Grand Prize $200 - 2026 Garuda Artwork Contest

Garuda Community
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HI there everybody, and a big shout out to all the great artists in the Garuda community. :waving_hand: :smiley:

It’s that time of year again fellow Garudians, we’re about to kick off our annual Garuda Artwork Contest. This year the Garuda Artwork Contest should be bigger and better than ever, as we’ve made some changes that will hopefully make it an even greater success.

As a further enticement for artists to participate in this years contest, I’ve decided to increase this year’s prize money to $200 US. My hope is that the larger purse will help attract new artists to join the Garuda community. Hopefully, this will result in even more outstanding artwork being created this time around for our community to enjoy. So, be sure to let any of your artistically inclined friends know that there’s a good chunk of cash up for grabs in this year’s event.

Another change in this year’s contest will be that artwork created with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) will no longer be eligible to compete for the grand prize. Hopefully, this will encourage more participation from our distro’s traditional artists who felt that allowing AI artwork to compete for prize money was an unfair competitive advantage.

Even though AI artwork no longer qualifies for the grand prize, I still highly encourage community members to post their AI generated artwork on the contest thread. I’m sure many would love to see your AI artwork, so feel free to make your contribution to this thread as well. Please be sure that any artwork created with the assistance of artificial intelligence is identified as “AI Art”.

Good luck to everyone participating, and keep that great artwork coming. :+1:

Please see below for further information and full contest details:

Guidance on what type of art we’d like to see:

Devoloper’s Guidance

Artwork Wants & Expectations

Guidance on the best Linux Software for Creating Art

By @elite

How the Winning Artwork is Decided:

Voting

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2026 Garuda Artwork Contest - (Grand Prize $200)
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Contest Duration:

The 2026 Garuda Artwork Contest will run for an as yet undetermined duration. The contest will likely continue until just before the disto’s next ISO release date (unknown). Constant inquiries about any upcoming release date on this thread are inappropriate, and may be subject to deletion.

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Voting:

We require that only one individual image be included on each post per contest entry. The reason for this is that as with last year’s contest, the winner of the contest will be determined by the number of “likes” each individual piece of artwork receives. The individual (non AI) piece of artwork that garners the most “likes” during the contest will be declared the contest winner. In the unlikely event that the contest ends in a tie, I will serve as the tiebreaker and cast the deciding vote.

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Definitions:

“AI artwork” is defined as any piece of art that was made wholly, or in some part with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Any artwork posted during the contest that was fabricated using AI assistance must be clearly labeled as “AI art”. AI artwork may be posted, however it will no longer be eligible for the grand prize.

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Artwork Originality:

No artwork (AI or otherwise) may be posted during the contest that is based on the copyrighted works of others.

Posting remixes of non copyrighted material is permitted as long as you give attribution to the original artist.

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Artwork Wants & Expectations:

All artwork submitted during the contest should be at a minimum 1920 X 1080 in dimension. Including both 1080p and 4K resolution images would be highly appreciated, but is not a requirement. Providing a link to an external image hosting site would be be the best way to include multiple different resolutions of the same image. For voting clarity we only want one image included per each individual post/contest entry.

As you might expect, this being a Garuda artwork contest, submissions with the distro name “Garuda” overlaid on the image would also be greatly appreciated. Once the distro’s release name has been finalized, artists may also choose to incorporate the release name in their artwork as well.

Providing a download link for the original image (in different dimensions) with and without any release name incorporated into it would also be highly appreciated. This way Garudians may continue to use your original image as wallpaper long after the release name has been changed.

Posting images in some way related to a specific Garuda distro edition would be advantageous, (ie dragon images for the dragonized edition). However, images of a general nature are also welcome. Individual Garuda edition maintainers will be posting their guidance on the color palettes or image content they might be looking for, see suggestions below.

Guidance from the devolopers:

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Disclaimer:

The $200 grand prize winning piece of art is not explicitly guaranteed to be selected as the wallpaper for any/all Garuda releases. The Garuda developers may still decide to include pieces of AI artwork as a desktop wallpaper, or in a distro wallpaper pack. The artwork choices for the next Garuda release is completely up to the discretion of the developer of each individual Garuda edition.

Artist’s posting any submission during the duration of the contest are deemed to have given consent for their artwork to be featured as a Garuda desktop wallpaper, or in a Garuda wallpaper pack.

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Guidance on the best Linux Software for Creating Art

By @elite

Linux Software for Creating Art:

There are a few apps you can use for art, also some sites I use to get bits to add to a wallpaper or logo. There are others out there as well I wont list because they list things in the fine print of the TOS.

First the software:

For art with a drawing tablet there is Krita It works on any OS and if you like it you can grab it on steam to support the development. However currently you can not export as a svg without extra work.

