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.

Digg this! | reddit

Create a Lightbulb Icon that follows the tango! guidelines.

Here is another great inkscape tutorial from vectortuts, demonstrating how to create a vector lightbulb icon within the tango! icon guidelines.

This tutorial is a great overview on using inkscape for drawing icons.  For an overview on managing your workflow in inkscape while designing icons, see the previously posted tutorial, “creating icons with inkscape – a basic workflow.”

Also, be sure to check out the vectortuts website. Even though there are only a handful of inkscape tutorials posted there, if you have intermediate to advanced inkscape skills, you may be able to apply some of the techniques from the other tutorials hosted there.

Note: This tutorial only demonstrates the process to create the light bulb icon above. The image below is a random subset of images that are in the tango! icon library. To get the tango! icons, including icons in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, visit the download page on the tango! website.

Creating Icons with an on the table perspective.

One of my fellow fedora artTeam members, Martin Sourada has created a great tutorial for creating icons with an ‘on the table’ perspective.

This particular tutorial links closely to the echo icon theme that the fedora artTeam are working on at the moment, but contains useful elements that can help with all icon design in inkscape.

creating icons with inkscape – a basic workflow

Updated: This tutorial has been updated and enhanced, so be sure to check it out again!

Here is another great tutorial for everyone’s favourite open source vector graphics editor. (that would be inkscape…)

Today’s tutorial outlines a basic workflow for creating, tweaking and exporting icons with inkscape. If you need some more icon tutorials check out the icon category

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.

all languages:

postage stamps in inkscape – a tutorial by nicu

here is another awesome tutorial by nicu. In it he demonstrates how to create simple postage stamps using Inkscape. What is really nice about this tutorial is that nicu demonstrates the 3 different ways of aligning circles around the edge of the rectangle to get the perforated edge effect that postage stamps have…

this tutorial is well worth a look.

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 

SVG-tastic icons

Very nice and easy to follow tutorial on how to create multi-coloured SVG icons with Inkscape.
(Thanks to Prokoudine for suggesting this tutorial…)

View this Tutorial

digg story

simple clouds tutorial

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

view this tutorial 

a simple icon tutorial

here is a nice little tutorial for how to create a simple icon using inkscape.

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 

Inkscape Tutorial by heathenx: Create a Paper Clip

A video tutorial by heathenx that shows you how to make a simple paperclip in inkscape. This tutorial also serves as a good introduction into basic path and curve manipulation.

Result of this tutorial:

 

 Here is the tutorial:

Inkscape Tutorial by heathenx: Create a File Folder

here is yet another cool video tutorial from heathenx. In this one, he demonstrates how to create a simple yet still pretty good looking file folder.

view this tutorial

Creating a “Web 2.0 style” Badge in Inkscape v.45.

here is a cool tutorial for creating a simple star shaped badge in inkscape. it is nice and detailed and provides step-by-step screenshots to make it really easy.

view this tutorial

icon creation

here is a super-simple tutorial that shows the simple workflow of creating a very nice looking icon using inkscape. the resulting icon from this tutorial is actually an image in the open clip art library

 view this tutorial

Quick Shiny Buttons in inkscape – video tutorial