Hi everyone, just wanted to let the good people here know about the Inkscape tutorials I'm publishing on my new blog, at http://www.designmarkgraphics.co.uk/blog

I'm a long-time fan and user of Inkscape, and have used it to carry out all sorts of design work, over the years. I love it, and think more people should try creating their vector work using Inkscape to boost its profile and encourage further development of a great application.

I hope I can share some of my knowledge and techniques to help everyone learn more and enjoy using Inkscape as much as I do. Looking forward to seeing you over there at some point!

Good stuff you got there, Mister!

Thanks 4hn, that's kind of you to say so.

It's great to get encouragement when you're working hard on something like this, so if you're enjoying the blog please do pass the word on - the more people who say they're getting something from the tutorials, the more likely it is I can spend time doing them.

This week's tutorial is, I think, a good one, inspired by an author over at Vector Tuts+ which I've converted for Inkscape users. Create vector water droplets using Inkscape. Enjoy.

Hey, everyone. I uploaded my latest blog tutorial last night which takes advantage of both Inkscape and GIMP. It'll show you how to Create a worn, printed ticket using Inkscape and GIMP. Here's a quick preview of the final result:



Hope it's useful.

Hi again, everyone. I've been running a little behind schedule lately, what with one thing or another happening, but here's my latest Inkscape tutorial, which will show you how to create a pad of sticky notes in Inkscape. Enjoy!

I had a quick look and it was enough to press Ctrl+D Thank you !

That's great, thanks for the bookmark and comment, lejimi!

I posted a new Inkscape tutorial up to the blog last night. It's a little narrow in focus but that can also be a good thing sometimes when you just need to know how to do one particular thing. I was making some corporate-style imagery for some presentation slides a while back ("all the arrows must go up...") and thought others might find the technique helpful.

So, here's a tutorial which will show you How to create curled, 3D arrows using Inkscape. Hope it's an enjoyable one for you all.

Very good tutorials Designmark, I hope your blog gets noticed as it looks like it could be very useful to new & old Inkscape and Gimp users alike.

Perhaps you should visit http://screencasters.heathenx.org and leave a link to your blog in the comments:

http://screencasters.heathenx.org/wtf-already/#comments

...along with a description of what you are doing at your blog. I'm fairly certain that heathenx will not mind and in fact will welcome your comments and the link to your blog since many of his visitors are looking for newer, updated tutorials. Also, I'm hoping to get my own site up soon which will also feature a bunch of Inkscape tutorials that I've been working on & I'll definitely recommend your site for further tutorials.

Keep up the good work and good luck with your blog!

Thanks, BTP, I really appreciate all the great feedback I get and the more readers come to the blog, the more tutorials I'm likely to write. The traffic stats are fairly good so far but I've got a feeling there are still plenty of Inkscape (and GIMP) users who don't yet know what I'm doing, so I'm obviously not promoting it strongly enough or to a wide enough audience.

Funnily enough I picked up from my Analytics data that some traffic was being driven to the site through HeathenX's video blog, and he was good enough to mention my site by name in one of the posts, which was very kind. You should see my comment in that very post you link to, about half way down.

It's still early days for the blog and I've got an absolute ton of ideas for other tutorials, it's just finding the time to post them. I'd be happy to link to your site too once you're up and running - we should think about guest posting on each others' sites to grow the readership to both. The more we share what we know, the more of a community we can create for these wonderful applications.

Hey Mark,

Hahaha! That is funny. Not sure how I didn't notice it before, but yeah NOW I see he already mentioned your site with a link to it.

I would definitely be interested in linking to each others sites and do guest posting once my site is ready to go live. I have a ton of ideas as well. If I could just get this screencasting thing down pat, it would be great. At first, I thought it would be difficult to find tools for screencasting on Ubuntu, but as it turns out, there are a ton of them to weed through in order to find what works best for me.

BetaTestingPro wrote:If I could just get this screencasting thing down pat, it would be great. At first, I thought it would be difficult to find tools for screencasting on Ubuntu, but as it turns out, there are a ton of them to weed through in order to find what works best for me.

Ah yes, that's one of a couple of reasons I went down the text-based tutorial route. That, and a habitul tendency to drift off on tangents when I'm talking to someone about design.

