10 of the Best Inkscape Tutorials

With the readership of the inkscape tutorials weblog steadily increasing over the past year, there are many great tutorials deep in the blog archives that newer readers may not have discovered yet. Therefore to celebrate the forthcoming milestone of 1.5 million page views of this site, we have decided to list the top 10 inkscape tutorials that have been featured on the inkscape tutorials blog to date.

Text and Simple Styling An awesome tutorial from Troy Sobotka detailing how to create a colourful outset text effect.

Creating a Business Card Template and Basic Business Card with Inkscape Create a business card template using inkscape, and learn how to populate it with a simple business card design.

Shattered, Smashed and Grungy Text in Inkscape A step by step on creating a smashed and grungy text effect using inkscape..

Create a Lightbulb Icon that follows the tango! guidelines. This tutorial provides a detailed how-to on creating a lightbulb icon that uses the tango! icon set guidelines.

Create an impressive stick man cartoon character / avatar A super detailed guide to creating a stick man cartoon character using inkscape.

Draw A Realistic Vector Guitar in Inkscape In this tutorial,  Nick Roberts demonstrates in detail how to illustrate a “Fender Stratocaster” type guitar. The final result is stunning, and the author has detailed the steps superbly with many super useful screen shots.

Creating a Coffee Cup using inkscape Another detailed and impressive tutorial from the vectortuts website. This tutorial demonstrates how to draw a coffee cup using inkscape.

How to make RPG map elements with inkscape. This is a great tutorial on creating RPG map symbols using inkscape. The tutorial outlines a workflow for creating a simple jailhouse RPG element.

chrome text effect From the same author as the “Text and Simple Styling tutorial”, Here is a another that demonstrates how to create chrome text effect using inkscape.

sticker with a folded / dog ear edge here is a cool tutorial for creating a simple sticker / decal with a folded down edge.

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Create an impressive stick man cartoon character / avatar

Here is another tutorial / in depth guide on creating cartoon characters by one of my favourite inkscape tutorialists, David Shaw. A while back, he published an awesome guide to creating a simple cartoon character in the tutorial Slime to Start.

This time he has created another in-depth guide to character creation with Inkscape, and this time the goal is to create a cute cartoon stick man with a style similar to the Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew. Once again, David goes into immense detail of his entire creative process, and the result is a great introduction to inkscape with an awesome result.

For those of you interested in cartooning in inkscape, make sure you check out the following screenshot by Inkscape artist / developer, John Bintz (of Moment of Clarity fame.) It outlines the workflow that John goes through tracing, tweaking and inking his cartoons. Note that the screenshot is done before the 0.46 paint bucket tool came out (which i am pretty sure john had a hand in developing) so cartooning in inkscape is even easier.

howto illustrate a chinese dragon using inkscape

here is another great tutorial from kalaalog, in this one the entire workflow to illustrate a chinese style dragon, from concept sketches to finish product is outlined. This tutorial is in two parts, the link after the break links to part 1, and there is a link at the end of that to part 2 of this tutorial.

pac-man ghosts / baddies tutorial

nicu has outdone himself again. Not only has he created a tutorial for creating cool pacman baddies, but he has again put his results into the public domain for all to download, and this time he has also done a screencast of his process… enjoy!

How to make RPG map elements with inkscape.

Here is yet another awesome tutorial from Nicu a great tutorial for creating RPG map symbols using inkscape. In this “How it was made”, Nicu outlines a workflow for creating a simple jailhouse RPG element. Nicu is a major contributor to the Open Clip Art Library, and he has placed a large collection (50+ drawings) of these RPG map symbols into the public domain. You can also download the whole package from his own clipart gallery. Comments and praise should be left at Nicu’s Blog post for this tutorial.

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drawing a simple axe using inkscape.

here is a simple yet effective procedure for drawing an axe using inkscape.

cute pencil icon tutorial

here is a tutorial for creating a cute pencil icon using inkscape.

view this tutorial 

Create A Shield Icon

This video tutorial demonstrates how to create a simple yet effective sheild icon using inkscape 0.45.

view this tutorial 

I can’t draw but I want to draw people faces (with Inkscape) : a tutorial by nicu

here is a tutorial by nicu that i have been waiting a long time for…

it is called:  I can’t draw but I want to draw people faces (with Inkscape)

it is really cool, so check it out!

 view this tutorial
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simple clouds tutorial

here is a simple tutorial that show you how to use inkscape to create cartoony clouds.

view this tutorial 

simple starfish tutorial

here is a super-simple tutorial for creating a starfish character in inkscape.
great for a beginner to learn easy object manipulation.

 view this tutorial

drawing a pack of dynamite using inkscape

here is a very nifty tutorial that shows you how to draw a pack of dynamite using inkscape. this tutorial has no step – by step instructions, but a whole lot of diagrams and arrows. it is a different approach to a lot of the tutorials out there, but i like it cos it makes you think a bit more.

view this tutorial 

slime to start: creating simple cartoon characters in inkscape

here is an in-depth tutorial on creating a simple cartoon character in inkscape.
it follows the complete workflow through research, initial sketches, creating inkscape objects, and finishing of your slime.
all in all a very cool little tutorial.

 view this tutorial