Seeing as my user name is He4rty (Pronounced Hearty), I thought I'd make a quick tutorial on making a heart shape in Gimp, as well as learning how to create a heart quickly and easily this tutorial will hopeful show you some of the ways in which you can use the selection tools.

1. Create a new image in Gimp 512px * 512px and fill with Black, Go>View and just check to make sure "Show Guides" is ticked, if not click on the phrase in the menu. Then Go>Image>Guides>New Guides and add a Horizontal and vertical guide at 256px, Finally Go>Layer>New Layer and Rename Layer to "Heart" and check Transparency then click O.K.



2. From the toolbox select the "Ellipse Select Tool" and change the settings too,
"Add to Current Selection" and Check the options "Expand from Centre", "Fixed Aspect Ratio", change the fixed ratio to 4:3, then starting from our guide cross begin to draw an ellipse selection until the first size box shows a value of 384 (I've Highlighted the box in the image below).



3. From the toolbox select the "Rectangle Select Tool" and change the setting to "Subtract From Current Selection" , Nothing else needs to be checked. Starting on the Vertical guide draw a rectangle selection that is larger than the top half of our original ellipse selection.



You should notice that the marching ants around our selection now only shows the bottom half of the original ellipse we created as the selection.

4. From the toolbox select the "Ellipse Selection Tool" again and just change the fixed ratio to 4:2.25, then starting from our guide cross begin to draw an ellipse selection until the first size box shows a value of 384.



You should notice that the marching ants around our selection now shows a very strange looking ellipse shape.

5. From the toolbox select the "Rotate Tool" and change "Transform Mode" to "Selection" . Click anywhere on the layer to bring up the "Rotate Tool" dialogue and change rotation to 45 and click rotate.



6. From the toolbox select the "Rectangle Select Tool" and change the setting to "Subtract From Current Selection" , Nothing else needs to be checked. Starting on the Horizontal guide draw a rectangle selection that is larger than the right side of our ellipse selection.



You should notice that the marching ants around our selection now shows half a heart shape.

7. From the toolbox select the "Bucket Fill Tool" and change your foreground colour to a nice Red (I used FF0000) and fill your Selection.

8. From the toolbox select the "Flip Tool" and change "Affect Mode" to "Selection" , Make sure "Horizontal" is checked, then click anywhere on your layer to flip your selection.



9. From the toolbox select the "Bucket Fill Tool" and fill your new flipped Selection. Go>Select>None to remove the Selection and Go>View and untick "Show Guides", Now sit back and admire your new heart.



Can I encourage you to experiment with the ratio sizes and the rotation amount but just remember your top ellipse needs to have a smaller fixed ratio than your bottom ellipse.

Thanks, he4rty. You brought out another interesting and easy to follow tutorial.

Among other things, now I know how your nickname must be pronounced indeed, while I mentally read it as "He Forty" by mistake so far.

I am attaching a snapshot of the heart shaped selection that I obtained with slightly changing the values of some of the reported settings, as I locked the aspect ratio of the top ellipse to 4:2.75 and set the angle of rotation to 35 degrees.
For causing the heart to come out hollow, I duplicated the relevant layer, scaled the layer copy to 80% and converted its alpha channel to the selection across which I cleared the former layer.
Lastly I locked the alpha channel of the layer containing the hollow heart and filled it with the "Incandescent" gradient, choosing "Shaped (spherical)" as a shape variant.

Thanks for the tut he4rty!

Interesting. I've always created hearts using the paths tool, which takes a bit of practice.

Nice tute He4rty, made it into a pdf to try later.

Thank you he4rty and thanks for the PDF Molly.

Gino - Nice results
Odinbc - Like the apple logo!!!
Mike - Nice results.
Molly - Thanks for the pdf.

I'm sure something better could be achieved, have a search for heart puzzle box on the net.

Thanks for this excellent tutorial. The steps are clear and easy to follow and I have nice red heart.

he4rty: this looks like fun . i've always used the paths tool for heart shapes, but this looks like something i could play around with for some time and get new ideas out of.

Good job of getting people used to the full features of selections.
Ronounours recently added the Hearts option to G'mics Rendering menu too.
Decided to tart up my results with some sprite packing.

You're going to get fed up of hearing me say this but beautiful work again fluffy!

fluffybunny: yeah, i agree with erisian, that's really nice looking! good job.

AnMal - Thanks for the Comment
Fluffy - Nice work on the image.

I really like what you did there Fluffy. The gold background really sets it out against the red.