Hi everyone, first time posting in this forum.

I've really been enjoying Inkscape and we've begun using it a lot for our shirt designs.

this is one of the designs I finished awhile back, it was done almost completely in inkscape, I finished it in photoshop with some small details.

Hope you like!

That is phenomenal. Love all the detail. Did you use the engraver tools for this project?

That's one scary Buddha Head. How did you do the the shading lines?

Wow ! Really an high quality art and the first one i`ve seen who use the engave tool. Can you post an little howto or screenshots of some steps ?
It would be very interesting to see how you did it.

Thanks everyone!

I actually didn't use the engravers tool for this as I found it to be a little too buggy to be reliable just yet. I do have great hopes for that tool in the future though.

My work process was to scan in my sketch and put it on it's own layer and then lock it. I drew in the main outlines and shapes on a top layer, and then went in with the pen tool and laid every individual line and shaped the curves for each one on yet another layer. It was painstaking to be sure. After all the lines were in place, I converted the stroke to path for all of them, and while they were still separate I selected them all and used the tweak tool to shrink or grow the areas. Occasionally the tweak tool would kill a required node and my lines would go wonky, so it often took a little finesse to get them just right.

After all the lines were how I wanted them, I selected them in groups and performed the union Boolean to weld it all together.

Here's an outline view of the main part of the design.



I drew the smoke and clouds with the calligraphy tool and then did the texture / splatters in Photoshop.

I'm working on another design in a similar style that I will post soon.

I really really like Inkscape, and after suffering for years under Illustrator it's a welcome breath of fresh air. The calligraphy tool is great for getting natural looking smooth lines, and the tweak tool makes it easy to get a variable line weight quickly.

Wow thats impressive. Really striking image, great to see inkscape being put to such good use
Would you be willing to let us put a screenshot of this on the website?

Simarilius wrote:Wow thats impressive. Really striking image, great to see inkscape being put to such good use
Would you be willing to let us put a screenshot of this on the website?

I wouldn't mind at all. I have some other designs I have used Inkscape with I will post in the future as well.

If you want to link back to my site that'd be cool too, but it is an e-commerce site, so I'm not sure what your policy is on that.

enclothe wrote:I drew in the main outlines and shapes on a top layer, and then went in with the pen tool and laid every individual line and shaped the curves for each one on yet another layer. It was painstaking to be sure. After all the lines were in place, I converted the stroke to path for all of them, and while they were still separate I selected them all and used the tweak tool to shrink or grow the areas. Occasionally the tweak tool would kill a required node and my lines would go wonky, so it often took a little finesse to get them just right.

Wow, that's some impressive dedication to detail. Did you at least duplicate some of the lines? I've never attempted this kind of image in inkscape, but my inclination would be to either use the engraver tool (which I agree is buggy) or draw a single line and duplicate it as necessary to get all the lines in place then tweak the individual lines a little. Thanks for sharing your process on this really impressive piece. Should make a great shirt.

Wow did you do a select all on all layers to see how many paths there were?

As a primary author of the engraving features in calligraphic pen, I would appreciate if you try to work with it and report your experience. Please try to use a recent SVN build, it has some improvements in this regard compared to 0.46.

llogg wrote:

enclothe wrote:I drew in the main outlines and shapes on a top layer, and then went in with the pen tool and laid every individual line and shaped the curves for each one on yet another layer. It was painstaking to be sure. After all the lines were in place, I converted the stroke to path for all of them, and while they were still separate I selected them all and used the tweak tool to shrink or grow the areas. Occasionally the tweak tool would kill a required node and my lines would go wonky, so it often took a little finesse to get them just right.

Wow, that's some impressive dedication to detail. Did you at least duplicate some of the lines? I've never attempted this kind of image in inkscape, but my inclination would be to either use the engraver tool (which I agree is buggy) or draw a single line and duplicate it as necessary to get all the lines in place then tweak the individual lines a little. Thanks for sharing your process on this really impressive piece. Should make a great shirt.

Yeah, actually if they were similar in curvature and shape and still fit the form, i would copy the lines to speed up the process. I love the spacebar / copy feature in Inkscape, it makes it really painless to duplicate a shape easily.

Glad you like it, it is already a shirt and has been one of our best sellers going strong for several months now.

EarlyBlake wrote:Wow did you do a select all on all layers to see how many paths there were?

You know I didn't. I imagine it's quite a few, a lot of shapes have been welded together though, so it wouldn't quite give an accurate view of how many individual shapes there originally was.

bbyak wrote:As a primary author of the engraving features in calligraphic pen, I would appreciate if you try to work with it and report your experience. Please try to use a recent SVN build, it has some improvements in this regard compared to 0.46.

First I'd like to thank you and everyone else working on Inkscape for all your hard work. It's amazing how user friendly the workflow is. Me and my co-worker will occasionally blurt out 'Did I mention I love Inkscape?' at random points throughout the day. I've used Illustrator for years and I always felt like it was working against me.
I just downloaded the latest build and have been playing with it. I'll work with the engraving tool some more and report back. Should I just post in this thread or make another thread, or should I just email you? I've never given feedback on software before so I'm not sure what the protocol is.

Thanks, we really take usability seriously. You can start a new thread here, I think others will be interested to read your impressions too.

I seriously admire your work ethic, to do all those lines while keeping an artistic edge all the way through . . . you should post some of your other work here.

Dayum! Fantastic electric work! U got a website or something where I can view more of ur works?

Unlimited foreveR