In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to use Inkscape’s Extrude functions and the gradient palettes to create a 3D RSS icon. You’ll need to know how to work with color, fills and strokes – I won’t be going over those basics again here. If you’re brand new to Inkscape, please consider first checking out my Color & Gradients Tutorial for Absolute Beginners, which will show you how to use the Fill & Stroke Manager.

Step 1: Draw a rounded rectangle shape and convert it to a path

Using your rectangle tool, draw a square. The color doesn’t matter at the moment. Then switch over to your Edit Path by Nodes tool. Select the rounding point of the square, and drag it downwards until you’re happy with the curvature of your corners.

With your rounded square selected, go to Path > Object to Path. After you’ve selected Object to Path, it will appear as though nothing has happened, but if you followed the directions correctly, your shape object has been converted into an editable path.

Step 2: Create your RSS Feed shape and convert it to a path

Let’s work on our RSS shape. Using your circle tool, draw a dot and set it aside. Then once again using your circle tool, draw another dot, slightly bigger. Turn off the fill for the second circle, and turn on the stroke, making it appear similar proportionally to the diagram below. Repeat this process, creating another, even larger circle, then turn off the fill and turn on the stroke.

Select the two stroked shapes with no fill (you can select them both at the same time by holding down Shift and click on them one after the other). With the two of them selected, go to Path > Stroke to Path. Again, it will appear as if nothing has happened, but your stroke has been converted to a path.

Repeat this for the final circle shape, but this time, with the shape selected, click Path > Object to Path.

Step 3: Stack and Cut

Open your Align and Distribute Palette (Shift + Ctrl + A or Object > Align and Distribute). Select the two stroked circles (by holding down Shift and clicking each object in turn), then click the Align Vertical Center button once, and the Align Horizontal Center button once.

With the circles aligned, once again select both of them, and go to Path > Combine. You will see the inner bounding box disappear, and the outer bounding box snap to the edges of the outer circle.

Draw a square that’s roughly the same size as the outer circle (see the diagram below). Turn off the fill, turn on the outer stroke. Position the square so that the bottom-left corner of it is situated in the center of the circles. Select all of your objects (the circles and the square [holding down Shift]), then go to Path > Divide. The square will disappear as in #3 below, and you’ll get multiple bounding boxes. You can now delete the two un-necessary pieces, leaving just the rss syndication symbol, and position the dot to complete the shape.

What just happened? By using the divide tool, you essentially split the two circles along the square’s path. Divide takes the top shape – any shape will do – and uses it as a guideline by which to slice up the shape directly below it; in this case, the circles.

Step 4: Extrude Your Shape

We’ll be working once again with the rounded rectangle we made in step 1. With your rectangle selected, go to Path > Object to Path. With your rectangle still selected, go to Effect > Generate from Path > Extrude, and set your settings however you like. You can see mine in the diagram below. The magnitude determines the width of your final button; I set mine to 25. When you’re done with the settings, click “Apply”, then “Close”.

Place the rss shape on top of the icon backing. Change the shape color to white.

Step 5: Apply Color Gradients

Using your Edit Path by Nodes tool, select just the top piece of the rectangle, and apply a linear gradient to it (by clicking the linear gradient button in the Fill tab of the Fill and Stroke Manager). Edit the gradient colors so that they fade from a dark orange to a light orange and back to dark orange again. I created a four-stop gradient – you can see my colors below.

Grab your Edit Path by Nodes tool, and select each piece of the button siding. You may have to zoom in very close to get each piece. With all pieces selected, go to Path > Combine. After the pieces have been combined, you can select the siding and apply a radial gradient to it. Below, you can see the results of my radial gradient application. You’ll notice I’ve set the center of the gradient to the bottom left corner of the siding, and set the color to a darker orange, to simulate shadow. Nearer the top / outer rim of the gradient, the color becomes a lighter orange.

To the RSS shape itself, I’m going to apply a very subtle white-to-gray linear gradient, just to give the color some depth. If you’re satisfied at this point, you can save and be done. I like to spice it up a little, so in step six, I’ll show you some additional effects that can be added.

Step 6: Apply Finishing Effects If Desired (Intermediate – Advanced)

Above, you can see I’ve applied three effects.

For the drop shadow: Draw a thin rounded rectangle, about the width of your rss button. It should be a dark color. Select it, then open up your Fill and Stroke Manager. At the very bottom, you’ll see a blur slider. Blur the rectangle. Then move it to the back with Object > Lower to Bottom.

For the Gloss: Select just the top piece of your rss icon backing – the orange rounded rectangle – and Ctrl + C to copy it to the clipboard. Then, instead of using Ctrl + V to paste it, go to Edit > Paste in Place. This will paste a new copy exactly on top of the copied object. Then, apply a semi-transparent white linear gradient to this shape. Both gradient stops should have more than a touch of transparency. Convert the object to a path if it isn’t one already (Path > Object to Path), select your Edit Path by Nodes tool, and delete the two bottom-right nodes.

