Create a Vector Portrait from a Photo in Inkscape

hello and welcome back to another video my name is mike davies and in today's tutorial i'll be showing you how to create a vector portrait using an image inside of inkscape i'm using inkscape version 1.1.1 which is the latest version of inkscape at the time of this tutorial [Music] before i get into that don't forget to check out my website at daviesmediadesign.com as always i have tons of video tutorials on here as well as free software help articles so definitely check that out plus you can get access to more content by becoming a dmd premium member and i'll include a link to this as well as all the relevant links from this tutorial in the description of the video here is the final composition we'll be creating for today's tutorial and to start us off we're going to just go to file new and we're just going to use the default composition for inkscape so this should be the default document size for everybody i do just want to change something real quick so i'll go to file document properties and you'll see this is the a4 page size but down here i'm going to make sure border on top of drawing is checked and then i'm just going to exit out of here next we'll bring in the photo i want to use for this tutorial so i'm going to open up my file explorer and here is the photo i downloaded this will be free i'll make it available to download in the description of the video so we'll just click and drag this into our composition and release and it's going to ask us how we want to import the jpeg and i'm just going to go with the import type of link which should save us some file space and then just go with the default settings here and click ok and i'll minimize this so here's the photo i'll hold ctrl zoom out with the mouse wheel and with the select tool the image should be selected if not just click on it until you get these little handles i'm just going to click and drag the handle in while holding the control key if you hold shift it'll drag it from the center and i'll just reposition this that should be good right about there and i just want to center this using my mouse so i'm going to use the right arrow center this using the keyboard i should say so i'm just looking at the jacket here so that's pretty straight right there next i'm going to click on align and distribute objects and then i'll make sure this is set to relative to page and i'm just going to horizontally align this to the image and that looks pretty good there so we'll exit out of here so now we're going to go to layer layers and we're just going to come over here click on layer 1 and rename this image i'll be creating layers as we go just to keep everything nice and organized and also just to make sure we don't lose any work i'll hit ctrl s to save this and let's name this vector portrait composition hit the enter key and now we can hit ctrl s as we go to save our work so to get started on this design let's start off by creating a new layer so inside the layers dialog i'm just going to click this little plus icon and let's start with the face i'll rename this face and position we'll set to above current and click add so now we have a new face layer so now new patterns that we draw will be drawn on this layer next we're going to come over to the toolbox and grab the pen tool or the bezier curves tool you can also use the shortcut key b for that tool and now i'm going to hold ctrl and use my mouse wheel to zoom in and let's come over here to the rulers and just click and drag to create a guide and we'll put this around the center of his face and now we're just going to click to create our first node click and drag the mouse and while i'm still dragging the mouse if i hold the shift key i can change the direction of just a single node so what i like to do is just point the node in the direction i'm going to go in next so towards this part of the chin up here so we're going to draw the second part again hold shift key sometimes you have to do that sometimes you don't so right here we're going to have to do it so hold ctrl i'm sorry hold shift to change direction so we're going to go off in this direction here and release and hold ctrl use the mouse wheel to zoom in so basically that's automatically creating what's called a corner in inkscape anytime you hold shift while you're dragging this and changing the direction of a single node that is entering the cornering mode for that node so now we're just going to continue up here and by the way that does take a little practice to know when a good time is to hold the shift key versus releasing it versus not holding it at all so really just getting that timing down is sort of an art form in itself but we're going to skip the hair we're going to go around the outline of the face and we're going to try to stay inside the hairline itself so that line's pretty straight as are these right here use the space bar as a hand tool and we're going to hold the shift key while we're still holding the mouse and change direction and we're just going to end this right here but hold the shift key and drag it down so try to drag that towards the guide and release and now we're just going to bring this all the way down to the starting point and close that off so you can grab the nodes tool hold ctrl zoom in and you may need to tweak some of these nodes here so right here i think is where i screwed up the most so just tweak this as needed if you hit the delete key you could just get rid of