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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simple “starburst” effect tutorial.

This tutorial details how to achieve the simple “starburst” effect using inkscape. The method in this tutorial shows how to do this by manually creating clones and rotating them, which is not the most efficient way to achieve this effect. Check out the Official Inkscape Tutorial, “Tips and Tricks” for how to use Tiled Clones to make this effect quicker and easier to achieve.

using inkscape to illustrate tomatoes

here is yet another awesome tutorial from kalaalog, this subject of illustration this time is a bunch of tomatoes.

a simple drop shadow tutorial for inkscape

If you are looking for a simple technique for creating shadows of simple objects, this is your tutorial.

How to Illustrate A Reddish Pink Hibiscus Flower Using Inkscape

here is another awesome tutorial from the equally fantastic kalaalog. This tutorial demonstrates how to Illustrate A Reddish Pink Hibiscus Flower in Inkscape. As always, the link to the tutorial is after the jump…

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/

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

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.

Drawing a compass graphic with inkscape.

Here is a neat workflow showing how to create a fairly detailed compass graphic by adding and editing simple shapes. This is a great tutorial for inkscape beginners, as it is well communicated, and intoduces simple inkscape operations like node editing. As always the link to the tut is after the break.

draw a snowman with inkscape

this is a simple tutorial that shows you how to illustrate a simple snowman 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

 

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.

draw a feather

a simple, yet highly effective tutorial for drawing feathers…

view this tutorial 

awesome peacock feather tutorial

an awesome, detailed step by step for illustrating a peacock feather using inkscape. (special thanks to Khiraly for suggesting this one…)

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

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

inkscape interface introduction

this tutorial is a fairly detailed overview of the inkscape interface.
it basically covers what you see when you first open inkscape.

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

Inkscape Tutorial by heathenx: Create Tiled Clones

here is another cool video tutorial by heathenx.
In it he demonstrates basic use to the tiled clones feature in inkscape. with the tiled clones he creates a simple checkerboard background.

view this tutorial

Official Inkscape Tutorial: Tips and Tricks

This tutorial is the webpage version of the “Tips and Tricks” tutorial that comes bundled with inkscape. To view these tutorials as an SVG just go to Help>Tutorials in inkscape.

It covers the following tips:
Radial placement with “Tile Clones”, How to do slicing (multiple rectangluar export areas), Non-linear gradients, Excentric radial gradients, Aligning to the center of the page, Cleaning up the document, Clipping or masking a bitmap, Hidden features and the XML editor, Stamping, Pen tool tricks, Entering Unicode values, Using the grid for drawing icons, Object rotation, Open dialog as an object palette, Bitmap drop shadows, Placing text on a path, Selecting the original, Window off-screen recovery, Transparency, gradients and PostScript export

 

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Official Inkscape Tutorial: Calligraphy

This tutorial is the webpage version of the “Calligraphy” tutorial that comes bundled with inkscape. To view these tutorials as an SVG just go to Help>Tutorials in inkscape.

It is a fairly in depth introduction into the calligraphy tool and its various options.

 

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Official Inkscape Tutorial: Tracing a Bitmap

This tutorial is the webpage version of the “Tracing a Bitmap” tutorial that comes bundled with inkscape. To view these tutorials as an SVG just go to Help>Tutorials in inkscape.

view this tutorial

Official Inkscape Tutorial: Shapes

This tutorial is the webpage version of the “Shapes” tutorial that comes bundled with inkscape. To view these tutorials as an SVG just go to Help>Tutorials in inkscape.

This tutorial covers all the basics on using shapes in inkscape. How to draw, resize and manipulate rectangles, ellipses, spirals, stars & polygons.

view this tutorial