Thanks brynn. The first image I posted was a drawing of a composition for a painting requested by my granddaughter in Florida. She's expecting a little girl in June and wants to hang the painting in the baby's room. I finally decided not to make the stroke around the ark part of that composition. Bu...

I forgot to attach my final image, so here it is. (A slightly different drawing.) Oh yes. I grouped all the paths before I started the sequence above.

The way I've been able to do it is to duplicate the ark; fill it with a dark color, like black; enlarge it slightly; then move it behind the original drawing of the ark; then tweak to make it look right. That works.

How can you put a stroke around a drawing made up of many paths or shapes? I want to outline my drawing in Inkscape, so it looks like it is separated from the background. See attachment. I want to outline the ark without outlining the individual shapes.

Thanks llog. That'll help.

I think I've learned how to use this tool with the mouse.

I think the Pen (Bezier) tool in Spiro mode works best with the Wacom stylus, instead of the mouse.

I think I've learned how to use the Pen (Bezier) tool and the Spiro mode to make curves. Not exactly sure what I'm doing yet, but I'll keep working on it. I seem to have the most trouble making the initial curves. The tutorial in Very Simple Designs http://verysimpledesigns.com/vectors/inkscape-tuto...

Tried deleting the Preferences file, but that didn't change the way the Pen tool acted. Downloaded and reinstalled Inkscape (twice) and that didn't change it, either. When I try to change the lines from straight to curved, I just get a box, like the rubber band you use to surround nodes. Sometimes t...

The Pen Tool doesn't seem to work correctly. I can't rework the lines to make them curves instead of straight lines. (I'm in Nodes.) And, the Spiro mode doesn't work at all. Any thoughts?

The problem and the way to clear it up must be the way jey_62 describes. Thanks jey_62. --Merritt (also mseymour)

Thanks a lot brynn. That undoubtedly helped. --Merritt

OK, now it works; don't know why! --Merritt

Well, I checked both boxes shown in Mouse Inkscape Preferences, restarted, now I get the box that says, "No extended input devices" and it won't go away. Both boxes stay checked after I restart, even though I uncheck them. I must be doing something wrong. I'm trying to select the Wacom Sty...

When I click on File>Input Devices, the dialog box comes up, but when I click on the arrow to the right of the device, it is highlighted in blue but no other devices come up. This makes it impossible to select an Input Device. How can I fix this? Windows Vista Home Premium.