nodes if you need to like i just did there so we don't need this to be perfect which means this will probably work for us and i'm just going to grab the select tool once i'm ready i'll hit ctrl d that's going to duplicate this and i can either hit the h key on the keyboard or just click on one of these so in this case it is this icon right here to flip this and i'll come back here click and drag my mouse while holding the ctrl key and it should snap to that guide i created there make sure your snapping's turned on if it's not then we'll hold the shift key and click both of these are now selected and we'll go to path union and that should merge the two face shapes into a single shape so yes this isn't going to match up perfectly with the original but that's all right so next we're going to come over here we're going to actually do the neck part so we'll come over here click to add a new layer we'll name this neck and we'll position this below the current layer since we want it below the face layer and click add so there it is so hit the b key on the keyboard and hold ctrl zoom in so for this part we're going to click and again start creating some curves but instead of just duplicating this we're going to actually bring it all the way over here and try to somewhat line it up with the neck here let me use the space bar so it'll be a little off let me hit ctrl z and use the shift key once again to adjust the handle here and release and i'm just going to bring the neck all the way down here below the shirt and then we can bring it over here and just connect that right there so there's the neck next up we're gonna do the shirt so let's come over here create a new layer this one we can set above the current and we'll just name it shirt and click add we still have the bezier curves tool so we're just going to as best we can trying to get this shirt going get it nice and matched up here and then we're going to bring it down like so and hold ctrl zoom in so this part's a little off uh in terms of being on the center there so that's okay we're just going to sort of adjust it or tweak it but i'll hold the shift key to bring this node back up and release it hold ctrl zoom out with the mouse and we'll just sort of get that back on track there use the space bar as a hand tool and we will connect that so now we'll do the jacket so again create a new layer we're going to name this jacket we'll set it above the shirt layer and click add hold control zoom in so let's start right about here and hold ctrl zoom in a bit more we're going to just make that a nice straight line and then for these i'll make the curve a little bit offset there a little bit more curved and then we're going to bring it around this corner hold the shift key to change that direction bar to move over so we'll bring it right here up to the neck and let me hit ctrl z because i actually have to click and drag and then use the shift key to change the direction of that like so and to save us some time i'm really just going to try to make this as close to the original neckline as possible we can always clip it out but i prefer not to have to do that so hold the shift key to redirect this node here make it independent and now we're just going to sort of loosely follow the shirt line here and we'll come down here a bit and hold ctrl zoom in so we'll try to match these up and release actually i'm going to hit ctrl z because i don't need to go that far down i'm just going to go down to right here so hold the shift key to change the direction there and shift key use the space bar we're going to connect that and it's okay if that doesn't perfectly match the original all right so i think in this case we're going to just duplicate this bring it over here and then tweak the lines as needed so let's grab the select tool control d to duplicate it h key to flip it we're going to drag it on over holding the control key as we drag and we're going to align it like there grab the node tool hold ctrl zoom in and so with the node tool you can click and drag and select multiple nodes simultaneously and then we can drag these in let's click off of them and it might just be easier to redraw this from scratch to be honest so yeah we're just going to redraw this from scratch so let's click on here and hit the backspace key and grab the bezier curves tool or the pen tool still on the jacket layer so let's come up here to any starting point and let's just draw this from scratch and we'll just go ahead and connect that all right so we basically have all the base elements besides the hair so let's come over here to the face layer create a new layer name it hair click add so we're going to set a base layer for the hair and then once we do that we're going to color everything in and that's really where the fun stuff happens so let's start anywhere over here get the hair going hold ctrl zoom in so we're going to control z so if you create a curve here use the shift key to change the direction shift key change direction shift key change that direction there so again that kind of comes with practice and is a bit of an art form at times feels like it hold the shift key and for this part we're going to hold the shift key bring this in and change the direction so we'll add this hair follicle here hold shift bring it in hold shift bring it in and we'll add this hair follicle here as well so we've got two of them going on you don't need to add every single hair follicle you just need a few pieces of detail