The bevel isn’t actually a bevel at all, but two rectangles, one slightly smaller than the last, stacked on top of each other (smaller one on top). The trick to the beveled effect is to apply exactly the same gradient to both rectangles, but to change the gradient direction of the lower one using the Edit Path by Nodes tool. For more details on this effect, try my silver pendant tutorial.

And we’re done. Enjoy!

Everything’s going eco these days, and chances are you’ll have the occasion to make some environmental or organic icons, graphics and logos. I hope to help give you a nice basis for the creation of nature-themed graphics. This tutorial is a bit long, and is for intermediate – advanced Inkscape users. You should be familiar with Inkscape’s color and gradient tools, as well as have some basic knowledge of path / pathfinder tools. You won’t be able to do this without a solid knowledge of Inkscape gradients, so if you need a quick lesson on colors and gradients, try this tutorial first.

In three parts, we’ll discuss how to make the body of the globe body of the icon / logo, the surrounding leaf and leaf stem, the water droplets, lighting effects, shadows and extras.

You’ll need to click here to download the vector for the world map silhouette that I’m using – it’s free, and only takes a sec.

Overview

Here’s a close-up of what we’ll be making:

Though this might look rather complicated, there are really only three basic parts to this icon: the glossy button itself, the globe insert, and the surrounding leaf and stem. Here are the three basic parts of this icon / logo split into pieces (the globe is shown on a black background so it can be seen easily):

We’ll be walking through the steps of re-producing each of these pieces in this tutorial. You’ll learn tricks like gloss, drop-shadows, pathfinding and transparency, so bear with me, this might take a while.

Step 1: Create the Glossy Button Background

Let’s first create our aqua glass button so the rest of our artwork has a background on and around which to appear. The button consists of a basic circle with two inner glows, plus one shiny gloss effect gradient. Here’s the button split into its component pieces:

Draw a basic circle, and fill it in with a radial gradient. The stroke should be turned off. The center of the circle should be a light aqua color, with the outer edges a slightly darker blue-green. Here’s my circle, with my gradient stops:

Bottom Glow

Now to make each effects piece. First, let’s create the bottom glow (labeled Piece 2 in the graphic above). Draw an oval in the center of your circle. Mine is shown below in red. The color doesn’t matter right this second. Fill that oval with an aqua to transparent linear gradient. Here is my red circle, aqua gradient, gradient positioning and result:

To finish off our bottom glow, let’s give it a bit of blur. With your oval still selected, use the blur slider to give it a blur of 7.8. Here are my results:

Crescent Side Glow

Now we’re going to make a crescent-shaped side glow (Piece 3). To get a nice crescent in Inkscape, we need to use our path tools. Make a copy of your circle background button (with circle selected, Ctrl + D). Make it the copy a tad smaller than the original. Now copy the smaller circle (with smaller circle selected, Ctrl + D). You should now have the left-most picture below. (I’ve made the copies a different color so they can be easily differentiated). Then, place copy one on top of copy two, like the right-hand picture.

Select both circles (You can select two items by holding the Shift key and using your selection tool to click both). A bounding box should appear around them. Now go to Path > Difference. This is the result:

Color your crescent with a solid light green, and give it a blur of 8.7. Below are my color and blur settings. My crescent is shown on a black background here so you can see it. After that, position the crescent on top of your circle, near the left edge.

Glossy shine

And now for the finishing touch, a glossy shine. Draw an oval near the top of your circle. I’m showing mine in red here so it can be seen, but color doesn’t matter at the moment. Then fill that oval with a white to transparent linear gradient. This is my red oval, white gradient positioning, my gradient stops, and the result:

Okay! That’s our background. You should now have the glossy orb shown on the left.

Before we go on to Part 2, select all of your objects – both of your glows, the background circle, and the gloss gradient – and go to Object > Group to join all the parts of this button together. Remember, to select multiple object, hold down Shift while clicking on each object in turn.

In Part 2, we’ll talk about how to create a leaf, background, and the surrounding green stem.

Caterpillars are way adorable, and 3D cartoon caterpillars are twice as way adorable. Happily, they’re fairly easy to make in Inkscape. This tutorial uses the Inkscape interpolate tool, plenty of radial gradients, and a dainty dollop of node editing. The pen tool, some of you may be happy to note, doesn’t appear once in this tutorial, so if you’re not yet familiar with the use of the bezier pen, give this tut a shot.

Step 1: Create the Body

Draw two circles – one larger, one smaller – a good distance apart from each other, one pink, one green. You can, of course, use any colors you like, but the two colors should be different.

Select both of them, then bottom align them by going to Object > Align and Distribute > Align bottoms. In the graphic to the left, the Align Bottoms button is circled in red.

Select both of your circles again (you can do this by holding down Shift while you use your selection tool to click on each object in turn), making sure to select the bigger one first, and the smaller one second.

