It’s Friday, I’m feeling a bit lazy so today I’m just going to point you in the direction of some interesting Inkscape tutorials that you might want to take a look at over the weekend.

I have some major bug fixing to do on one of my other sites but will prepare some shiny new tutorials for next week!

Illustrating Tomato is a nice tutorial from kalaalog.com. It’s not so much the tomatoes I find interesting, but the technique of first hand drawing them and then making shapes around the drawing. Gives a nice hand-drawn finish.

Inkscape Docs Interpolate Tutorial - if you haven’t got this far through the Inkscape documentation take a look at this well-written tutorial on interpolate. It’s a very cool tool in inkscape for morphing from one shape or colour to another.

Gradients to Path is such a simple yet brilliant idea. A really easy way to make a gradient or abstract shape using markers on a line.

3D Text by Nicu is an easy to follow tutorial on getting an embossed look on text using the blur filter. Could work well with non-text objects too.

That should keep you going until next week when I’ll be concentrating on some fairly heavy going GIMP tutorials on photo restoration. Have a great weekend!

Do you write web comics? To take some of the effort out of it and save time, here’s an easy way to make speech bubbles that you can use each time you write a new comic.

The Rounded Speech Bubble
Start with an ellipse. In this example I’ve given it a grey outline and blurred it slightly. Click on the shape and go to Path>Object to Path.

Here we’ll add the point to the speech bubble to the bottom-left of the ellipse, so shift-click using the Edit Paths Tool on the bottom and left nodes to select them and Add a Node between them. Now select just the new node and change it to be a Corner Node

Pull the new node in the direction you want for your speech bubble. It’s now taking on a speech-bubble-like shape but it doesn’t look right yet. For that you’ll need to edit your new nodes Bezier handles to form a sharper point. Still using the Edit Paths Tool move the node’s handles so that they are at about a 45° angle and pointing back towards your original ellipse shape.

You can also lengthen the handles on your corner node to make the point thinner. All that remains is to create a text area inside your bubble and fill it with some sample text of your choice. You can flip your bubble horizontally and/or vertically to change the direction and to move the point, simply select the corner node with the Edit Paths Tool and drag it in the direction of your character.

It’s really easy to repeat the process using a square. You’ll probably want to round the corners. You can do this by changing the Rx and Ry values for your square or rectangle:

Check out this post on Playing with Polygons for details on how to make star bursts and other shapes.

Tip: To make a thought bubble start with a softened star burst shape:

Now resize it so that it’s wider than it is long. Add a few circle shapes et voila!

You can download the files for these images and play with them yourself. Check out the License Agreement first.

A while back I wanted to make a decal for my MacBook. The idea was to make an octopus that would sit on top of my laptop with some tentacles curving around the screen area.

I began with a pencil drawing. I roughly marked out the edge of the screen on paper as well as a void area where the corner was and figured out roughly how the octopus’ tentacles would work. Then I sketched out the octopus using my markers as a guide and scanned it.

My pen scrawls are not pretty, so the first thing to do was remove them. Opening the image in GIMP I used the Eraser Tool to remove the lines and the page creases to clean up the image so I could work on it more easily. I left some of the paper texture so I could give the octopus a distressed texture but you might want to get rid of all of it.
You can see there that the pen lines intersect some of the pencilled area so after erasing the pen some of the pencil lines will have to be put back in.

Here’s how the image looks after some minor cleaning.

I wanted to keep this image so I could go back and make changes if needed so I made a copy and placed it on a new layer above and called it “Outline”. It’s not a true outline yet because the white background of the paper is still present. To get rid of this, use Select by Colour to select the pencil colour and then Select>Invert to to invert the selection and press Delete to get rid of the white area. On this occasion doing it this way rather than just selecting the background colour worked best but depending on how your image scans in you may find you can just select the background colour.
Here’s how the “Outline” layer looks:

To start adding colour I made a new layer below “Outline” and began colouring using the paintbrush tool. You’ll find having the above Outline layer visible helps at this stage! To blur the lines between the two colours I used Smudge . I’ll show you how it looks with and without the outline below:

When you scan a pencil drawing it tends to look really washed out or else the line is dark but the paper is also dark. I find it easy to start with a light image and darken the lines later if needed. To darken the Outline layer go to Colour>Hue/Saturation… and reduce the lightness.
You’ll find that darkening the pencil lines really enhances it. Here you can see the difference. I’ve also added some texture to the colour with a speckled brush and a slightly darker shade. You could Bucket Fill with a texture or pattern if you had something less hand-drawn in mind.
Parts of the octopus, like around the curve of the head, are too sketchy for my liking so to add more definition I made a new layer above “Outline” and using the Eye Dropper Tool I selected the pencil colour and drew in additional lines and shading. It can be difficult to match the pencil size and strength so you may find you need to experiment a bit before it blends with your original pencil lines. A little bit more definition makes all the difference:

That looks almost ready to me. Now to finish cleaning up the image use a Mask Layer to white-out everything but the octopus.

