This is an object that was created by me.


When using Fill, it adds extra lines, and also fills in areas that shouldn't be filled.



I've circled the areas in red which are affected.

Any ideas on what I did wrong?

the fill tool creates shapes to approximate a flood-fill feature of raster graphics programs. you can select the shapes created by this tool and edit them...they have their own node points and Fill & Stroke properties etc. use a stand out color stroke for original shape (not the fill tool shapes) and zoom in and adjust as needed, and maybe even apply boolean operations or mask/crop to get final drawing.
the fill tool has its' uses but for your crown shape i'd do something different instead, to get a "cleaner" drawing, by separating it into a few separate shapes, each having Fill property color set (as opposed to using the fill tool) to create the solid appearance.

This is an object that was created by me.

How did you make the object?
It looks to me as if your object had some shapes that were not closed (beginning and ending point the same) as if you were drawing lines to make the object. The fix is to draw the right line to close each shape. I hope all this makes sense...

Thanks for the insight, I think I know how to resolve this now.

How did you make the object?

Basically by drawing connecting lines. I have a raster image that I layered below the lines layer, and traced it. I'm pretty new to vector work, very new to Inkscape, and likely not approaching it correctly.

Yeah, what druban says. You probably have some unclosed paths.

In the area below that I've circled in blue, which is one of your indicated trouble spots -- what's the problem? I can see that the left side does not match the right side there. But the fill seems to be consistent with the path. If you want the left side to look like the right, you'll need to eliminate the lines I've highlighted with red, and close the remaining portions of the path. Edit -- Ooooh, now I see the rogue "line". But it's probably the same story -- open paths.

The area I've circled in pink, the diamond shapes pattern -- I'm guessing the paths that create them are not closed. It's hard to say for sure though, without having the file to examine. But that's a good guess.

What appears to be a diagonal line, that I've indicated by a green stroke, is again, probably some paths that did not get closed properly. It's probably not really a line, meaning path or stroke. But instead it's probably a veerrrrrrrryy narrow strip between 2 shapes (that are created by adjacent unclosed paths).

I'm trying to think of a good way to suggest for you to fix this, but it's really a matter of personal preference. There's not like a button to "close all paths".....at least not that I know of. Well, one way to approach this, is to select a single node, and then Tab through them. Each time you hit the tab key, the next node along the path gets highlighted. You'll have to do it somewhat slowly, because when you hit the tab key, and the next node is not highlighted, that's where you have an open path. Then your next tab will highlight the other end of the open path. As I said, there are probably several, maybe many ways to remedy this, so you should do whatever seems to work best for you.

If you can't seem to make it work, please feel free to upload your SVG file as an attachment to a reply. Then one or more of us can help you find the culprits

chriswww wrote:the fill tool creates shapes to approximate a flood-fill feature of raster graphics programs.

I think you must be speaking of the Paint Bucket tool "Fill" typically refers to vector fills, a la the Fill and Stroke dialog. Once the paths are all properly closed, Cryptman will probably not need to use the bucket tool. Once the paths are all closed, and combined, Fill should work fine

PS -- oops, I see that you replied while I was typing....I'll post anyway

Thanks brynn, that also definitely helps. I have located the rogue unclosed paths and corrected. I also just figured out how to join two unconnected end points. Like I said, very new and appreciate the assistance.

sorry for confusing everyone...i honestly thought that fill bucket tool was used for such a fairly complex shape.
your approach (Cryptman) is as good as any.
As you probably don't want to have snapping turned on during tracing, the only thing i could suggest is to view the paths in the xml editor in inkscape. at the end of a closed path list of points should be a "z" attribute to indicate that the path is closed.

One more issue. I have a number of bounded areas which I have been able to fill with the bucket tool. It was working fine, but all of a sudden, instead of filling the area, it seems to just fill the inside edges rather than the entire negative space. Any thoughts?

You might be zoomed out? Zoom in and try again. But Make sure the whole area is visible when you fill . Also, you can't have any blur applied to the stroke, so check for that in the fill and stroke dialog.

Sorry to waste time, I am an admitted inkscape rookie. Somehow I had the fill color the same as the color of the background. It was filling the area fine, but with the background color.

that's an often occuring (i think) gotcha in inkscape. stroke/fill/opacity/blur carry for a lot of the vector generation tools. switching to outline view sometimes help clarify matters.