Then, with both selected, go to Effects > Generate from Path > Interpolate, and set your settings like this:

Exponent: 0.0

Interpolation steps: 6

Interpolation method: 2

Duplicate Endpaths: check

Interpolation Style: check

Live preview: uncheck or checked, it doesn’t matter

Click “Apply”, and close your Interpolate window.

What you now have is two sets of shapes – your original two circles, plus this:

This will form the basis for your caterpillar’s body. You can delete your original two circles – you no longer need them.

Step 2: Shade the body

What you have now looks and behaves like one shape, but it’s actually just a group of circles. We’re going to add a radial gradient to each circle to give it the appearance of being 3D, but first we need to ungroup these circles so we can work with them individually. With your whole group of circles selected, go to Object > Ungroup (or click Shift + Ctrl + G).

Now, select the first circle, and add a radial gradient, with the current green color in the center and the outer color being slightly darker. After you change the gradient color, you’ll want to switch to your Edit Path by Nodes tool and move the center of the radial gradient to the top of the circle, so that light appears to be shining down from above. Here are my gradient spots and gradient direction settings:

Continue doing this for each circle in the group. Don’t move the circles, just click on them, add a radial gradient, then adjust the gradient color and position. Here’s what mine looks like when I’m done:

Step 3: Make and shade the eyes

Time to add some eyes. Make one white circle and position it over the face. Then, add a white-light grey radial gradient to that white circle. Duplicate your eye (with eye selected, Ctrl + D), and paste it next to the first one. I like to make the second eye a little less wide to give the impression of perspective.

Add some eyeballs by drawing some little grey-black dots over the whitest part of the gradient on both eyes. You don’t need to add a gradient to these dots, but like the second eyeball, I like to make the second dot a smidgen thinner.

Step 4: Feet

Draw a pink circle. Then go to Object > Object to Path to convert the shape into a path.

Switch over to your Edit Path by Nodes tool , click on the top circle node, and pull both handles outwards a smidgen to create an upside-down gumdrop shape.

Duplicate this shape – you should have two of them. Make the second one slightly smaller, change its color to green. Position the pink foot under the last section of the body. Position the second foot (green one) under the second section of the body, like this:

Select both feet by holding down Shift while using your selection tool to click on both of them in turn. With both feet selected, to go Effects > Generate from Path > Interpolate, and set your settings as below:

Exponent: 0.0

Interpolation steps: 5

Interpolation method: 2

Duplicate Endpaths: check

Interpolation Style: check

Live preview: uncheck or checked, it doesn’t matter

You should now have a nicely aligned row of feet, plus your two original feet (hidden behind the new row). Delete your two original feet, then duplicate (Ctrl + D) the row of feet so that you have two rows. You should now have this:

Select your first row (top row shown in picture) and ungroup it (with row selected, Object > Ungroup). Select each foot in the row, and with the foot selected, use the eyedropper tool to click on the corresponding body section just above the foot.

This will transfer the color of the body to the foot, creating a seamless blend of color. You should now have one row of legs that look like they’re part of the upper body:

No need to ungroup the second row of feet – just select them, position them as shown below, and lower them on your artboard so that they’re behind everything else (with row selected, End key or Object > Lower to Bottom):

And there’s your basic caterpillar shape. All that’s left is to personalize it as you like with antennae, eyebrows, and maybe, just maybe, a mouth.

If you’re at all familiar with the Adobe Illustrator blend tool, you’ll know you can create neat vector flowers and swirls using Illustrator’s blend tool. Inkscape has a similar tool called “interpolate”, which produces lovely lines by “blending” two separate lines into one flowing shapes. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use the Inkscape interpolate tool to make a vector Buddhist lotus flower.

You should already know how to use Inkscape’s pen tool, gradients and color functions before beginning this tutorial. If you don’t, click here to read about color and gradients in Inkscape.

Step 1: Draw your background

Since many of our lines here are white, they won’t show up against the white Inkscape page. So the first step is to draw a dark background so we can see what we’re doing as we do it. So draw a square, and fill it with a dark blue – medium blue radial gradient, with the medium blue in the center. Below, I have my gradient stops and background.

Step 2: Draw the outline of your petals

The flower itself consists of six parts – five petals, and one yellow glow in the center that looks a bit like a beam of light, and serves as the “pollen” of the flower. Below is what each part of my flower looks like on its own. You’ll notice that both sets of left and right petals are the same, just mirrored, so you only actually have to draw three petals, one center, one middle, and one outer petal, and then copy the middle and outer petals. I’ll walk you through that later in this tutorial.

Lets do the central petal first.

Before we begin drawing, make sure that your document has snapping enabled. Go to File > Document Properties > Snap and make sure your settings look like mine below. Then let’s start drawing. Using your pen tool, draw a single curved line. In my stroke color panel, I’ve set the stroke color to white, and in my stroke style panel, I’ve set the stroke width to 2.0. The fill is turned off.

Now, select the line you just drew, copy it, and paste that copy onto your page. With the copy selected, change the stroke color to pink.

