graphical blog 2

Technique : pierre noire et sanguines + eau via pinceau à aquarelle sur papier blanc crème.
Temps : environ 10 minutes (ces images sont des détails), d’après modèle vivant.

Il y a une version française de cet article

MyPaint 0.7.0 is out:

• source tarball
• Changelog
• package amd64 (x86_64) for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) Updated, first version was wrong (thanks to Parsimony for the test), 2^nd update, python-2.6 dependency was missing
• Package i386 (x86) for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), updated, python-2.6 dependency was missing (thanks Mr Semaine.

Verify time to time this directory for updates.

Verify everytime if there ins’t equal or newer version on Getdeb, it will generally be better packaged than mine.

Here is the Changelog:
- color history popup
- merge layer down
- layer solo
- color changer can operate clickless (hold key down, release key to select)
- can save flattened transparent PNG
- recognize eraser end of the stylus
- elliptical dabs are possible now (aspect ratio)
- new brushes and background patterns
- save/load improved
- fixed bugs that caused overwrite without asking
- made OpenRaster the default file format
- made "save scrap" more consistent (always save to scrap directory)
- faster saving and loading (about factor two)
- do dithering when converting from 16bit to 8bit (only when saving with transparency)
- fixed build problem with some distributions
- many other GUI tweaks and bugfixes

Color history is certainly the preview of a future most sophisticated colour palette tool interface. The colour history is accessed by pressing quickly several time the secondary stylus button or the right mouse button. The actual colour four previous colours can be chosen. This help the work-flow with coherent colour palette.

The background interface allow to choose in a pre-existing patterns palette or to choose a plain colour (and add it). For now interface doesn’t allow to add own pattern, need to add them on the backgrounds directory using system tools:
~/.mypaint/backgrounds (thanks to Martin Renold for the advise)
Or more generally for a multiuser system:
/usr/share/mypaint/backgrounds/

Updated list of default brush. I added the David Revoy brushes,(concept artist of the Durian Project), the first brush set with little text at bottom. Among interesting new brushsles, H to 8B pencils. Tools near from paint knives (blue tools).

Il y a une version française de cet article
MyPaint more and more used, some professional artists start to use it, as in Blender foundation, Durian Project, with some sketch examples and some brush for MyPaint, some other works with MyPaint from David Revoy, a French, concept artist of the project.

DavidOmatic, Malefico and Tanda talented Argentine artists used it for several works.

Jag works from San Paolo, Brazil, using MyPaint, Gimp and xylography. Some explanations of technics used with MyPaint.

Swedish artist Griatch painted lot of nice picture on DeviantART avec MyPaint
There is also a lot of other artists using MyPaint on DeviantART.

A really talented Russian children done an animation painted with MyPaint, animated with Synfig and video-edited with Cinelerra.

Some articles about MyPaint around the world: Mypaint - español (spanish) - MyPaint - 中文 (chinese) - Mypaint-日本語(japanese)

Mobile platforms
There is also MyPaint for Maemo (Maemo site), thread about it with some tricks on Maemo forum. A little article about it. A video of mypaint on n800.

I already write about MyPaint on EeePC, it could be interesting with netbook using tablet-PC like shapes.

I would like to see it in action on Openpandora.

There is also an application called MyPaint on iPod, but has nothing in common with MyPaint and has really limited functionalities.

Il n’y avait pas de modèle hier, j’en ai profité pour croquer quelques élèves en plein bouillonnement (et bavardage, ça sent la fin de l’année) artistique de l’atelier.

Techniques : Stylo feutre chinois Guohua noir (pas cher et résiste visiblement à l’eau), brou de noix fait maison (mélanger un peu d’extrait de cassel (5€ les 500g, qui peuvent durer plusieurs années) avec de l’eau) dans stylo pinceau rechargeable, crayon blanc (pinceau aquarelle avec eau pour fixer un peu), aquarelle blanche et quelques pointes de stylo-pinceau B jetable PITT artist pen (Faber Castel), le tout sur emballage de 6 paquets de semoule leader price :D.

Thème D’après élèves agités et parfois en plein travail.
Temps : aléatoire, selon remise dans la même position de l’élève agité, et dont de mémoire ou divination personnel (quelques secondes à plusieurs minutes).

I meet since long time a precision bug with my Wacom low-end Volito tablet and MyPaint. This tablet has got a very low precision: 512 level of pressure and then a very low approximation. The Linuxwacom driver send not-null values when stylus come near from tablet surface. This is probably linked to the low precision of this cheap tablet. The information ‘button 1 down’ is correctly only send when the stylus really touch the tablet with little pressure.

The Bolito2 and Bamboo are probably also affected by this behavior, if it’s the case, write a comment here please and thee effect of the workaround. If you see this behavior with xidump (included generally in Wacomtool package) write me a line.
xidump 'Wacom Volito'
to run it in my case.

As Mypaint fondamentally start to stroke as soon as pressure information is given, even if button down event is not sent, this cause to me some headhaches with residual strokes in my drawings. This bug (and following workaround) is also present for the great historic color (button 2) feature of actual SVN version of MyPaint.

The workaround as given by MyPaint author is to modify slightly the main pressure curve of MyPaint.
(Menu Edit=>Settings in pressure tab, shift slightly the left-bottom black square of the curve to the right, then press Save button (Warning, with high value, MyPaint v0.6.0 crash with some tools).

I managed to do another workaround of this bug by using a really low value in the configuration file created after the saving:
~/.mypaint/settings.conf
Thes values give good results:
global_pressure_mapping = [(0.0, 1.0), (0.011, 1.0), (1.0, 0.0)]
(0.011,1.0) values are rounded value after graphicaly playing with curve. I’m not sure exacly but value above about 1.5 or 2.0 (for x) crashed Mypaint with INK tool and pressure at max