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.

simple text effect: outline styling.

here is another awesome tutorial from Troy Sobotka (author of the chrome text tutorial). This tutorial details how to create the following outlined text effect:

Shattered, Smashed and Grungy Text in Inkscape

here is a step by step howto on creating a shattered text effect.

view this tutorial

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.

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…

drawing chain links in inkscape

here is a nice little tutorial on illustrating chain links using inkscape.

drawing gears in inkscape – a howto by nicu.

UPDATE: Nicu has been posting incremental updates on this tutorial on his blog… to date there are 3 parts in total:

1. Drawing the Gears
2. Colouring the Gears – Golden Gears
3. Colouring the Gears – Gears on Old Paper

After the last few posts not being actual tutorials, today the inkscape tutorials weblog is getting back into the swing of things with an awesome little howto from nicu.

Nicu demonstrates how to create gears in inkscape, vary them and build them up to create complex “mechanisms”

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/

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.

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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draw a snowman with inkscape

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

tutorial to Illustrate An Ornate Pitcher

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.

cute pencil icon tutorial

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

view this tutorial 

draw a feather

a simple, yet highly effective tutorial for drawing feathers…

view this tutorial 

A tutorial by simarilius: Mirror, Mirror, on the wall…

Here is a cool little tip for creating a mirror modifier in inkscape using tiled clones…

What does that mean? basically it is set up so what you
draw on one side is automatically mirrored on the other…
its a cool tip so check it out:

 

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

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

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

 

view this tutorial

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