Hi, I need some help. I have been playing with fonts and text and want to create some text with Hatched or Hachure (I think that is correct) inside the font. The process itself is not difficult. Select a suitable "fat" font, enlarge it, font to selection, Cut, stroke the selection. On a new layer copy the selection, shrink the selection and fill with a hatched pattern or brush.
This is where I would like some help with the pattern or brush. Vertical and Horizontal hachures brushes and patterns are easy to make with the pattern/grid generator.
To make a visually appealing "tilted" hachure pattern or brush is quite difficult. I find that even with a 45 degree rotation there are "nicks" in the lines. Personally, I like a tilt of around 22.5 , 25 -30 degrees. I have played for hours with the grid filter and rotating as well as the newsprint filter in line mode. Can anybody give me some other method or supply a nice brush (one that takes colour) ?
I attach some brushes and pattern to give some idea (hope I have attached the correct brush and Pattern. I have made bigger brushes but they are over 1.5 Mb so I did not include them

You can compress them with zip or 7z, and upload the compressed file

wbool63, that looks really nice; like the effect. Have downloaded - thank you so much for sharing.

Thank you Wooble for the nice pattern and brush.

You would obtain a cleaner result if you do "Text to Path" and stroke the path.


Probably not what you're seeking, but perhaps the following technique would be worth playing around with.

In the Blend Tool's Options dialog, choose the "FG to BG (Hardedge)" gradient and set the Repeat to either "Sawtooth" or "Triangle".

You can now draw on the canvas to create your hachure pattern. The length of your stroke determines the spacing of the lines. You can hold down the CTRL key to constrain the angles to 0, 22.5, 30, 45, et cetera. Turn on Supersampling to achieve a more natural appearance.

With a little experimenting, one can achieve fairly decent results.

Have a look at 10 GIMP PATTERN by graphicavita. They are very handy not only for the pattern, they are semi-transparent. In Gimp the Stripes and Stripes Fine patterns work in a similar way.

Thank You Saulgoode, I will certainly try to use your method of creating tilted parallel lines. It is exactly what I am looking for. I agree that stroking the path yields a better outline, but yesterday my concern was with the hatch!

@ Odin , Thank you for that link , I will have a closer look at that.

@ Keshef, Dalia and Molly , thank you for your replies


When I get it sorted out, I will make a small tut on this text method.

Hi, I have made a new set of brushes that take colour. I have made a few new texts with hatch or hachure.
This hatching method of fonts adds some interests to headings or sub headings (eg in Map titles) Here is one example using a somewhat "fat" font, using one colour only.

I include some reasonably believable hachure / hatch brushes.

I hope I have attached the correct brushes, I have a problem understanding the brush naming convention.
I will do a a tut of this method in a day or so, I am pretty strapped for time for a day or so.

I think it loos great.
How you used these brushes would be interesting to see in your tutorial. I'm looking forward to it.