Kendra Schaefer

In Part 1, we learned how to make a basic glossy button background in Inkscape. Now, we’re going to be looking at how to produce the surrounding leaf and stem for our environmental logo or icon.

This part of the logo consists of three different parts: the circular background, the leaf overlay, and a few drop shadows and glow effects that you might not notice unless they’re pointed out. Here’s a breakdown of the pieces:

Making the Circle

This circle is going to sit beneath the glossy button that we did in Part 1, so we want it to be a little bit bigger than our glossy button. You can adjust your size accordingly to make the “stem” thicker or thinner, according to your preference. So step one is to take the background circle from our glossy button, duplicate it (with circle selected, Ctrl + D), and make it a little bigger. I’ve made my copy in this picture red so it can be seen. This is what you should now have:

To our red circle, we’re now going to apply a 4-stop radial gradient, with most of the gradient colors positioned so that they’re crammed together along the outer rim of the circle. For your gradient colors, be sure to go from dark green to light green, then back to dark green. This creates an illusion of roundness.

The Leaf

Using your pen tool, draw a shape like the one below. You’ll probably want to use the edge of the circle for a guide, setting the tip and bottom points of the leaf on or near the edge of your circle. Then, again using your pen tool, draw another shape, this time a sort of bent crescent. This will become the inner “streak” of your leaf. Mine is drawn here in red so it can be easily seen, but the color doesn’t matter:

Place the new shape on top of your leaf shape. Select both the leaf and the new shape (hold down Shift while using the selection tool to click on both), and go to Path > Exclusion. This is the before and after result:

What just happened? Basically, Inkscape took the new shape you made, the crescent, and subtracted it from the leaf. Now you have a leaf shape that has a transparent “window” in the center of it, that window being your crescent.

The real beauty of this shape is the gradient that you fill it with. You’ll want to fill it up with a four-stop linear gradient, with the darker color on the inside, and the lighter colors on the outside. My gradient stop colors and gradient positioning can be seen below. Note that the color on the outer edge of the leaf is slightly transparent.

Here are my gradient stops and my gradient positioning:

Glow Spots and Drop Shadows

We want to make our leaf look a little more glossy, and appear a bit more 3D. So we’ll be adding a drop shadow to the inner edge of the leaf, and adding two glow spots to the leaf’s surface to give it a tad more shine.

First, the glow spots. Draw an oval and rotate / position it as below. With your oval selected, apply a white to transparent radial gradient, with the white in the center and the transparency on the outside. Here are my gradient stops and results:

Repeat the process one more time to create another glow on the other side of the leaf: draw an oval, position / rotate it, and apply a white-to-transparent radial gradient. To make the drop shadow, copy the leaf shape (select leaf shape, press Ctrl + D). You should now have two copies:

With the copy still selected, apply a two-stop black to transparent green linear gradient. Here’s my gradient positioning and gradient stops:

With your copy still selected, apply a blur of 6.5 and set opacity to 19.9. Position your drop shadow along the bottom edge of your original leaf:

And finally, so that we can move all the parts of our leaf around at the same time, select your leaf, your drop shadow, and both of your glows (hold down Shift while selecting to select multiple objects), and go to Object > Group.

Stack it all Up

So far, we’ve created three parts, a glossy sphere, a stem, and a leaf. Before we move on, lets stack all of these things on top of each other in the right order. Your stem should be at the bottom. Your glossy button should be on top of that, and your leaf should rest on top of the button.

TIP: To “stack” things like this, and to move object on top of or behind each other, use the Raise and Lower options in the Object menu.

Notice that I have not positioned my aqua button in the exact center of the stem background circle. Instead, I offset it a little to make it look like the stem is wider in some parts.

In Part 3, we’ll add the world map vector to create a globe, put a water droplet on our leaf, and add a few additional finishing touches.