Drawing Smooth Curves with Gimp

Paths and the ability to work with them should be in the repertoire of any serious gimper. It’s about the only way to make smooth, complicated curves. In this tutorial, we’ll see just how easy it can be to use paths and in doing so, create an arch.

To start with, create a new image on a white background. In the main Gimp toolbox, select the Path tool. On the image, place anchor points more or less as shown below. Note that the anchor points will automatically be joined by lines and to close the path, you need to hold down on the CTRL key as you click on the first anchor you laid.

With the anchors laid, click on the lines that connect them and drag them up until you get something that looks this.

What we’ve got now is very rough. Click on the anchors and some handles should pop out. These control how the path enters the anchor. Play around with them until you get a feel for how they work. If you want to control both handles at once, hold down on the shift key. Sometimes you’ll miss the mark and might create another anchor point. You can remove it easily by holding down SHIFT+CTRL and click on it.

For the next couple of steps, we’ll need the Path Dialog. It can be opened underneath the Dialog menu (Dialog -> Paths). In this dialog, you should see our new path. At the bottom of the dialog, there’s a button “Path to Selection”. It’s the one that resembles a selected rectangle. Hit this button once to convert your path to a selection. Then fill it with a gradient.