and the viewer really can fill in the rest on their own so right here we've got some hair follicle so hold control zoom in so we're going to start it right here hold shift change the direction hold shift bring it here and we don't need to do every single one of these just enough to add a little detail come down a little bit we'll do one more here shift bring it in shift all right so the ear is going to line up a little differently because we just duplicated the face to start with so we don't need to come all the way down here we'll just come over like so and bring this up and i'm going to hit ctrl s once again just to save this and now i'm just going to very loosely follow the original hairline we created here but for up here i'm just going to make it a little bit more wavy try to emulate this sort of widow's peak he's got going on here let me hit ctrl z to back up i do want to make sure i do a decent job with this so i may need to hold shift and just change the direction on that and we'll bring it back around and just connect that all right so now we have all the base elements so next what we'll do is color this in and then we'll start to add the details throughout this so the details are really where this portrait starts to come to life otherwise it's going to look a little bit bland so let's start with the hair since we're already on it i'm down here inside of the default palette you can use this little menu item here and click on inkscape default and i'm just going to change the hair color to black and then we'll click on the face and you can tell which item you're on because you'll see the layer light up over here so let's go with some skin tones here and we're going to change these colors later as we add more details but we'll do the neck here and shift click on these two let's just go with a slightly lighter gray and then the shirt and maybe do a green color i don't know if i like that green too much all right all right so the reason i like to add all the colors in here is now we can get an idea of if anything needs to be tweaked there's probably a couple of things that need to be tweaked right here for example so we grab the nodes tool and just sort of make some minor edits here and just try to make it look a bit more natural it's really going to come together at the very end but but for now this is a good place to start so let's leave it right there so if we click on the face here we can now get to the face details but first i'm going to go to object objects so we're on the face layer but you can see now there's multiple objects here inside that one single layer so this is the original face path that we drew what i can do inside of the objects dialog is just turn the opacity down a bit and that's going to allow us to see what's going on underneath there and we'll probably have to come over here to the neck as well and just turn that down a bit so let's come back up to the face so now what i'll do is hit the b key and we're just going to start with any of the details so let's go with the eyebrows because they are prominent this is coming from a guy with prominent eyebrows so we're just going to quickly outline this and grab the select tool ctrl d to duplicate it h to flip it and just drag it on over like so so now let's move along we're going to come over here to the curves tool again hold ctrl zoom in and let's do the glasses now and i'm going to have to decrease the opacity of the hair so let's click on the hair layer and just turn that down so we'll come back here to the face layer and i'm just going to draw the main rim part of the glasses first so let's come down here click to start it and hold control there we go and with this curves tool still selected we're going to just draw the bridge here actually let's just draw it halfway and then duplicate it so there is that so i'm going to grab the select tool and let's just grab the bezier curves tool again and we're just going to very quickly draw so actually i'm going to hit ctrl z i'm just going to leave that out because i don't think that's going to add anything but we've got the glasses here so what i'll do is let me finish the top portion here so let's grab the curves tool very quickly we're just going to draw this and hold shift actually let's fix that hold shift bring it in and we'll just draw this line here let me hit ctrl z let's just bend it slightly to create a slight curve there release all right so now we have all the elements of the glasses at least for one half so what we're going to do is we're going to shift click on everything and hold ctrl zoom in make sure we shift click on the right stuff we're going to hit ctrl g to group it so now it's going to place everything inside of a group and then ctrl d to duplicate it and then what i'll do click off of here click back on hit the h key to flip it and then we're going to drag it over while holding the ctrl key and you may need to reposition it slightly so it's not going to line perfectly actually that's probably fine we will probably have to correct it later and then what you can do is shift click to select both sides of the glasses ctrl g to group both of those groups into a single group so now it's all over here in a single group now i can click on here double click and rename this eyeglasses hit the enter key all right and eventually it'll show up there inkscape's getting a little buggy on me right now but it did eventually rename that group so now let's hit the b key again and this time we're