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

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.

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…

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.

Creating a Coffee Cup using inkscape

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

Playing with Spiros and Path Effects

Note: This tutorial was done with a development (unstable) version of inkscape. To play with these features you will need to download a development version of inkscape or wait until Inkscape 0.47 is released.

Here is another awesome tutorial from Andy Fitz. In this tutorial, Andy experiments with the new spiros Live path effect, combining it with the existing and equally awesome patten on path LPE. The link to the tutorial is after the break.

Niko Kiirala on Filters: Tutorial Three – Composite

Here is the next tutorial in the filters series by Niko Kiirala, This tutorial covers the composite filter.

“Composite is, as the name states, an effect that can composite images together. It uses the Porter-Duff blending modes named after the writers of the paper, where it was published.

The Porter-Duff blending modes are basically logical operations applied to images. For example, you can go and take an exclusive or of two images. In the original paper there was a table showing an example of each mode and some variation of that has been included in most places, where these modes are explained.”

Niko Kiirala on Filters: Tutorial Two – Color Matrix

Here is the second tutorial in Niko’s Inkscape Filter Effects series. Today’s tutorial focuses on the color matrix filter. The quote below (taken from the tutorial) best sums it up…

Color Matrix is an interesting filter, that can mix up the colours in your image in many ways. Blanc and white images, sepia toning, hue rotation and removing one of the basic colours from image are a couple examples, what kind of modifications this filter can do.

Niko Kiirala on Filters: Tutorial One – Blend

Inkscape developer Niko Kiirala is doing an awesome, in-depth tutorial series looking at the complex area of SVG filters in inkscape. The first tutorial, which covers the blend filter is a great introduction to the inkscape filters and their use.

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.

drawing chain links in inkscape

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

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.

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.

howto illustrate a chinese dragon using inkscape

here is another great tutorial from kalaalog, in this one the entire workflow to illustrate a chinese style dragon, from concept sketches to finish product is outlined. This tutorial is in two parts, the link after the break links to part 1, and there is a link at the end of that to part 2 of this tutorial.

creating fire / flames using inkscape (and the new SVG filters!)

Please Note: This tutorial uses features that are not currently available in the most recent stable version of inkscape (0.45.1). To achieve the effects in this tutorial, you will need to download an unstable version of inkscape, or wait until the 0.46 release.

Here is a great tutorial that demonstrates how to use the new SVG filters feature in inkscape to create fire / flames.

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.

Abstract Effect using paths and markers

Please Note: This tutorial uses features that are not currently available in the most recent stable version of inkscape (0.45.1). To achieve the effects in this tutorial, you will need to download an unstable version of inkscape, or wait until the 0.46 release.

This tutorial describes a neat little technique for creating impressive abstract images using paths and markers. As usual, the link to the tutorial is after the break. An impressive result of the tutorial is shown below.