For what I’m using this contest is Inkscape a Vector art program, while its not perfect it gets the job done. I do recommend checking its wiki if there’s a specific thing you would like to do with it as there’s a lot of things under the layers. LLMs just don’t have resent info from them and often lie about features just don’t waste your time.
If you want the global menu to work on kde with it you have to add GDK_BACKEND=x11 as a environment variable. You can do this by R clicking on the icon in the start menu and hitting properties.

There is also a up and coming vector program called Graphite you can get it in the aur or test it in the browser is in alpha so some main things are missing but they are working on it. I see it as a good replacement for Affinity Designer once it hits beta.

Two other get a mention Lazpaint and KDE’s Karbon I’ve only used them a few times but they work well at what they do.

Websites:

As for the websites I like to use for svgs I use https://freesvg.org/ now they don’t really separate things the best and you might see some questionable things depending on how you search. But its pretty much mush all free game unless stated in the arts description.
The other I use for fonts is https://www.fontspace.com/ you are looking for fonts that say on the right 100% free. Others are paid, personal use, or you must give credit. You can also filter out the non free.

How to install the fonts after you download them, Add them unziped to the .fonts folder in the home directory. After you have added the ones you want in terminal paste and run fc-cache -f -v this will rebuild the list and find the new fonts. Then you can open the software you are using.
If you want to now more on this you can check Rebuild Font Cache on Linux - Dave Lage
[/details]

There are other tools (Blender) and sites out there but this is what I use. Gimp is fine for touch up but I cant say its good for crenation.

As for DE’s if you use a drawing tablet KDE is by far the best, x11 is alright but they are putting in a lot of work to make it perfect on wayland for artists. But for all other things gnome, cosmic, hyprland etc all work fine. I have been doing this years works on Wayfire.

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Guidance from the distro devs on what type of art they’d like to see:

@garuda-team feel free to add your own specific wants to this section.

What @dr460nf1r3 would like to see:

  • A Catppuccin Mocha palette, Garuda-themed wallpaper.

What @FGD has in mind:

Usage of pre-existing color palettes:

  • This does not mean that all colors in each wallpaper must use exactly the same color palette, but if it’s too different it will make the wallpaper fit less well with the edition’s theme.

Respecting the mood, feeling, and the spirit of the theme.

  • Mokka aims at a smooth, slow, sleepy, subdued, and calming mood, (not retina burning eye strain).

  • Dr460nized aims at an adrenaline pumping high, shouting loudly in your face, bright and colourful aura.

Does this mean a dragon would not fit Mokka? It could! But you’d have to alter it to fit the proper mood. That is art. :slight_smile:

  • For example, a super cute baby dragon in the Mokka colors, sitting calmly by the Tree inlaid onto our current wallpaper. Now that’s funny! :slight_smile:

  • Don’t hesitate to be adventurous, think outside-the-box, and use your full imagination. Have some fun with it!

Please state which Edition(s) your art is for.

For those unfamiliar with the different editions color palettes and themes, there are examples of each on the Garuda downloads page.

Garuda Mokka - Catppuccin Theme: Mocha palette

@SGS kindly provided instructions on how to download and install the Catppuccin Theme (Mocha palette) for use with Inkscape.

@SGS’s method:

Download the Catppuccin (Mocha Palette) Theme files from here:

Paste the downloaded Catppuccin (Mocha Palette) Theme files into your ~/.config/inkscape/palettes/ directory.

╭─sgs@y7p in ~/.config/inkscape as 🧙 took 0s
🕙 08:39:24
╰─λ ls palettes/
.rw-r--r-- 531 sgs 21 Sep  2024  'Catppuccin Frappe.gpl'
.rw-r--r-- 530 sgs 21 Sep  2024  'Catppuccin Latte.gpl'
.rw-r--r-- 534 sgs 21 Sep  2024  'Catppuccin Macchiato.gpl'
.rw-r--r-- 530 sgs 21 Sep  2024  'Catppuccin Mocha.gpl'

Now within the Inkscape program select the Catppuccin (Mocha Palette) Theme.

grafik
grafik2794×328 50.4 KB

Garuda Dragonized Theme

@elite kindly provided the color codes he uses when creating art for the Dragonized theme:

Mid purple - #7F008A
Pink - #CF6EFF
Blue Purple - #6536E8
Cyan - #86E0FF

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I have a few more with this style to be posted later then back to a more normal style I typically do.


(Rustic Garuda)

(Mokka, Hyprland, Dragonized, i3, Cosmic)

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i3wm :smiley:

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(Mokka, Dragonized, i3, Gnome, XFCE)

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Can you state for which edition(s) your 2 wallpapers are intended for?

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Xfce, i3wm and the Rest :wink::hugs:

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garuda-tillidie-170
garuda-tillidie-1701920×1080 238 KB

Any edition

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(Garuda Cube)

(All DE’s) Since it’s a dark version of the eagle.

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Idea from, tbg

(Any DE/OS)

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Garuda_landscapemoka12
Garuda_landscapemoka121920×1080 140 KB

DE Mokka :smiley:

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(KDE, Gnome, I3, Cosmic)

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