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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Creating a Business Card Template and Basic Business Card with Inkscape

Here is a great tutorial for creating business cards using Inkscape. This tutorial has two main sections.

The first details how to create a printer ready template from a PDF guide using clones and guides. Using clones in this fashion to create a template in inkscape is awesome; once the template is created correctly, the changes that are made to the original populate thoughout the rest of the tempate!

The second section provides a detailed process for creating a basic business card (with a nifty pinstripe background). This portion of the tutorial is a great introduction into basic fill / stroke techniques, pattern fills and text editing and kerning.

This tutorial is published by worldlabel.com , a maker of labels. Worldlabel are quite active over at the open clip art library producing the “Clipart of the Week” and have also donated a substantial amount of public domain clipart to the library.

Intoduction to gradient creation and manipulation in inkscape.

Here is a great tutorial providing a detailed and easy to comprehend introduction to creating and manipulating gradients using inkscape. It is aimed at the absolute beginner, but even the seasoned inkscape professional may glean a useful tip from this comprehensive tutorial. It also inadvertently provides a great introduction to the most useful dialog in Inkscape: Fill and Stroke.

Realistic Guitar Tutorial

In this tutorial,  Nick Roberts [ of Everlong Design] demonstrates in detail how to illustrate a “Fender Stratocaster” type guitar.

This tutorial is close to one of the best inkcape tutorials out there.  The final result is stunning, and the author has detailed the steps superbly with many super useful screen shots. The author even details the hex values of all the colours that are used. Be sure to check it out and leave feedback on the tutorial itself. More positive feedback to the tutorials authors means more higher quality inkscape tutorials for all…

Creating a Coffee Cup using inkscape

This is a detailed tutorial on creating an impressive coffee cup using inkscape.

Drawing a manga character using inkscape.

While this video is not a tutorial per se, it provides a great insight into how a more complicated inkscape drawing is constructed. It is basically a step – by – step construction of all the objects in the drawing put into a neat little video. Below is a thumb of the finished product that can be viewed at the artist’s deviantart page.

The video (hosted on youtube) is embedded after the thumb, so you may not be able to view it if you are reading though an feed reader.

Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNTeoHeGMQY

http://halley.deviantart.com/

http://halley.cc/

Create a Metal Orb using inkscape

Here is a great tutorial on making a metal orbs from chrisdesign.

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!

chrome text effect

Here is a detailed tutorial that demonstrates how to create chrome text using inkscape.

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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Illustrating Basic 3D looking objects in Inkscape

here is a good tutorial on creating basic 3d looking objects using inkscape.

drawing a simple axe using inkscape.

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

a Quick Guide to Inkscape

this is an awesome quick guide into some of the basics of inkscape.

it is a great introductory guide and a great quick reference guide for inkscape

it covers:

• working with paths
• working with objects
• working with groups
• working with clips and paths
• working with layers
• working with gradients

 

Reflecting images on surfaces with Inkscape (and the GIMP): a tutorial by nicu

Here is another tutorial by Nicu that shows you in detail how to achieve the reflected surfaces effect. This tutorial covers how to achieve this in Inkscape first. Nicu then covers how to do it in the GIMP.

The ultimate guide for creating shiny web buttons with Inkscape – by nicu

Basically, the title of this tutorial says it all…

 view this tutorial

shiny arrows tutorial: by nicu

here is a cool little tutorial that tells you how to create the shiny / glossy arrow using inkscape. This is great for inkscape newbies that want to learn the inkscape by producing a simple, yet still pretty glossy arrow.

On a side note, if you like this tutorial, or achieve the glossy effect via a different workflow, make sure you write a tutorial, and post it on your blog/website. Its good to see other people’s workflow in the form of tutorials… (click here for more info on my blatant tutorial push…)

Check it out, and leave a comment!

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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a quick globe – video tutorial

here is a little video tutorial on how to create a globe using inkscape:

view this tutorial

simple clouds tutorial

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

view this tutorial 

Inkscape Tutorial – Using Gradient Over Multiple Objects

a tutorial that shows the technique to use a single gradient over multiple objects.

view this tutorial 

text reflection using inkscape

here is a great little tutorial that shows you how to use inkscape’s masking to achieve the trendy text reflection effect that is everywhere nowdays…

view this tutorial

A tutorial by simarilius: Faking irregular gradients in inkscape

it is not actually possible to make a gradient shaped like a curve in inkscape.

however, you can fake it - heres how: (for a smoother finish try also adding a blur to everything after the last step of this tutorial… )

 

 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 

sticker with a folded / dog ear edge

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

 view this tutorial

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Photographic Photos

 by sim…
here nice tutorial for making your photos on the screen look a bit more like they were printed out.
It demonstrates how to add a simple frame, shading and a curvy shadow.

This is an SVG tutorial with a linked bitmap, so you need to download the zip file, and extract it for it to work correctly…

PLEASE NOTE: This tutorial was done before the release of inkscape version 0.45 and the blur filter is now implemented in the software. this means that for the shadow step, you just need to draw the rectangle and blur it, no need to bother with the interpolation any more

 

View this tutorial

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