Make a new layer at the top and colour the entire layer white (or the colour of your choice) - this will be your background colour. If you skip this step and have a transparent layer you won’t be able to see your mask. Choose Layer>Mask>Add Layer Mask and choose White (Full Opacity). The mask colours everything the colour of the layer, except the areas where you paint. Think of it like this; it’s like placing a piece of paper on top of your drawing. To see the drawing below you need to cut out an area to let it show through. That’s what we’ll be doing next.

For clean lines we’ll blank out everything but the shape of the octopus below.
First select your drawing. I found the Scissors Select Tool does a really nice job of this. Making sure you’re still on your new Layer Mask layer, choose a starting point on the outline of your image and then click along the outline to make the selection. The tool automatically fills in the edges between each node:

Once you’ve selected the image, press Enter to confirm the selection. Now use the Bucket Fill Tool to fill in the selection. Any colour is ok since this is just a mask and won’t show in the final image. You can be fancy and change the opacity or just go for full opacity if you simply want to cut it out. Now when you’re happy with the mask go to Layer>Mask>Apply Layer Mask to complete it.

You should now have your completed image!

Now for the decal. You’ll need to acquire some printable vinyl available from specialist photo paper suppliers. The vinyl will either have an adhesive or will cling statically - probably the better option for a MacBook decal. Check which side is printable and if needed flip your image so it prints out as intended. All that remains to be done is to print and cut out your image. Done!

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I took yesterday off work and away from my computer for May Day, hence yesterday’s lack of posting. As a result I’m behind with my work so today’s tutorial will be along later today. In the mean time I found this funny, not sure why, but it was funny.

The Polygon Tool is great for drawing basic shapes like squares, hexagons and even stars but did you know you can use it to make more complex shapes?

The key to this technique is to use star type polygons. They have an extra handle that you can use to distort the shape.
Try it by making a 4-sided star polygon.
It will look something like this:

And if you change the Rounded value to 0.5 you’ll see you get smoothed corners.

Now select the Node Editing Tool and move the inner handle inwards to create a thin “plus” shape.

Now move the other node around so that the shape rotates through itself to distort it into a fan shape.

If you select the Polygon Tool again (click on the shape) you can go back and play with how rounded the shape is, how many corners it has, the spoke ratio etc. which will vastly change the shape. Here’s what happens when you round the corners to 2.0.

Increasing the corners to 8 sides creates a completely new shape.

Now if you go back and edit the node positions again you’ll get something different.

As with any object you can resize and rotate in the normal way and edit colours and stroke styles. Here are a few more examples:

Left to right: Corners: 9, Spoke Ratio: 0.295, Rounded: 2 | Corners: 7, Spoke Ratio: 0.016, Rounded: 0.5 | Corners: 16, Spoke Ratio: 0.033, Rounded: 0.5 (with additional bucket fill on outer teardrops).

If you’d like to have a go with the shapes above or use them in your work, download the svg file here and don’t forget to view the license agreement

Ever wonder how some people go from idea to finished graphic? Me too. Usually I like to work to a design for a reason - maybe it’s a graphic for a new website, an icon or a new business card. It’s so much easier when you have a brief.
So what do you do when you haven’t got a brief but you’re in the mood to draw? Usually what I do is take a look around, go for a walk, see if anything inspires me.

For this piece I drew what was sitting right in front of me - a pot plant.

Here’s a picture of the orchid I worked from:

Orchid flowers are pretty complex so to make things easier I worked on small pieces. I found it much easier once the flower was broken down into petals.

Here’s an overview of the individual pieces that make up the orchid graphic:

The two scallop shaped petals started out as circles. They were converted to paths and after adding a few nodes I was able to create this shape. The picture on the left shows how the nodes are arranged. The right-most node is symmetrical to make an even curve. The two nodes either side are angled inwards to help pinch the shape into a point where the pink colour begins. You might need to do some tweaking to get the right shape but if you begin with a circle it shouldn’t be difficult.

The three oval-shaped petals were also created by starting with a circle and adding nodes. Some of the nodes were moved around and the curves edited to create a slightly irregular shape to make the flower look more natural. Copy and paste to create two more petals and edit them slightly to make each unique. Rotate each petal until you’re happy with the configuration.
You’ll notice the real petals have a vein down the middle of each. I used the Bezier tool to draw a curved line, set the stroke to be a semi-opaque grey and blurred the line slightly to soften it. Each petal needed its own line redrawn to maintain the organic look.

For the inner petals I copied the two scallop shapes and scaled them down. The tube (middle) part was the hardest part to do. It was difficult to get the perspective right so I just had to make roughly the same shape as the photo showed. That was made from a rounded rectangle shape with some nodes moved around and the path reshaped.

