Basic textures in GIMP: Elastic band

Overview

This mini guide shows how to create a basic elastic band in GIMP from scratch.

Required tools

• GIMP

Creating a basic cloth texture

RGB noise window

Motion blur window

Elastic Band texture

1. First of all create a new square image. For this tutorial I've created a 512x512 image, but you can use any size you want.
2. Fill the image completely with a grey color. For this tutorial I've used the 8f8f8f color.
3. Add a lot of noise to the image:
   1. Select the menu option Filters -> Noise -> RGB Noise.
   2. A window will pop-up like the one in picture RGB noise window. Uncheck the Independent RGB flag and set a high value in the noise boxes (I've set it to 1.0, the maximum, but you can try different values)
   3. Press OK to close the window and wait until GIMP has finished adding the noise to your image.
4. Next step is to add motion blur to the image:
   1. Select the menu option Filters -> Blur -> Motion Blur.
   2. A window will pop-up like the one in picture Motion blur window. Set the blur type to "Linear", the Angle to 0 and the length to the 256 (the maximum value).
   3. Press OK to close the window and wait until GIMP has finished adding the blur to your image. your image will look now like the one in picture Image after adding blur.
5. Add a ltittle more contrast to the stripes:
   1. Select the menu option "Colours -> Brightness-Contrast ..." and lower the brightness (I've used a value of -20) and increase the contrast (I've set it to + 70).

Now your image looks like the one shown in picture Elastic Band texture. You can add any color to the elastic band texture you've created using any of the colour tools blender provides or by adding a new layer, add colour to it and merging it down with the texture.