Before we begin, I must mention and credit "Carbonfour" for the first part of this tutorial. His
website no longer exists, his
Deviant Art profile is outdated, and I'm not certain this
tutorial exists anywhere other than through the Wayback machine. But credit where credit is due and all that jazz.
0. Being true to the above tutorial, first create a new image. Since I like working with large images then scaling them when I'm done, this image will be 800x600. Fill the background color with #001ab5
1. Change your active color to white. Grab a 35x35 or so fuzzy brush and fill up the majority of the image with connected, fairly random strokes. Start at the edges, but leave some padding from the border. Similar to my image or the Carbonfour version.
2. Go to Filters > Blur > Motion Blur and
use these settings. Run it a second time (ctrl+f).
3. Go to Colors > Curves.
Use these settings.
4. Run Motion Blur twice again (ctrl+f). This is where I began experimenting 9 years ago. You should, as well, using the below only as a guideline.
5. I tiled the image using Filter > Map > Tile. I allowed it to tile three full times in width only: since I started with an 800px image, I made the length 2400. This opened in a new image. This was me; if I were you, I'd just tile it twice. I did this so I could make the image rather tall.
6. Make a copy of the original layer, and use the move tool to offset it/moved to the left or right by 400px (half the original width). I then set the layer filtering mode to "Lighten Only."
7. Flatten the image. (Image > Flatten Image.)
8. Make a new background with the color being the predominant background color in your shape (in this example, it's 00002f). Make this your background color in your active color palette for the next step.
9. Next, go to Image > Canvas size and make the image square (2400x2400). Be sure to hit the "center" button.
10. Run filters > Guassian Blur. Choose RLE, and set the horizontal blur to about 50 (0 for vertical).
11. Run Filters > Distort >Polar Coords.
Note: GIMP crashed in the middle of this tutorial (three 2400x2400 images with multiple layers open at once could crash it. Who knew?), so I'm working off of a smaller version for the next two steps. This is 1600x1600, but is using the exact same shape from earlier. The XCF file included at the end is from the above steps.
12. Here's where it gets tricky. Making multiple copies of this circular shape, I sort of wove them together at the edges to make one long, continuous, vertical stream. Each layer above the original should have the layer filter "Lighten Only" to preserve the lighter areas and weave them together.
13. Using the crop tool, I made one narrow image from the selection available. This turns out to be a 180x1600 image.
From here on out, you should experiment. Use different blending modes, blur, etc. It's all about adding your own style to it. Included is an example xcf file to get you started--complete with descriptions of each layer if necessary.
My end result.Download the XCF file.