With the copy still selected, go to Object > Flip Horizontal (or you can just press “H” on your keyboard). Line up the top points so that they’re touching each other. Since you’ve turned snapping on in your document properties, this should be pretty easy. You now need to select both of these lines. To select two or more objects at once, hold down Shift while selecting each object in turn.

Step 3: Interpolate the lines

Here’s the fun part. With both objects selected, go to Effects > Generate from Path > Interpolate, and set your settings as I have below. Click “Apply”. Inkscape has now blended your left object and your right object together in a series of steps that smoothly fades one into the other. The result looks something like this:

This is the basic method you’ll use to create each one of your petals. You make two lines, stick them together so the ends touch, select them both and interpolate. You’ll create one outer petal, then copy the interpolated result, paste it into your page, select it, and go to Object > Flip Horizontal.

And you’ll also create one middle petal. Again, copy the interpolated result and flip the copy horizontally.
You now have five petals. Time to lay them on top of each other to create our flower. Arrange each piece.

Step 4: Add the central glow

Nice. There’s our basic flower. Now it’s time to add the center. Using your pen tool, draw a shape that looks like the one below. In your color selection panel, turn the stroke off, and fill the shape with a yellow-transparent red radial gradient , bringing the center of the gradient down to the bottom of the shape. Now position the gradient so the transparency is closest to the top, as below.

All we need to do now is position this shape in the center of the flower. This is what it should look like:

And we’re done! Perhaps a couple more touches for an Asian atmosphere?

Creating vector grunge text in Inkscape is indeed super simple. In this tutorial, we’ll start with the basic Arial Black font, and turn it into a gritty vector in seconds.

This tutorial is suitable for complete beginners. All you need is Inkscape , a free, open source vector graphics editor.

Step 1: Type some text

Select your Type tool , choose a nice bold font, and type out any phrase. I’m using Arial Black 72pt font.

In the Windows build of Inkscape version 0.46, there is a well-documented bug that prevents some users from changing the font of any text using the main font drop-down menu. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next edition of Inkscape, but for the time being, this can be circumvented by selecting your font through the Text > Text and Font… menu item.

Step 2: Convert your text to a path

What you’re going to do here is take your font and turn it into a picture. Right now, your font is behaving like type. You want to get it to behave like a graphic. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to do.

TIP: This would be the time to double-check your spelling and make sure your text says what you want it to say. After you convert your text to a path, you will no longer be able to edit it using the text tool. After this, if you need to re-type your text, you’ll have to start over.

Make sure your text is selected, and in the Path menu, click on Object to Path.

It will appear that nothing has happened after you click this, but rest assured, your type has been converted to a path. If you want to double-check and make sure the conversion took place, just click on your Edit Path by Nodes tool, and you should see all of the new anchor points (nodes) appear around your font:

Step 3: Jitter those nodes

With your text selected, go to Effects > Modify Path > Jitter Nodes…

In the Jitter Nodes options window, input the following settings: Maximum displacement, px 4.0, and check all of the check boxes. I’ve got my settings displayed in the screenshot to the left, but you can set yours any way that you see fit.

If you have the “Live Preview” checkbox checked, you can see how the text will look as you change the settings. Feel free to play around with the pixel displacement until you get exactly the look you want. When you’re satisfied, click Apply, and close the window.

With the settings input as above, here are my results:

You can add a larger maximum displacement in your jitter nodes options to get a more dramatic effect, or lower the displacement to get a slight distortion.

Enjoy!

This tutorial is meant to give absolute beginners a detailed understanding of using and applying colors and gradients in Inkscape, and the different options available to you when working with object color. This tutorial goes very slowly, and covers basics, so if you’re above beginner-intermediate level, this will probably bore you to tears.

Parts of an Object

Every object you draw in Inkscape has two parts: a fill and a stroke. The stroke is the outer boundary of the object. The fill is the object’s inner, or main color. Below, you’ll see I’ve drawn a circle with a red stroke and a yellow fill. By simply manipulating the fill and stroke colors, you can produce almost any shading or lighting effect. Every object, be it text, 2D shape or 3D shape has a stroke and a fill. Stroke and fill can be colored independently of each other, and each have their own settings that are independent of each other. You can turn off the stroke or the fill for any object as well, and just show one or the other.

The Fill & Stroke Manager

To start working with color, you’ll first need to draw an object, then click on it to select it. You should see a bounding box appear around the outer edges of your object as in the picture above. Once the object is selected, you can either click Shift + Ctrl + F to open up the Fill and Stroke manager, or you can click on either of the Fill / Stroke color boxes at the bottom of your screen.

Below is the Inkscape Fill and Stroke Manager.

Notice the Fill, Stroke Paint, and Stroke Style tabs at the top of the manager. The “Fill” tab, which is currently selected in the picture above, allows you to manipulate the color, transparency, and blur of the fill. The “Stroke paint” tab gives you the same set of options for the stroke – you can manipulate its color, transparency, and blur. The Stroke Style tab is a little different – it lets you choose stroke width, stroke style (dotted, dashed, etc.), choose different ways to display corners and edges, and add arrowheads if desired.

