My question is simple. How can I turn circles or texts into paths? Shift+Ctrl+C does not seem to work, and I couldn't find anything about the matter on Google. I would like to be able to draw perfect circles and then manipulate them as if I've drawn them with Draw Bezier Curves (B), or to type some text and then, for example, change the positioning of letters or remove the dot over "i". How can I do that?

Specifically, I would like to know what would be the best way to recreate such eyes in Inkscape:



Note that I started using Inkscape only recently (thanks to this tutorial), and all my previous experience is based on Paint.NET. Also, sorry for grammar mistakes, English is not my first language.

Shift+Ctrl+C works for me(?). After using it with your circle selected, you should be able to choose the "Edit Path by Nodes" tool, delete the bottom node, and then select the middle nodes and click "Make selected segments lines".

you can probably do that with the ellipse tool and make the half circles by editing two of the ellipses with the node edit tool.

1.Does it work if you go to the paths menu and select 'object to path' manually? If so, then your keyboard configuration may not be accepting one or more of the modifier keystrokes.
2. The text, after converting to paths, still needs to be ungrouped before you can select an element In the case of the 'i' it needs to be ungrouped, the 'i' selected, and then the path broken apart before you can select the dot to delete it.

It appears that my entire problem was caused by the fact that I was unaware that in order to change circles or texts into paths, I need to use a different keyboard shortcut. I was previously using CTRL+ALT+C and receiving an error message, and only now I learned that I have to use CTRL+SHIFT+C instead (unlike what I said in first post, sorry for that). It's all fine now, thanks! Also thanks to druban for info about ungrouping the text, that was very helpful too.

One last question though, is there a way to cut holes in objects? For example, it would be very handy if instead of making white circles over the gray one, I could just cut circular holes in it and draw eyelids and pupils below the gray circle. So far, any attempt to do it through "Clip" or "Mask" wasn't successful.