Edit: I ended up going with my basic banners, I'll keep trying with the little knight image until I get it right but until then I guess it's basic stuff.

To be short, I've started doing the game streaming. I want to have some cool little banners that link to my twitter, maybe paypal (still not sure on a donate button), a youtube channel. You get the point. I can make simple little banners that look.... okay. The problem is that I'm mediocre at art. I use gimp and was wondering if anyone had any tips on using gimp to help make my horrible scribbles look a little better.

I've been at it now for about 5 hours total in the last three days. I have a horrible little armored knight that I refuse to show to anyone since it looks like a pile of trash.

Help, Please?!?

Are you using a mouse or a tablet?

If it's a tablet you can adjust the smoothness of the lines to make things more forgiving. For lineart stay away from the pencil or pen options. Use the paintbrush or the airbrush instead. Same for colouring. To stop the brush from changing shape or size as you ink or paint, you'll need to use pressure on the tablet.

GIMP is weird activating it.

The only way I could get it to work consistently is to make a new brush in GIMP and give it the dynamic properties of Size Vs. Pressure/Opacity. It's a bit of a chore, but it helps alot with your lines. Always use smoothstroke too and give the brush some weight between 50 and 100. It'll smooth out your line work.

Note that you can use the lasso tool for lines too, but it's timeconsuming. It's faster drawing lines in by hand. You just need a steady hand, practice and patience.

~ Pyre.
P.S: I suggest googling creating brushes in GIMP. Along with brush properties. This part does make lineart and painting in GIMP alot easier.

I've been using a mouse but I have one of those wacom bamboo tablets. I've never used it since I don't have a stylus for it. I've made brushes before though I'd have to look up setting the settings for it.

Well, if you already have the sketch / messy lineart (?) finished, maybe you can try this program? ---> http://paintschainer.preferred.tech.

It's an online program that colors your sketches for you. So even if you have messy sketches, a bit of color might make it look better. Honestly, I just started testing it out so I'm not sure if it needs transparent images (the one time I used it, I did have a transparent image) or if it will just start coloring white space.

I can't really help much until you go into detail about what you want to fix? Do you want cleaner lines? Or do you just not know how to draw armored knights? Are your coloring / effects awkward? I used to use GIMP so I can probably help there but it would help if you stated the exact issue you want to fix.

Good luck!

The big issue is I just suck doing this kind of stuff. My art skills are limited at best and for the most part I just hate how it looks. It's kinda like, I can see what I want it to look like, but I can't put it on paper and it look anything like I can see it in my head.

It's a knight, waist up, old style thick black border with kinda cartoonish features. What I have I scrapped. It was giving me a headache looking at it. I'm gonna try again on my day off. Worst case I guess I'll farm it out on commission but I didn't want to do that.

Np, I used to use a mouse too before I started using a tablet. And it took me about a year on and off to get used to using a tablet. Mouse is easier, but it's messier unless you have a steady hand. GIMP won't make life easy for you there. You'll really need to practice. I'd suggest hand-drawing on paper if you want to do art yourself. It's the only way to improve your hand-eye coordination.

It does take years to get better though.

Believe me. I know of artists ten years my junior that draw better than I do.

XD.

It's so humbling.

Doesn't help that I haven't used my tablet since last New Years.

Good luck.

~ Pyre