Posts

Ok, I'm not one of the worlds great artists. I've done a few decent tiles - people have even been kind enough to give me a five every now and then. I've also done several utterly crap tiles so it all balances out in the end. I've never made a serious attempt at digital art beyond tiling (at least, not since I was 11 and I used to play a lot with the rotating colour thing in Deluxe Paint on the Amiga).

One thing I have noticed about this site is that every now and then, even some of the best tilers, even the holy ICE members themselves, end up with those embarrassing grey lines around a tile (in the case of the more advanced quilts, such tiles are usually checked back out to the artist with a stern little note, so the grey lines never last for long). I've noticed several today, so I thought I'd share with you my sure fire way of avoiding these things - it hasn't failed me yet and a couple of people have even gone "oh yeah, that's kinda clever" when I've told them about it. BTW, I'm using photoshop 5.5 here. People tiling with a program that doesn't have layers... umm... sorry.

Step 1: Make a new image, of whatever size the drawing area in your tile is (eg 128*128 for most main quilts). Just a plain background. Then Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C to select & copy it. This will give you a nice rectangle of exactly the right size.

Step 2: Flip over to the tile and paste (Ctrl-v). Your rectangle should be automatically pasted right in the middle of the tile - exactly where you want it.

Step 3: Make a duplicate of the background layer- the actual original tile image.

Step 4: Flip back to your rectangles layer and use the wand tool to select the inside of the rectangle.

Step 5: Flip back to your background duplicate layer and Ctrl-X. This should give you a layer that contains only your borders, with a nice perfect "draw here" sized hole in the middle. Move this layer to the top of your layer pile and never touch it again.

Step 6: Do all of your drawing on layers stacked under your border layer. This allows you to blend perfectly with the edges but, if you're clumsy like me, you don't have to worry about accidentally painting over them and munging your blending efforts. You also don't have to worry about stopping at or before the edges of the "draw here" area - a boon if you're using blurs or smudges near the edge because you won't accidentally catch the grey checkers.

Anyway, that's the way I do it... I'm sure others have come across this or similar techniques but enough tiles appear with unsightly lines and grey smudges around the edge to suggest that some people could benefit from this post.

I'm looking for a partner to do a private quilt with -- themed much like the labyrinth and railroad quilts are. Less surreal as defining a surreal space (with a definite ground and sky that builds). I think with two people this project is a bit more feasible -- almost like building a painting one block at a time. We can do it either by disorganized collaboration or by surrealism, either way is fine with me. I thought it would be neat to do it with another female tiler. so if you don't want to participate, could you name some other active female tilers that you might recommend?

Thanks a bunch. I can get your more info in #tiles later tonight, if you are around (EST).

miskate made a good work on babel quilt
but , there is someone

(she had only one vote so far on each tile before i did vote)

who voted on EACH tile 0 (zero)

so this is obviously from someone not nice
cause the tiles are good

it is really sad to see that

thanks for giving me ur hard earned money Caitlin) :) very apresiated :)
explanation of the evil gamma problem is in the tile bw:)