Well.
After some years of doing stuff in PSP8 but avoiding all the vector stuff cos I didn't understand it, I thought it was time I got to grips with it.
So about 3 weeks ago I got Inkscape and started working through some tutorials.
I made a jug, some pac man ghosts (one of them rainbow striped), a compass and a fat penguin.

Then I decided it was time to do some of my own stuff and I done these.

I'm not happy with either, but the files are now so huge it has become almost impossible to do anything with them and I would probably have to start from scratch.

Still, they aren't too bad for someone who had never managed to do anything like this before.

The first one took well over a week, the second took a couple of days.

Three days into the first one I thought I was wasting my time, but the more I used it the more I liked it. I love the way I can take lines and bend them, take splodges of colour and shape them.
That is so cool.

First one


Second one

Definitely not bad for a beginner -- more ambitious than I've ever tried, that's for sure. But I'm one of those perpetual beginners, lol.

Just a tip on the big slowdown when files get huge and/or it's crashing a lot. Use Layers. Even if you don't necessarily need them, you can hide everything that you don't need at the moment, and speed up the program quite a bit.

Thank you!

I'm a bit embarrassed. There are two N's in beginner!
I knew it didn't look right so I tried two G's but that looked worse.
I am not the worlds best speller...

Yes, I use layers. With the first one the hair is the problem so just making those layers invisible, or replacing them with a plain blocks in roughly the same shapes while I worked round them helped a lot.

The second one is just huge, and I'm not sure why. The whole file is nearly 6MB, a lot of it is in the wings, which is a pain for something that is so barely there, but there must be a lot of size other places too, because making the wings invisible doesn't really help enough.

But anyway, I'm done with them now, so I don't have to fight with it any more.

I've learned a lot doing these two.
Still, loads more to learn!

And thank you to everyone out there who has done tutorials, or posted useful stuff both here and elsewhere.
Without you people I would never have got a grip on this program at all!

This is very good work for a beginner! If a file is getting particularly slow, I would move a portion to a different file to work on it. Using layers still requires the same amount of memory to store, when you hide layers it will just use less cpu to render. Also be aware that inkscape will frequently crash while fiddling with layers so be sure to save often!

Thanks!

I learned the trick about saving often.
Sadly I learned it the hard way...

I'm still trying...

Still having huge trouble with hair in particular.

Lillie wrote:I'm still trying...

I like this one a lot! Great work!

Thanks.
I appreciate your comment.

I thought the mouth come out well good.

I used interpolation for the hair, which was Ok with this as the hair is very structured.
I do have a tablet, I drew two lines, interpolated between them and then scruffed them up with the tweak tool.

Then I duplicated, altered the colour, moved them a little, that sort of stuff to try to get the effects of lots of strands.

It don't work so well on loose hair.

The other problem is that there are so many lines, so many nodes (even after simplification) that there comes a time when I can't work on it any more because it's slowed down so much.
But that might be my computer, I suppose.

But it's all a learning process, isn't it!

Lillie wrote:Thanks.
I appreciate your comment.

I thought the mouth come out well good.

I used interpolation for the hair, which was Ok with this as the hair is very structured.
I do have a tablet, I drew two lines, interpolated between them and then scruffed them up with the tweak tool.

Then I duplicated, altered the colour, moved them a little, that sort of stuff to try to get the effects of lots of strands.

It don't work so well on loose hair.

The other problem is that there are so many lines, so many nodes (even after simplification) that there comes a time when I can't work on it any more because it's slowed down so much.
But that might be my computer, I suppose.

But it's all a learning process, isn't it!

I thought the mouth was well done as well.
I never thought use the tweak tool after interpolation. That is a pretty good idea.

It is strange that just the number of nodes would slow your computer down. How old is it?
I think what is actually slowing the computer down is the live effects, in other words it is actually the interpolation and the number of steps in the interpolation that is slowing your computer. Each time that the computer has to redraw/render the image, the live effects make the computer do many many calculations before it can draw. With simple paths, the computer has a much easier time redrawing.
My computer isn't a monster, but using the calligraphy tool, I make >10,000 strokes and it doesn't slow down at all. I don't tend to simplify them either. I don't think your computer will slow down if you use simple paths. Also since you have a tablet, it will be much easier for you to be in control of each strand than have to fiddle with the interpolation.

Oh, I just thought up a good way to fix performance issues if you encounter them. Hide all layers except the hair. Export the hair as a .png. Then re-import the .png as a bitmap. You can then hide all the hair layers and use the bitmap in its place.

My computer is a lap top, bought at the end of last august, just before windows 7 came out, so it has vista on it.

It's pretty good. Not top of the range, but 2 gig ram and a dual core processor.
Plenty of space on the hard drive too.

So, I don't know.
If I hide the hair it's better. Which is OK except when I am doing something that involves the hair.

It seems a specific Inkscape thing, because I can work with huge files on paint shop pro without any problem, much bigger files than the ones that give me trouble on Inkscape.

For instance, the last pic I did, the sgv file is about 1.3MB and it's almost impossible to do anything, it's so slow.
But the last thing I did in PSP is well over 4 MB, many, many layers and stuff and it's not a problem at all.
So I'm at a loss as to the cause or the solution, except for work arounds like hair hiding and stuff.

Next pic I do I will try the calligraphy tool, and also exporting and re-importing, see how that helps.
Thanks for the tips!

I am almost positive it is the live effects. I think when you try the calligraphy next time Inkscape should perform more to what you are expecting.