going to do the eyes so we're going to try to put in as much detail with the eyes without putting in too much to give everybody an idea of what's going on so we're just going to hold the shift key bring it in so in other words if i get too detailed with the portrait it really just starts to look like a bad drawing whereas if we had just enough details to everything it brings to life enough of the person to where you could tell it's a person without overdoing it so now we're going to grab the ellipse tool here and the circle tool hold control and i'm going to have to release so i'm going to come over here to my pallets shift-click to get rid of that stroke and then just left-click on the black so that's going to reset the type of circle that'll draw here so let me just hit the backspace key on that and grab the circle tool again click and drag and release so let's bring this over here then what i'll do is click on the outline of the eye control d to duplicate it and then i'm going to shift click on the actual iris here and we'll go to object clip set and that should clip out the part of the iris that went outside here of the eye shape and then what we can do is shift click on these two items ctrl g to group them ctrl d to duplicate h to flip and then we're going to bring it on over here to about right here it's going to look funny when we have the original right below it but once we get rid of the original so if i hide you can see it looks a little bit more normal there so let's unhide that and if you want you can shift click on the two eyes ctrl g to group those together double click on this and rename this eyes hit the enter key and that should update that so i'm not going to add like all the details to the eyes this is going to be good enough behind the sunglasses once we color it all in so now once again i'll grab the curves tool the bezier curves tool and let's go with the lips next so this i'll just very quickly draw so hold shift hold shift and then draw a line through this and hit the enter key and that will apply that so now we got the lips and we're going to group that later but for now we're going to move on so let's go with the nose here so for this i'm going to come up top actually hit ctrl z i'm going to start right here again this is one of those things where you want there to be some detail but not too much so i'm just going to click and drag right here and release and hit the enter key and then we're going to move down here and just add a little bit of a curve there to the nose and release hit the enter key and then under here same thing just like that so i'm just going to do one half of the nose there and then i'm just going to do a line right here to indicate that there's a little bit of a curve there and i have snapping turned on i'm going to turn that off because it's kind of bugging me right now hit the enter key hold ctrl zoom in and now what we can do is just draw the nostril hold the shift key sometimes this takes me multiple goes to get the nostril right that looks fine for now so i'm going to left click to fill that in so there we have the nose as you can see i didn't get too crazy with it shift click to select all of the paths that have to do with this nose ctrl g to group ctrl d to duplicate h to flip drag it on over and hold ctrl while you drag and i do need to turn the snapping back on of course and just make sure that snaps there to the guide and now we can shift click on the two groups here for the nose ctrl g to group them together double click rename this nose hit the enter key so let's do the beard and the mustache so you guessed it we're going to grab the pen tool or the bezier curves tool and let's turn off snapping and then we're just going to very quickly create a rough outline here so hold the shift key hold the shift key and i'm just going to stop the mustache right there bring it all the way in release and then for the beard we're going to very loosely draw the beard let's come up top here and try to follow the line we already drew here for the face so bring it up here connect that should be good so grab the select tool hold ctrl zoom in shift click ctrl g to group control d to duplicate h to flip hold ctrl while we drag it over and let's turn on snapping and snap it to the guide so now we will shift-click select the two groups ctrl g to group them together double-click rename it beard so we'll grab the pass tool again and we're just going to add some detail to the ear without overdoing it hit the enter key let me actually hit ctrl z i'm going to start that over and just go all the way down here hit the enter key and then in the original i just sort of added one little detail there and another one somewhere around here hit the enter key so we're just going to shift click ctrl g to group ctrl d to copy h to flip it and we're just going to move this to the other side i'm just going to have to eyeball it because it's not in the exact same spot as the original all right so now let's come over here back to the eyebrows we're going to shift click on these i actually didn't group these so ctrl g to group and rename this eyebrows but we can just left left-click to fill these in with black and same with the beard actually with the beard what we're gonna do is go to path union and i'm gonna have to ungrip these so ctrl shift g to ungroup and then i'm just going to shift click on the two sides and go to path union so they are not being merged together but because they're going to be the same