Hi I had a jpg image brought into Inkscape & Traced using Tracebitmap

Am learning Inkscape and strguggling with this - have tried misc things but still doing somethig wrong

I have the image as a base layer locked and a suplicate of image on anothr layer

Also have another layer for Filling with Colour

When I first tried colouring image using fill I only coloured lines - having looked into that discovered how to use paintbucket tool
Been trying to fill image with that

Been trying to use Hold down Alt, click shift and drag bucket over shape you want to fill ( so red line appears) a few secs later SOME of the shape has been filled but not all ..

Initially my "fill was way past the outline of image" read more info online about how to use control tools so that was sorted

Been playing with control tools too and paintbucket done this many times but still cannotget complete fill of shape
& am still having difficulties with some of petals not being filled

Wld make this post very long if I wrote down evthing ive tried so am hoping someone can just tell me what I shoudl be doing

ALL I want is very simple ( for you guys) a Coloured rose on 1 layer - solid colour & Black outline on a layer above it , but am struggling to even get that

IMage of rose is attached

Many Thanks for your help
TT

Hhhmmm.....I don't understand why the paint bucket tool isn't working. If you zoom in too far, so that all of the area you want to fill isn't showing on the screen, it might not fill the whole area. So just make sure the area is all showing on the screen. All you need to do with the paint bucket tool is click once. That will fill the area. (The Shift + click and the Alt + click drag have other kind of fancier uses, and aren't necessarily needed in this case....unless I don't understand what you want to do.) You can experiment with the Grow setting, to make sure that the color completely fills the area, without leaking outside the area. Then you'll have to move the new color down below the black outlines (Object menu > Raise, Lower, etc. or buttons on Selection tool control bar). When you finish, you may want to group all the shapes together with the black border, if you plan to move it around. (Object menu > Group, or button on command bar)

Or yes, you can click once to fill one area, and without deselecting it, hold Shift and click the next area. And if you keep going like this, all the filled areas will be a compound path with a number of subpaths. Then you would not need to Group them. But you'll still have to move it down below the black border after you're finished.

I managed to color your line art in a much more efficient manner (for more on this check this other thread I started).

What I did was:
1.- Delete top shape (for some reason you've got 2 line art shapes, one on top of the other)
2.- Ctrl + C (to copy the shape) -> Ctrl + Alt + V (to paste in same place)
[I know I could've used the top shape I initially deleted but I'm doing this for 100% consistency]

Now, since what you've traced is a path, not a stroke, it is possible to break apart the line art to fill it with color. Therefore, we
3.- Ctrl + Shift + K (break apart)
4.- Do Fill = Red, Stroke = X on the Fill & Stroke panel (which you can show with Ctrl + Shift + F).
A red shape will appear, don't worry, we'll fix it.

Now, zoom really close to the outline and select the black part on the outline. You should see a single big shape selected.
5.- Delete said shape.

Ta-da! Now you have the black outline (remember, a path) and a color shape for each separate enclosed part.

Hope this was helpful!

I reread the initial question and I think that, although I (at least partially) solved your problem, I did not really understand your main question.

I get you're having trouble with the bucket tool but I can't really grasp what's troubling you. However, I think it might be this: bucket tool in Inkscape doesn't work as in Paint, for example. This has to do with raster vs vector images (google it). The bucket tool in Inkscape will not completely 100% fill the enclosed shape. You can change some parameters to correct this but it still won't be 100% perfect.
[The file I posted, to my knowledge, 100% filled]

Fael thanks VERY much for your reply

Yes indeed the rose is completely coloured... A few comments

1. Yes u r right I was iniitally trying to use the inkbucket tool as I have in other apps ( and yes I had realised that from googling etc)
2. I had succeeded in filling my rose through trial & error and it turns out Id done pretty much the same way as Brynn had shared in his post. That being said I am new and learning so I am welcome to hearing other techniques too
3. As yet I have not tried your way BUT the rose does indeed appear to be filled so thank you for sharing this & will have a play following your instructions
4. Re why did I have x2 line art shapes hmmm firstly I was trying to have line art layer, colour layer, line art layer ( sandwhich ), secondly when wanting certain lines to be darker "bolder if it were type" I duplicate them ( this may be technically incorrect but for my urgent need was what I needed.

Again I am open to any suggestions as to how to do things correctly

Many Thanks to you ALl for your help
TT

4. In your original file, one of the "black" outlines wasn't #000000 which is black. Looks like it was a very dark brown. So you would not have needed the extra one, but only to have changed the color to the true black. I thought it might not have been fully opaque, but it was.