The last few shapes are made up of a flatted oval shape for the yellow part and an enlongated oval with a few additional corner nodes to make the points. It looks like a pretty complex shape until you see how simply the nodes are configured.

Most petals were coloured using a gradient of magenta→off white. It’s important to apply the gradient to each element individually since on the real orchid each petal has its own colouring.

As there’s so much white-on-white the upper shapes were given shadows.
To make a shadow:

• Select the shape to be given a shadow.
• Copy the shape and use Edit>Paste in Place to paste a copy on top of the original.
• Change the colour of the new shape to pale translucent grey and add a blur (less blur for harder shadows).
• Increase the size of the new shape slightly. Be sure to maintain the size ratio.
• Move the grey shape down and to one side by a few pixels in the opposite direction to where the light source would be.
• Ensuring the grey shape is selected use the Lower Selection button to put it behind your original image.

All that remains to be done is to put all the shapes together and the orchid is complete.

If you would like to use the SVG file you can download it here but read the license agreement first.

I happen to think Infrared photography is pretty cool though I realise it’s not to everyone’s tastes. Since I work in digital and don’t own an Infrared filter I wanted to create an Infrared-like effect.

So to start open up your photograph in GIMP. This is the file I’ll be working with.

Distorting the colours is really easy. Open up the Hue/Saturation/Lightness menu, Colours>Hue-Saturation… and play around with the hue until you get some colours you like. I chose to shift the hue to 180 and pushed the saturation right up to accentuate the colours. If you wanted something subtler you could keep the saturation closer to the middle of the slider.

I could leave it there but I don’t really like myself with green hair. Purple suited me much better. And looking at the photograph I like the sepia quality to my clothes and camera so I’m going to match my head and hands with my clothing.

More recent versions of GIMP come with the coolest selection tool - Foreground Select.
Here’s how:

Zoom right into the area you’ll be working on; if you try zooming out half way through you’ll lose your selection and will have to start over. Choose the Foreground Select Tool and start roughly marking out the area you want to select using the lasso cursor. You don’t need to be too careful with this but try to avoid crossing into areas you don’t want to select (the foliage in this case). When you’re finished you’ll have a large coloured area. Now use the brush cursor to select any areas you missed with the lasso. It will automatically select areas of similar colour nearby.

Picture shows after lassoeing but before tidying it up with the brush.

Press Enter to view your selection.

If you’ve missed anything you can repeat the process. Just make sure the Add to Selection button has been selected.

I probably could have selected that a bit better but you get the idea. I had to redo this for the tutorial so I got a bit lazy. I’d also recommend not saving it as a jpg until you’re done or you’ll have hideous pixelation like I had.

Anyway, now to make my head match with my clothes I’m going to apply a sepia tone. For this go to Colours>Colourise and slide the Hue slider around until you get something orange-brown in colour. Play around with it and see if you need to reduce the saturation.

And here’s how it looks when you’ve selected and coloured all the parts.

If you want to have a go with this particular photo you can download it.

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When I was making the title image for this site I started with the idea of a swish - those wave shapes above. Initially I tried drawing by hand with the pencil tool but even with a tablet my drawing was too shaky. It would have taken a lot of node editing to get that looking even slightly smooth. Next I tried using Bezier curves to construct the shape but after joining all the lines it just looked kind of of messy.

To get a smooth looking shape I needed a more simple approach. So here’s how I ended up with a smooth shape.

The shape is basically a triangle - thick at one side and tapering into a point. So start by drawing a triangle with the polygon tool.

Next you’ll need to edit the triangle’s path to create the curves, but before you can edit the path you’ll need to change it from an object to a path. Path>Object to Path will do this. Choose the Edit Paths by Nodes tool and select the image to see the nodes.
Stretch the triangle out so it forms the basic shape of the wave you’re making. It will probably look something like this now:

To create the curves start by working on the nodes that lie between the base and the tip of your triangle shape. You can tell by the sharp angles between the lines that these are corner nodes. To smoothen that, out make the node symmetric.

You can see the angle has been smoothed out into a curve. Repeat with the node below.
Now you can move your curved areas around to make the beginnings of a wave. In the picture below I’ve moved the top node up and left slightly and the lower node up and right. I’ve tilted the curve by moving the Bezier handles up and down until I’m happy with the shape. You’ll also notice the top right-most node has been moved down to make the base of the shape more narrow.

To add another curve I add two nodes (top and bottom) between the curve and the point and repeat the process to create the new curve. To add more nodes shift-click on the two nodes you wish to add a node between and click the Insert Node button.
In the same way as you did above, play around with positioning the nodes and moving the Bezier handles until you end up with a curve you like. Here’s a pic showing the position of each node’s handles.

And that’s it - a pretty easy way to get a smooth curved shape.

If you give this a try please comment below and let me know, or if you have an alternative method I’d love to know.

I’m never sure what to put as a first post on a blog so why don’t you have a look at the About page if you’ve just found yourself here by accident.