This is what my Fill, Stroke Paint, and Stroke Style tabs look like for my yellow circle with a red stroke, shown above:

The Stroke Style tab is fairly self-explanatory. Remember to make sure that the object you want to edit is selected, and then play with the options in the Stroke Style panel. In this case, plain ol’ messing around with it is the best way to learn.

The options on the fill and stroke paint tabs are almost identical, so let’s take a quick look at the row of buttons in the top-left of the color manager. You can toggle between these buttons to fill or stroke your object with a multitude of patterns or colors.

These buttons give you a host of options for manipulating your color – but you cannot have two of these options selected at a time. You cannot, for example, have BOTH a solid color fill and a linear gradient fill on the same object. You can only choose one of these buttons per fill or stroke – this button panel lets you switch between the choices. The part of the shape (fill or stroke) that is effected depends on which top tab (Fill or Stroke Paint) you are currently in. For example, starting with my yellow fill, red stroke circle, if I click the “X” button in the “Fill” tab, the fill is turned off, and I get a red circular outline. Or, if I did the same thing inside of my stroke tab, and turned off the stroke, I get a solid yellow circle, no border.

To turn the stroke or fill back on as a solid color, simply click the solid color button under the appropriate tab.

The two gradient buttons, linear gradient and radial gradient create a color blending effect, fading two or more colors into each other.

I’ll talk more about how to use and manipulate color gradients later, but for now, here’s a quick demonstration of the effects. On the right, I’ve made the strokes thicker (using the Stroke Style panel) so the results are easier to see.

I’m going to skip the Pattern and Unset Paint tabs right now – if you’re just starting out with color in Inkscape, those are a little bit outside the scope of this lesson.

The Color Tabs

The color tabs offer you five different ways to manage, sort, and choose the colors for your project. Below, you can see the same yellow fill color I used in my circle as it’s displayed in some of the different color tabs.

The RGB tab – RGB stands for “Red Green Blue”. It’s called such because it creates colors by blending various gradations of – you guessed it – red, green and blue to achieve the desired color. The RGB palette is a bit limited, and is almost always used exclusively for web graphics. If you’re designing buttons for the web, you should probably be working with the RGB palette. The “A” Slider stands for “Alpha”, a.k.a. opacity. this determines how transparent or opaque your color is.

The “A” slider differs from the opacity slider at the very bottom of the panel. The opacity slider controls the overall opacity for the *whole shape* – stroke and fill. The “A” slider determines the opacity for this ONE color.

HSL Color – Personally, I find HSL the easiest to work with. HSL stands for “Hue, Saturation, Lightness”. You’ll also see the “Alpha” slider here, which, again, allows you to manipulate the transparency of the current color *only*.

CMYK Color – If you are designing for print, brochures or magazines, you should be working with the CMYK palette. CMYK stands for “Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key [Black]“, and is the standard palette for many types of printing presses.

Wheel – If you find the sliders hard to use, or you are employing a color theory that is based on angles, you might prefer using the Wheel. It’s a bit more visually-oriented.

CMS – The CMS is your Color Management System. Again, if you’re just starting out with Inkscape colors, it’s unlikely you’ll be needing to use that. But just in case, here’s the manual on the Inkscape CMS: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Inkscape/ColorManagement

If you need to, you can also flip-flop between different color tabs to achieve exactly the color you want.

Summary of Color Application:

1. To add color to an object, draw the object
2. Select the object by clicking on it with your selection tool
3. Click Shift + Ctrl + F to enter your Fill and Stroke Manager
4. Use the top buttons in the Fill tab to add either a solid color, gradient or pattern to the fill, or to turn the fill off
5. Use the top buttons in the Stroke tab to add either a solid color, gradient, or pattern to the stroke, or to turn the stroke off

Remember, fill and stroke color have a similar interface, AND your shape must be selected for the changes you make in the Fill and Stroke manager to show up on your canvas, so if you’re making changes in the color manager and not seeing your colors appear, first check to make sure that your object is selected. Then check to make sure that you’re not editing the stroke when you meant to edit the fill, or vice versa. If the problem still isn’t resolved, check to make sure that your stroke or fill is not turned off.

To find out how to manipulate gradients, check out page 2.

It’s my personal opinion that silver is one of the hardest materials to faithfully render in any vector program. In this tutorial, I’ll show you a neat – and fairly easy – technique for creating a basic embossed silver jewelry-style effect.

You won’t need the pen tool for this tutorial, but you will need to know how to work with gradients in Inkscape. If you’re just starting out, go here to learn about Inkscape’s gradient and color applications.

Step 1: Draw your three background shapes

The first thing we’re going to do is draw three rounded rectangle shapes for our pendant design to sit on. Unlike Illustrator, which has a rounded rectangle tool that is separate from the normal rectangle tool, in Inkscape, both of these tools are combined. So go ahead and select your rectangle shape tool, and draw a rectangle. I’m making mine red so it can be seen clearly, but this color will be changed later.

