Brushes and Filled Shapes in GDI+

We can draw a closed shape, such as a rectangle or an ellipse, is filled with a brush. GDI+ provides several brush classes for filling the interiors of closed shapes: SolidBrush, HatchBrush, TextureBrush, LinearGradientBrush, and PathGradientBrush.

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Solid Brushes

To fill a closed shape, you need an instance of the Graphics class and a Brush. The instance of the Graphics class provides methods, such as FillRectangle and FillEllipse, and the Brush stores attributes of the fill, such as color and pattern. The Brush is passed as one of the arguments to the fill method.

The following code example shows how to fill a rectangle with a solid color red:

'create solid brush object Dim mySolidBrush As New SolidBrush(Color.Red) 'draw a rectangle and fill with a solid color red g.FillRectangle(mySolidBrush, 5, 5, 200, 100)  

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Hatch Brushes

We can fill a closed shape with a hatch brush. To fill a closed shape with a hatch brush, we need to create a HatchBrush object. To draw a closed shape call the fill method of the Graphics object, such as FillEllipse or FillRectangle.

The following code example shows how to fill a rectangle with a hatch brush:

'create hatch brush object Dim myHatchBrush As New HatchBrush(HatchStyle.Vertical, Color.Blue, Color.Green) 'draw a rectangle and fill with a solid color red g.FillRectangle(myHatchBrush, 5, 5, 200, 100)  

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Texture Brushes

With a texture brush, you can fill a shape with a pattern stored in a bitmap.

To fill a shape with a texture brush, we need to create a TextureBrush object. Then to draw a filled shape, call the fill method of the Graphics object.

The following code example shows how to fill a rectangle with a texture brush:

'create texture object Dim myTexture As Image = Image.FromFile("MyTexture.bmp") 'create texture brush object Dim myTextureBrush As New TextureBrush(myImage) 'draw filled rectangle with a texture brush g.FillRectangle(myTextureBrush, 0, 0, 100, 50)  

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Gradient Brushes

GDI+ provides two kinds of gradient brushes: linear and path. You can use a linear gradient brush to fill a shape with color that changes gradually as you move across the shape horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

A path gradient brush can be configured to change color as you move from the center of a shape toward the edge.

The following code example shows how fill a shape with a linear gradient brush:

'create a rectangle object Dim myRectangle As New Rectangle(0, 0, 200, 100) 'create a linear gradient brush object Dim myLinearGradientBrush As New LinearGradientBrush( myRectangle, Color.Blue, Color.Green, LinearGradientMode.Horizontal) 'draw filled ellipse with a linear gradient brush myGraphics.FillEllipse(myLinearGradientBrush, myRectangle)  

The following code example shows how to fill a shape with a path gradient brush:

'creare Path object Dim gp As New GraphicsPath gp.AddEllipse(0, 0, 200, 200) 'create path gradient brush object Dim pgb As New PathGradientBrush(gp) pgb.CenterColor = Color.Blue 'draw a filled path myGraphics.FillPath(pgb, gp)