I look forward to seeing your site, sounds like it's going to be ace!

Hey, I just published my latest tutorial article, too. You guys on this forum are the first to hear about it, and it's my first character-design tutorial. Just a simple one, but it's fun: How to draw a cute, chubby cartoon sheep in Inkscape.

Here we go again, then. I seem to have been very busy in Inkscape lately, and here's another tutorial I've put together which is quite in-depth, but lots of fun to do as well. It takes advantage of Inkscape's wonderfully intuitive toolset and the potency of Live Path Effects when using repeated base shapes along a path.

So if you get a chance and fancy a go, why not read how to Draw a Shiny Cartoon Bomb in Inkscape.

BetaTestingPro wrote:If I could just get this screencasting thing down pat, it would be great. At first, I thought it would be difficult to find tools for screencasting on Ubuntu, but as it turns out, there are a ton of them to weed through in order to find what works best for me.

designm wrote:Ah yes, that's one of a couple of reasons I went down the text-based tutorial route. That, and a habitul tendency to drift off on tangents when I'm talking to someone about design.

I can certainly understand that. I've had some success using FFmpeg, but I'm using it from the command line and it requires me to record raw video and then do compression afterwards. It works okay, but it's not ideal. Even with JUST FFmpeg, there are tons of options, which can be a bit confusing so I may end up going the text route for now as well until I can learn a bit more about Screencasting with FFmpeg.

designm wrote:I look forward to seeing your site, sounds like it's going to be ace!

I certainly hope it will be good for Inkscape users and I hope to get more people using this Awesome software. I have a few ideas about how to get more people using it. One of the ideas involves getting Internet Marketers to using the software AND promoting it as well. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to work on my personal projects as I've been busy dealing with paying clients, so I had to put my own project on hold for a few weeks.

designm wrote:Hey, I just published my latest tutorial article, too. You guys on this forum are the first to hear about it, and it's my first character-design tutorial. Just a simple one, but it's fun: How to draw a cute, chubby cartoon sheep in Inkscape.

BTW, another good tutorial from you! However, I think I found a small typo you may want to fix:

"Now create two more ellipses, again slightly taller than they are wide: about 15px wide by 10px tall . Make one a dark grey (I've used R=89 G=89 B=89), and the other white."

I think you meant to say:

"Now create two more ellipses, again slightly taller than they are wide: about 15px tall by 10px wide. Make one a dark grey (I've used R=89 G=89 B=89), and the other white."

Anyway, nice sheep!

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the blog and to add some Inkscape tutorials, I've just been ridiculously busy this last few weeks (months?!). No one said moving house with a baby was easy, and they were DAMN right.

Anyway, I've just uploaded a new tutorial which I think Inkscape users involved in web design should enjoy.

This was a really fun tutorial for me to make the icons for and write, I have to say. While it's a graphic design trend that I am in two minds about when it's taken to the extreme, the satisfaction I got from developing this technique using Inkscape's lovely tools was immense. So I hope everyone can get something from this tutorial on How to create long-shadow icons in Inkscape.

You lucky souls - two Inkscape tutorials in just under a week.

I received a request for a guide on How to Illustrate a Metallic Padlock by one of my blog readers, as it involves thinking of a way to simulate gradients beyond the normal linear/elliptical arrangements. Best of all, with a bit of planning and the right shape-creation, it can sometimes be a fun and not-too-challenging thing to achieve. And, as always, it's fun to do. Hope you all enjoy it.

Hi.

About that last one, you can do that with the combination of radial and linear gradients too.
Here is a similar image with only those used: http://inkscapecommunity.com/ic_gallery/albums/userpics/10014/f82~0.svg

But, speaking of gradients beyond the regular ones,
how would you simulate this?
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13941

Hi Mark,

I enjoyed reading the lock tutorial, and peeked briefly at the previous one. They are nicely done.

I looked for the vector art (or a link to it) , but only found jpegs on the pages. Would love to see the finished works in svg.

Hey all, here's a new tutorial I uploaded this evening on How to Design a flip calendar in Inkscape. This is a really fun tutorial which capitalises on some classic tricks of the vector trade to add depth and a touch of style to the design. It's not too difficult though, and really just centres on duplicating rectangles. Lots of rectangles...

Hope you like it.