@Quayuazue How very inventive of you! :)

The trees look ok, but it shouldn't take too long to trace the shape if you can't find one you like by googling it

If you find a perfect bitmap example of a reasonable size that is black and white, and then if you remove the white from the image in an image editor and import the resulting transparent png, you can either use that as your symbol, or you can use TRACED on it to create your own vector one.

The orange band of the Earthworm?

At the moment it's gone, but I could have both versions if you want them.

Every now and then I get asked how I make the textures - the seamless bitmap tiles I add to new styles.

For a long time now its been the same answer, and one that I've been increasingly troubled about giving because the main node-driven procedural texture generating software I've been using for the past 5 years now became abandonware probably about 2 years ago and shouldn't really be recommended because the image library is no longer available - and while you can add your own photos the image library is quite a big part of it.

The second bit of software I use is Krita, which is a free bitmap app that has a wraparound mode that allows you to hand draw seamless tiles. However, Krita brushes are remarkably complicated to create, so you tend to get a bit stuck with the default brushes (as I do), or have to buy brushes made by other artists which might not be what you want.

However, today I purchased the latest version of Artrage (Artrage Vitae) and discovered you can now hand draw seamless tiles by activating the two tile options available under the Advanced tab of the Canvas Settings dialog, from the View menu. I've told you these details because it took me 2 hours of really intensive googling to find out how to activate it. Apart from this little difficulty, once you've found it making hand painted seamless tiles in Artrage is a lot easier than in Krita - mainly because Artrage is better designed for casual use as a painting app and doesn't have a seriously complicated brush engine.

So here is a 5 minute example I did earlier with the tiling switched off.

With left and right tile activated...

And with top and bottom tile activated.

Yes, I managed to make them look quite a lot more scary by removing the broad band and making them less like actual Earthworms than before ;)

Its strange isn't it. Something can be made far more scary by making it even just slightly abnormal in some relatively small way. Maybe it's because we don't have a memory of seeing it in real life and have to look twice, before failing to identify it?

Oh, I did a rafflesia flower for Joe, and cheated by using a scaled down worm body as the short stem from the roots. They just pop up out of the ground, but I thought it would look a bit more creepy with a long worm-like stem. Maybe when I've done some mummies and things like that it will be even more creepy having them appear to be growing out of the bodies.

Hi everyone :)

In tomorrow's live mapping session Ralf will be tackling a journey map in Allyn Bowker's great "strip maps" style.

Come along and join in, or watch later :)