Welcome Emma!
Haha, I can see a partnership forming already! I'm also interested in making coloring books, and at least one of them I want the proceeds to become a donation to Inkscape. By Inkscape. For Inkscape. You know?! But hopefully, a series of coloring books. My biggest strength is in the geometric designs. But I hope to find people who can make freehand line drawings. Here are some that I've uploaded to our gallery, in 2 different albums:
https://inkscapecommunity.com/ic_gallery/index.php?cat=8Here is a series of tutorials I wrote for converting raster image to vector.
https://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?action=articles;cat=6 Many of them are for the purpose of preparing files to send to a cutting machines. But you can ignore that part of the tutorials, and just pay attention to the steps for tracing the paths.
Also, look at the Home tab for tutorials organized by skill level. The IC Tutorials tab are the tutorials written or created by our members, and are all different skill levels.
However, I have to say I've been most successful just starting with a blank page and a simple shape, duplicating it and following my muse. Especially if you want to think about selling coloring books, you can't trace just any image that you might find. You have to be careful about copyrights and licenses.
Also, the kind of tools and features I use most for the geometrical designs, are not covered much in those tutorials. These are the tools and features I use most: Pen/Bezier tool (in Straight Line mode), Node tool, Duplicate, Snapping, Grid, Guides, Flip, Rotate, Drag, Scale. Sometimes I'm also using Windows' Calculator.
While I don't think I've used them in the geometric designs in the gallery, for other geometric designs I've made good use of the Star/Polygon tool, with circles (made with Ellipse tool), Node tool, together with path operations Union, Difference, Intersection, Cut Paths, as well as the aforementioned Duplicate, Snapping, Grid, Guides, Flip, Rotate, Drag, Scale.
The first tool to blow your mind will be Star/Polygon
.
1 - enable Star/Polygon
2 - on the control bar, change the Corners to 6
3 - click-drag to see the star created
4 - position the mouse over the tiny white diamond shaped handle (it turns red when the mouse is in the necessary position) on the tip of a spike
5 - press and hold the Shift key
6 - click-drag the mouse, and watch the magic happen
Well, there's so much more I could say, but my eyes are drooping closer and closer to the keyboard
And that should be enough to get you starte
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