I have been using Inkscape for a couple of years - no real problems until today when I opened a blank page and the first thing I drew (be it a line, rectangle, whatever) is light blue instead of black. Stroke is a black square at the bottom left of the screen, O:100. If I go to ctl/shift F there seem to be nothing I can do to make the selected item have black lines!

The only solution I can find is to copy an old drawing file open the copy, delete the content and start as before - lines are black, settings are the same - total mystery to me. Perhaps there is someone else who has had the same problem!

Weird. Could you upload the svg file? (may need to zip it).

It sounds like black line is partially transparent. Here's a tutorial I wrote, to help people discover all the various sources of transparency in Inkscape: http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/inde ... article=18

My best guess is that it's a partially transparent layer, but it could be other things as well.

If you haven't identified the problem after checking everything mentioned in the tutorial, we will indeed need to see the SVG file!

Double-click the tool you used to draw and check its style/preferences for instance.

Cheers
P.