Tutorial Pesto

One of the features I like in Inkscape is duplication: to create an exact copy of the selected object. And by exact copy I mean exact copy: same shape, same colour on the same place.

How to duplicate?

Select an object, then right click, and choose duplicate. Or select the object and push Ctrl+D.
Appearantly nothing happens, because the copy is exactly above the original. You will only see it if you move it away, or recolor it.

Why is it a good thing?

I usually demonstrate this with a flower:
Draw one petal of the flower. Colour it, shape it how you want it.
If you are satisfied with that one petal, duplicate it once, rotate and move it.
Now you have 2 petals. Select both of them, and duplicate them.
Move and rotate these two new petals, so now you have four.
Select all four, duplicate, rotate and move, so you have 8 petals. It is this easy!
As you see, duplicate is saving you work and time. It is a good habit, get used to it!


While designing something in Inkscape, it is good to stop and duplicate at some point. Continue work on the copy, keep the original! This way you preserve every variations, you can use them later, sparing a lot of headache, or fuel your creative work flow.
This is what you can make by duplicating, resizing and coloring the same flower you just created

While you draw in Inkscape, you create individual vector objects. This means for example, if you draw 2 squares overlapping each other, they still can be selected and moved around separately (unless you merge them to one object, but I will cover this later). If you don’t need an object anymore, just select it and hit the Del key. that is all!

Note that in the latest version (0.47) developers introduced an Eraser tool. That is acting on selected objects similar to the eraser tools you are used to in Paint, GIMP or Photoshop. To use that properly you have to learn to edit paths and notes. I will come to that later, it is a huge part of illustrating in Inkscape.

Have a good time drawing! Contact me if you have any questions so far!

I will put my Inkscape tutorials here, so you can follow them, and post questions if you need so!

-expect 3 updates/ week, and very small bites of Inkscape knowledge!

If you drew an object, gave it a nice color, you still need to move it to it’s place, scale or rotate it. This is what the “Transform tool” is used to.

So select the transform tool from the toolbar, and …

…to select : Click on the object (select multiple objects by holding down Shift - more about this in a later post)

…to move: Select the object by clicking into it, and hold down the left mouse button to move it around. Holding down Ctrl the same time limits the movement horizontally or vertically - this is great for aligning objects.

…to Scale: Click once to the object. You will see the small transform arrows appearing. Click on an arrow to scale the object at the given dimension. Holding down Ctrl the same time lets you scale proportionately.

…to rotate: Click twice on the object. You will see that the transforming arrows around the object are changing. Click and hold an arrow at the corner of the selection to rotate the object. Notice the cross at the center of the selection! That cross is the center of the rotation. Put it elsewhere to rotate ie. around a corner etc. You can put it even outside the object boundaries.

… to skew: Click twice on the object. You will see that the transforming arrows around the object are changing. Click and hold an arrow at the sides of the selection to skew the object.

Tip: by pressing the Space button you can switch fast between the current tool you use and the Transform tool. Press it again to switch it back! Good luck!

In Inkscape you don’t use brushes to paint colorful images.
Here is what you do instead:

1. Draw an object or select a previously drawn object by clicking on it.
2. Click on a color on the palette at the bottom of the screen. The object is changing to that color.
3. On the lower left of the screen you see a small box with the same color now. That is the fill color of the object. If you click on it the Fill and Stroke window is popping up. You can open the same window with the Shift+Ctrl+F shortcut.

“Fill color” means the color inside the borders of the object. “Stroke color” is the border color of the object.

Just play with the colors for now, next time I tell you about the Fill and Stroke window more!

Inscape is a vector graphic editor in which You draw simple shapes, color and modify them.

Let’s try out the 2 most useful basic shapes: rectangles and circles.

1. Click on the Rectangle tool in the Toolbar on the left. (F4)
2. Click and drag anywhere on the drawing area to create a rectangle.
3. Pick a color to your rectangle from the palette on the bottom.
4. To draw perfect squares hold down Ctrl key while drawing the rectangle.

Same goes for the Circle tool: click and drag the same way, and additionally hold down Ctrl key to draw perfect circle. The keyboard shortcut for the Circle tool is F5.

We gonna use this two tools in most of the cases to create complex vector illustrations.

Do you have a question? contact me!

I decided finally to share my love with you…
I gonna post veeery short tutorials about my loved program Inkscape. Inkscape is an opensource vector editing program. It is totally free to use, translated to 70+ languages, and can be used for fun or in professional design - like I do.

So for start: download inkscape, and install it on your machine.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/0.47/Inkscape-0.47-3.exe/download