Switch over to your Edit Path by Nodes tool. You’ll now notice that there are three points around your rectangle. Two of those points are squares, one of those points is a circle. The circle point is located in the upper-right hand corner of the rectangle. That is your rectangle rounding point. To round the edges of your rectangle, use the Edit Path by Nodes tool to drag that point downwards until the desired roundness is achieved.

Okay, that’s one rounded rectangle. Now we need two more, each slightly bigger than the last.

Select your rounded rectangle, and duplicate it (Ctrl + D). A new copy of your shape has just been pasted directly on top of the old shape, so it still appears that you’re only looking at one shape, but there are indeed two. Let’s change the color of the top shape so we can clearly see it. It doesn’t matter what color you make it.

To make it bigger, hold down your Shift and Ctrl keys, and drag one of the corner arrows out just a teeny bit. Now, with the shape still selected, go to Object > Lower to Bottom (or press Pg Dn on you keyboard) to move the top shape behind the original shape. You should now have the middle shape below.

Repeat this process one more time, creating another rounded rectangle (select shape then Ctrl + D to duplicate it, then enlarge it and move it to the bottom). The bottom shape should be the biggest. This is what mine looks like – a large green rectangle, a purple, then a red:

Note for Advanced Inkscapers: You’re probably thinking that you can use the Outset tool to achieve a similar effect, but I don’t like to do that. In the current build of Inkscape (0.46), the Outset tool tends to garble the edges of rounded rectangles a bit. The rectangle stays crispier and crunchier if you just expand it.

Step 2: Create your Pendant Overlay Shape

You can use any shape you want for this: stars, hearts, swirls, you name it. In this tutorial, I’m going to use a funky spiral design.

Using your circle tool, draw a circle. The color doesn’t matter right now.

Then, using your spiral tool, draw a spiral and move it on top of the circle. I have my spiral settings set to: Turns: 6.0, Divergence: 1.0, Inner Radius: 0.020. You can find your spiral settings at the top left-hand corner of your screen when you have the spiral tool selected.

Select both the circle and the spiral shapes, and go to Path > Difference. This is what you should get:

There you are, you now have two sets of shapes – one stack of rounded rectangles, and one modern-y spiral design. Now all that’s left is to add some color and effects.

Step 3: Making your silver gradient

The essence of making realistic or semi-realistic silver is the gradient color that you choose. Your silver gradient should have at least five stops, with stop colors varying from extremely light gray to darker gray and back again. The shinier you want your silver to appear, the more extreme the gray variations should be. If you want it very shiny, your light grays should be almost white, your dark grays fairly dark. If you want your silver to appear more matte, you should make the color variations more subtle.

Let’s start by going back to our stack of rounded rectangles and coloring in the top-most shape. Select the top rounded rectangle shape in your stack, then open your Fill and Stroke Manager (Shift + Ctrl + F).

Change it from solid fill to linear gradient by clicking the linear gradient icon in the top of your Fill and Stroke Manager.

Now, edit your gradient by clicking the “Edit…” button in the Linear gradient section of the Fill and Stroke Manager. I ended up with a six-stop gradient.

On the left below, you can see what happens when, with my top shape selected, I click the Linear Gradient button. Then, on the right, you can see my gradient after I’ve edited it. If you want a convincing silver tone, it’s important that your gradient fluctuates from light gray to dark gray and back several times. The bigger the contrast between your light and dark colors, the shinier your silver will look. Conversely, if your grays are just barely lighter and darker than each other, your silver will appear more dull. The contrast on the below gradient is pretty low, so the silver has a matte feel to it.

Step 4: Change the Gradient Direction, Apply Additional Gradients

We have a basic silver color now, but that gradient looks a little too… well, fake. To give this a little more of a realistic effect, let’s change the gradient direction. Switch to your Edit Path by Nodes tool, and move the gradient direction nodes like so:

Go ahead and repeat this process for each of the two rounded rectangles underneath (purple and green in my picture above) – select the rectangle, apply a gradient, and change the gradient direction to something random.

There are only two differences between the gradient you apply to the top, and the gradient you should apply to the lower two:

1) The lower gradients should be radial gradients, not linear.

2) You may or may not want to make the grays in the lower gradients darker.

This is what my three different rectangles look like when they are separated (not stacked on top of each other), so you can see here how each of my gradients behaves:

And this is what they look like when they are all stacked up:

It is, as they say, all an illusion.

Step 5: Add and Color your Design

Take the spiral (or other shape) that you created previously, and place it on top of your rectangles. With the spiral still selected, apply the same gradient to it that is applied to the top-most rectangle (the lighter, linear gradient).

If you’re satisfied with that, you can save and be done. Or, go ahead and make some gradient adjustments to the spiral’s gradient with your Edit Path by Nodes tool:

And there we go.

