually move many of the nodes off to the sides to create a black border with a colorful inside. There is a lot you can do with this, add gradients, move the nodes to create various shapes, etc. (of course you can start with other shapes and apply the air spray filter too).
Brynne's gorgeous spiro samplers inspired me to share this, as I can envision applying the air spray filter on some of her samplers! Brynne and others (SUV, etc), thanks for being such inspiring resources!
dee

Oh wow!
I'm glad you made the tutorial, dee. You could post it in the Tricks and Tutorials forum, if you like.
I'm not clear why you move nodes though? Is that just to manage not getting a lot of black in the middle (or whatever dark color)? Or to sort of lose the design, so that it's more of an even texture?

I tried your idea, and below is what I got. The spirogram I used is at the top. And I did not move any nodes, because I wanted to see the design (just for fun). I tried it with both fill rules, and actually like the one on the left better.

Then I wondered what would happen if you blurred it. Well, since a blur is actually a filter, when I did that, it either removed the air spray filter, or put the new blur filter over top of it. Anyway, that didn't work. But if I blurred the spirogram first, then apply the filter, the result is at the bottom. It's kind of a softer texture, right? So I'm thinking if you started out with a spirogram that is very complex, like the one that you used in your tutorial, blurred it first, then apply the air spray filter, you might not have to move nodes around....as long as you wanted a softer texture to begin with.



OH! Isn't there a 'scatter nodes' extension? Would that serve your purpose, instead of manually moving nodes?? Or I know there's a 'jitter nodes' extension. You could set it to a high value to scatter the nodes too.

And then I started thinking about getting color into the stroke, tried that, and it was boring. But then (brainstorming, as I am wont to do, lol)(plus being slightly addled by fever and flu), I duplicated the same spirogram 3 times, rotating 45 degrees each time, and giving each a different contrasting color, to create the top left image below. Add the air spray filter, and the bottom left image results. Cool! And you can get slightly different effects by adjusting which color is on which level in z-order. For example, if you put red on top, the whole thing looks more reddish.

And THEN ( ) I remembered the trick (on my spriogram samplers) where I used really bright colors on a black background. So top right is the result with the air spray filter, and bottom right is blurred, then filtered. Cool! Actually I'm thinking the last one (bottom right) would look better with less blur to begin with, but I guess it all depends on what kind of texture you're looking for.

One last thought -- If you used less contrasting colors than I used, say like 3 shades of green or yellow and green, for example, the pattern of the spirogram would be less obvious, and also might reduce or eliminate the need to move nodes.



Thank you so much for making this tutorial dee. It's nice idea and really inspires me to be more creative!

Brynne - Ah, once you get started with this, you just can't stop! lol. Glad you are having fun. I wanted to keep the tutorial really simple, and let people discover the effects they can get on their own. I love the 3 colors effect, very cool.
I manually moved some nodes in order to re-shape it to the square mostly, and secondly to keep the inside clearer. I am making banners for websites so I may put a text character into each spiral for example, so need the contrast, or put the fleur de lis in the middle as another example. There's much we can do!
Your bottom left one looks like a wreath to me, we'll have to try this with a few shades of green for a holiday look.
Oh, on my green banner, I used a smaller spiro inside of a larger one. Using 2 different spiro effects opens up a whole need door of possibilities too.
Hope you feel better soon, there's a lot of flu bugs going around now.
enjoy!
dee