Hiya folks!

To introduce myself a bit..
I'm a traditional canvas/paper/paints artist so most of my work is sketched on paper, which is great for initial ideas.
I'm often asked to design logos, cd covers and that sort of thing but feel a bit 'left-behind' as I can't represent my further ideas using the computer!
I've always wanted to learn how to create clean, crisp images and digital art such as logos, web graphics etc from my paper sketches. It would help me tremendously if I could do this.

For example, I do lots of sketches/doodles for an idea, tracing whenever possible to save time.
When I have a design/layout I like, I take it to the next stage by redrawing again, this time colour samples.
When the colour sample is selected THEN I use my computer and a photo/paint app. It can be a long process and very seldom am I totally happy with the result!

So, after much research and reading, I installed the highly recommended Inkscape and, as a friend of mine wants a Iogo designed for his scooter/bike garage and club I thought I'd accquaint myself with Inkscape.

I still did the initial paper sketches for him to chose from (which I love doing by the way) and he has made his choice.
What I'd like to do now is offer him lots of colour, render, font variations but using only one or two computer generated drawings which would be editable in this way. Hope that makes sense!

My ink outlined sketches were scanned and saved.
I picked one to practice on in Inkscape and managed to Trace Bitmap to get to the stage where the black outline is highlighted with nodes and got rid of unwanted nodes (Simplify).
I've moved the nodes around a bit to reshape the drawing a bit and improve curves etc.
But all I have now are black outlines with nodes on the outside and inside!

This outline seems to be editable (which will be useful I'm sure), but it's what these lines surround that I need to work on too! I want to fill them with colour, add texture, bumps, make 3d-like - whatever - and save each variation.
So, I used the *Bezier/Straight Line Tool to go around the drawing again to get the seperate 'parts' on the INSIDE of the outline (hope you're following me here ). *BTW - is that a 'pen' tool?
I had my original scan on the page so I could reshape each part using the nodes (again! phew) and now have 2 parts which 'fit' together - like a jigsaw!!
I'm sure this can't be right as it's quite time consuming AND completely defeats purpose of Trace Bitmap

I've gone over the help files several times and get the jist of some of the processes, but not them all!
It's a lot to take in for a beginner but I'm really trying hard and will continue to read.
I've also watched loadsa youtube videos which were great and helped a few things click into place in my head, but obviously not enough for me to carry out this seemingly 'simple' procedure of getting scanned art to a fully editable stage!

Anyhoo, I've fumbled around with Inkscape for over a week now, made some (slow) progress I think...
and, in all honesty I could really do with some help! I know it's me - I'm completely missing something!
So I'd be truly grateful (and relieved) if some wonderful Inkscaper could help me get started - please!
I know that when I learn this part I'll be on my merry way to being a fully-fledged Inkscape artist coz I've seen what it can do and I know what I can do! It would take my art to a different level. AND I'm determined!

Thanks in advance for reading. AND please forgive me for asking for help on a topic which I'm sure has probably been discussed on this forum previously. I did have a quick look but have spent most of this week reading about Inkscape and getting very litle practical work done. I just felt the time had come to admit defeat!!

ps: Unless there's a miracle tutorial out there, it would be good to do this with real people if you know what I mean!
So I can come here and ask/discuss progress: I've got tutorials swimming round my head at the mo! (I'm -usually- a quick learner if that's any help!

Welcome atomicblonde! (Love your username )

Well, if you read the tavmjong bah Guide on Trace Bitmap, you realize that Trace Bitmap isn't meant to accurately reproduce an image. Not in such a way that you can Trace any image and have it magically converted to vector. I wish it could do that, and assume it would just be so hard to create such a feature. There's an internet based raster to vector trace type of converter which may do a better job in certain situations than Inkscape's, but I don't have the name or link with me at the moment. Hopefully someone else can share that?

I think what most sketch artists do is scan their sketchs onto hard drive, with an ordinary scanner. Then proceed to add the colors (including gradients, shadows and highlights) using Inkscape. The more serious of them use a pen/tablet (like Wacom) which enables them to sketch directly into Inkscape. Then there's another group who just like to create things from scratch, using the mouse and Inkscape's interface (including me, not even an artist, much less a sketch artist). And I think the latter is what Inkscape was designed to do, for the most part. But it takes a great deal of skill and experience to be able to produce sketchs from scratch in Inkscape.

You might try the Pencil tool, which is the closest thing Inkscape has to an actual sketching tool. But I have found it tricky to use -- it's not really like just drawing with a pencil. But it definitely has certain impressive features and uses.

That's about all I can say. But there are plenty of artists here who I'm sure will reply with more relevant and technical info. Just keep practing with Inkscape, and do lot's of tutorials to gain experience, and you'll get there. No one can just pick up Inkscape and produce professional work, unless they're incredibly talented.

I haven't done any work the way you do, but I think I know what your problem is.

If you draw a black hollow square, you expect your trace to result in a white (or transparent) polygon with a black stroke.

But trace only ever gives you unstroked polygons, so you get an polygon that's what was your outline, with no way of affecting the hollow centre that should be the fill.

The thing to do at that point, is to select the shape, and do a path->break apart. That gives you two polygons, one which is the inside, and the other the outside, of your original shape. Delete one of them. Use "Swap Fill And Stroke", and you've got approximately what you expected in the first place.


It' a bit trickier with a line. You've got to use node editing to select a node at/near each end, and use "break path at selected node" on each, before doing "break apart" and "swap fill and stroke", as before.


Where drawn lines cross, you may have to do some combination of these things, as well as path division and separation commands.

And just drawing new lines over your imported sketch might be the fastest way, anyhow.

Hi AB You might want to download a program called WinTopo (I'm assuming you are on Windoze). WinTopo will vectorize lines as lines and not shapes (centerline conversion). the free version is good but the bought version (not too expensive) even converts to smooth bezier - but you might not care about that ...

Anyway, another thing you might like to do is to pick the "stack" option when using Inkscape's autotracer so your shapes don't require quite as much editing...

Well what I do is trace the drawing with the bezier tool to draw the parts that will be filled. Then, the tracings must be arranged in a way that looks like you want it to.
What are you working on exactly?