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 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:

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.

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”

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…

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.

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:

drawing a simple axe using inkscape.

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

How To Illustrate Palm Tree using Inkscape

Yet another awesome step-by-step from kalaalog demonstrating how to illustrate a palm tree. The result is quite impressive.

Create Playing Cards – a video tutorial by screencasters.heathenx.org

 Another awesome video tutorial by the screencasters.heathenx.org guys.

in this one, they demonstrate how to make playing cards.

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.

10 Tips For Creating Good Looking Diagrams Using Inkscape

Here is a nice bunch of tips for creating nice diagrams using inkscape.

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 

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

Basically, the title of this tutorial says it all…

 view this tutorial

creating gears with inkscape.

There is a new effect in the inkscape pipeline that renders gears for you. However, in the meantime, here is a nifty tutorial that shows you how to create simple gears. (it is in French, but with basic inkscape knowledge the images whould be fairly easy to follow.)

 

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 clouds tutorial

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

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: 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

how inkscape’s clip function works

here is a mini-tutorial that provides a basic outline of the clip funtion in inkscape

 view this tutorial