In keeping with the technophile tradition of finding ever-more-convenient ways to perform already-way-too-easy tasks, I’ve put together a quick list of 10 super-useful keyboard shortcuts for navigating around Inkscape.

Place an object below or above other objects

With your object selected, use the Pg Up key (not the up arrow) to raise that object above (in front of) other objects on the same layer. Use Pg Dn to push it backwards in the stack.

Zoom In & Zoom Out

Press the + (plus) button to zoom in, or press the – (minus) button to zoom out. No more switching over to the magnifying glass for you.

Open your text and font panel

Hold the Shift and Ctrl keys and then press T to open up your text panel. This is particularly useful in the Windows build of Inkscape 0.46, which contains a bug that does not let some users change the font using the main drop down box. But you can change the font through the Text & Font options screen.

Object to Path

With your object selected, hold the Shift and Ctrl keys and press C to convert the selected object into an editable path.

Holding Object Structure

Hold the Ctrl key while you are drawing a shape or resizing an object to make sure it maintains its integrity. For example, when using the ellipse tool, holding the Ctrl key while drawing will create a perfect circle.

Rotation

With your object selected, hit H to flip it horizontally, V to flip it vertically

Switch to the Bezier Pen Tool

Though Inkscape lists the Bezier Pen hotkey as Shift F6, you can also switch over by simply pressing B.

Direct Selection / Node Editing & Object Selection

Inkscape lists the Edit Path by Nodes tool hotkey as F2, but you can actually just press N. Press S to switch to your Select and Transform Objects tool. I flip-flop between these often.

Change Node Handle Length

With a single (or multiple) nodes selected, press the < and > keys to lengthen and shorten both handles on the selected nodes. If you hold the Shift key while you use these, only one handle will lengthen / shorten at a time.

Instant Gradients

Draw any object, then press G to jump right over to your gradient application and editing tool. If you want to edit the direction of a gradient that has already been applied to an object, select the object and press X. If you press X with no object selected, or if the selected object does not have a gradient on it, you’ll get the 3D Boxes tool instead.

Level: Intermediate-Advanced This guide will show you the basics of creating various gemstones in Inkscape. In this tutorial, I’ll be doing emeralds, but you can choose your own shape and color – the principle is the same for any faceted stone.

In order to complete this tutorial, you’ll need to know how to use the pen tool and how to apply gradients and change gradient directions. If you don’t know how to use the pen tool, this is a great time to learn, as gemstones have almost no curves – all straight lines, so practice with your pen tool a little and get familiar with it before starting. If you need to learn about gradients, let me suggest you do the 3D letter tutorial first, which walks you through gradients step by step. I won’t explain how to apply strokes, fills and gradients here – you should already understand the basics of applying color. Read my Beginner’s Color and Gradients tutorial for help getting started.

Your best resource for figuring out how to draw a gemstone is, not surprisingly, the gemstone cut illustrations on jeweler’s websites. I did an advanced Google search for “gemstone cut”, and selected “black and white” as the image color type. This search turned up quite a few great diagrams that will provide the basis for what we’re going to do.

Here’s what I’ve got:

If you don’t like the cut of this gem, do your own Google image search, and find something to work with. We’re actually going to trace whatever picture we come up with, so find a good clear one with good, clear lines.

The trick here is to draw the facets of the jewels, and then fill each facet in with a gradient. Add a few sparkles, and you’re done. Okay, perhaps that’s a minor simplification, but that’s the gist of it.

Step 1: Import your image into Inkscape

Open up Inkscape, and go to File > Import. Open the diagram of the gemstone that you downloaded and center the gem on the artboard.

Step 2: Make a new layer

We’re going to be tracing over the top of the gem diagram, so you want to leave the gemstone on the bottom layer, and create another layer on top of it. When we’re done drawing the outline, we’ll throw away the downloaded picture, and color in our drawing. To create a new layer, go to Layer > Add Layer. Name your layer (I named mine “gem drawing”), and click “Add”.

Step 3: Trace the Gem with the Pen Tool

Using your pen tool, start to trace each facet of the gem.

Make sure you are drawing on the top layer – the new layer you have created. To make sure you’re on the right layer, look at the bottom of your screen. You should see the name of your new layer in the drop-down box.

Now you’ll start to draw. Grab your Bezier pen tool from the tool panel. When I trace like this, I like to use nice fill color on my shapes so that I can clearly see what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter what color you pick right now, as we’re going to go back and change all the colors later. Don’t forget to make sure that you’re working on your new, blank layer, not the layer with the emerald diagram on it.

I also like to start at the bottom, near the lowest point of the gemstone. Each shape you draw should be a single facet, and each facet should be a complete closed path. Take your time. This requires a little patience.

You can also adjust your paths as you go, or finish drawing and go back and correct them later. I prefer to draw with my black stroke left on so that I can see what I’m doing.

Below is what it looks like when I’m done tracing, and the stroke is still on:

I’m still going to leave those strokes (black outlines) on there for now.

Step 4: Color each piece

Now we’re going to start filling in each piece with a gradient. Since we’re drawing an emerald, the gradient colors I’m going to pick will be dark forest green to an aqua green. Select every single piece by clicking Ctrl + A, or whatever the “Select All” hotkey is for your operating system. In Inkscape, Ctrl + A only works when your pointer tool (the black arrow) is selected in the tool panel.

Then click on the “fill” square at the very bottom of your screen. A coloring panel will pop up.

What we want to do in the color panel is to apply a gradient to all the selected pieces. In Inkscape, first you apply a gradient by clicking the gradient button in the “fill”color panel, then you edit each stop (end) of the gradient to have the colors you want it to have.

With all my pieces selected, I applied a dark green (semi-opaque) to light green (more transparent) gradient across each piece.These are my gradient settings for both stops in my two-stop gradient. (If you’re a little confused, please take a look at the 3D lettering tutorial, which explains gradients in detail).

Below you can see my gradient stop colors, and what my emerald looks like after the gradient has been applied across all pieces:

You can now delete the bottom layer with the diagram on it – we don’t need it any more.

That’s all very nice, but now, since the gradients are all going in the same direction (dark on the left, light on the right), our gemstone looks odd – it looks like it’s curved in all the wrong places. To fix that, select each piece, and change the direction the gradient is facing. On some pieces, arrange the gradient so the dark spot is on the upper-right and the light is on the lower left. On others, the dark should be on the top and the light on the bottom.

Now it’s time to delete the strokes. Ctrl + A to select all objects, then go to the “stroke” panel and click the X to turn off the strokes.

Step 5: Line it all up

We’re getting there.

Before you start lining your corners up, you may want to make life easier on yourself by going to File > Document Properties > Snap and turning on node snapping.

Now you need to select your node editing tool, and make all of the edges line up so there are no gaps in your gem. To click on a specific node (or “anchor” for all you Illustrator users), select your node editing tool and double-click on the node you want to move. I actually didn’t turn on node snapping in the Document properties, because I like to let my edges overlap here and there on occasion to increase the faceted effect.

This is what mine looks like when I’m done lining up the edges:

That’s your basic emerald shape. If you’re satisfied at this point, you can simply save and be done. But I like to add some transparency so that our gem doesn’t seem so much like a solid object.

Step 6: Effects and Sparkles

If you set your gradients the same way I did, your colors are actually partially transparent. You can’t see that they’re transparent right now, because there’s nothing behind them except a white background. But we’re going to put some extra facets, streaks and glows on here so that we get a real transparent look.

First, add a new layer and call it “inner facets” (or whatever you like).

Now, with your pen tool, make some dramatically shaded triangular color facets that are filled in with gradients. Make sure you’re working on the “inner facets” layer. The top gradient stops should be nearly transparent – I have my opacity (A) set to 30 for the top gradient stop on these. When you’ve drawn a few, they should look something like the left-hand picture below.

Now, place those shapes directly on top of the emerald, lining up the bottom points. Then move this layer beneath the emerald layer by going to Layer > Lower Layer (Shift + Ctrl + PageDn).

Now add some streaks to the top and side facets. Return to the layer with the emerald on it – the top layer at this point. You create the streaks by using your Bezier pen tool to draw rectangles, and adding a gradient to those rectangles that goes from pure solid white to total transparency.

The final step is to keep creating transparent glowy shapes on the lower layer, then creating shine and glows on the upper layer until you’re satisfied with the results. You get the idea. Keep adding inner facets to the “inner facets” layer beneath, shading them as you please. To add more glows and sparkles, return to the top layer and draw white-to-transparent gradients. And you’re done! Here’s what I got:

And that’s it. You can repeat this for rubies and diamonds using red or aqua gradients. For topaz, use yellow gradients. Try using a few different diagrams as a background to trace over, and you’ll have a treasure chest in no time. Enjoy!

Everyone does a “how to make a glossy button” post, but I’m less interested in “how to make a glossy button” than the differences between the two common types of Web 2.0 buttons around these days, the first being Matte buttons, which are more often used on subdued and corporate sites, the second being gloss buttons, which add a bit of bling to most any page.

Although you get a remarkably different effect, with the Matte button looking soft and frosty, and the Gloss button looking cold and glassy, these are incredibly easy to make, and there are actually only two design differences between these styles.

Both of them have the same bottom starting shape, which is just a circle with a red-orange linear gradient:

On top of that, they both have a yellow-to-transparent “glow”, which is a round-ended semi-circle:

And on top of that – and this is where the real difference is – they each have a solid white-to-transparent gradient. The only difference being that Matte is a radial gradient and Gloss is a linear gradient.

Matte: The inner yellow glow uses a slightly lighter yellow that isn’t quite so bold, and the gloss effect is a radial gradient with solid white at the center fading to total transparency.

Gloss: The inner yellow glow is more bold, to indicate a deeper color, and the gloss effect is concentrated in an oval, which is a linear gradient fading from solid white at the top to total transparency around the center of the object.