color we can just color those in and it's fine we don't have to merge them together all right so next we're going to continue adding some details to the hair so what we're going to do with the select tool here is just click on the hair that should take us to the hair layer you can collapse the face layer and pretty much all the other layers here as well or just the objects i guess you should technically be in the hair layer there but we're back here in the objects dialog so let's hit the b key to grab the bezier curves tool and what we're going to do now we're going to hold ctrl zoom in so i'm just going to add some detail here by sort of outlining the highlights of the hair you're going to have to get a little creative with this part and i'll probably speed through a lot of this because a lot of it is going to be the same and then you're just going to find the starting point click to start and we're just going to create a little curve here and then we're going to start by clicking and dragging hold shift change the direction of this and we're just going to do this along pretty much the entire image here let me hit ctrl z and redo that shift all right so i accidentally grabbed another tool which sort of hit my path because i'm still selected on this path i can start it from right here the only issue is i can't really see the path anymore so what you have to do is grab the edit paths by nodes tool there you can see the path and i recommend just coming over here and left clicking to fill it in with the color and then you can come back grab the path tool and then you'll see right here the last node so click on that to start back off from there and then you can just sort of continue on it's just an annoying thing that inkscape does and they really need to fix that if they haven't already hopefully i just don't know about it and then once i'm done with that i'm going to bring this around like so and then we can always sort of add a little flare as we go so hold the shift key bring this in a bit and then bring it back down so i like to just add little like hair follicles as i go and finally just connect it right there so we'll probably have to tweak that a little bit but now we have some hair highlights there and a little bit of detail so now we'll add a bit more detail to the hair by sort of adding that same effect you see going on here around parts of the hairline so hold ctrl zoom in i don't need to get too crazy with this and this is the part that's going to stick out everything that goes beyond this line here so that's really all we need to focus on just adding a couple little hairs sticking out here all right so now we can grab the select tool and just shift click on everything and then we can shift click on the x here and then left click on the black color and now you can see we've got some little detail going on there so let's hold ctrl take a step back here so right now we're on the hair layer which has the opacity turned down so let's turn it all the way up so you can see what's happening here so what we'll do is left click on the white and we're going to come over here and just change this to like a dark gray and now i'll hit the b key again and we're just going to add a little bit of highlights to some of the tips here of the hair so pretty much just right here so we're just going to click somewhere near the base of this one and again it's going to take a little bit of creativity so something like that but we're going to shift click and left click on a lighter color like so so hopefully we can get that going that color so we don't need to do every single one but just you know a decent amount of them all right so now let's grab the select tool and we're just going to shift click on these hopefully we click on the right shapes and i'm going to left click on that gray and then shift click on the the x here to get rid of the stroke and let me go with the slightly lighter gray there so there we go now we've got some highlights going on all right so let's move on here to the neck and i'm just going to click on the neck and this is the same sort of principle we're just going to very quickly add some detail by drawing some lines try not to get too crazy with it maybe do this part right here that looks pretty good and i'll grab the select tool i'm going to click on the jacket so let's click on both of these by shift-clicking and just drag the opacity down and i just want to add some detailed lines here so i'll probably just add one right here and then one right here so let's grab the curves tool and we're going to click on here to create a new curve drag it hit the enter key and we'll do the same right here so i believe i stopped right there so we'll just go about right here hit the enter key so we'll do the same on this side hit the enter key and hit the enter key so now we'll do the shirt so let's grab the select tool click on the shirt and we're going to grab the bezier curves tool and just draw let's actually turn the opacity down on this so we're going to draw the second line here and we're going to turn it into a stitch to try to make it look a little cooler just like that hit the enter key all right so now let's get everything back to the proper opacity and try to start coloring things in and adding some texture so we're going to shift click on these two we're going to bring that up click on the shirts bring that up click on the neck bring that up click on the face bring that up and i think for this part we can pretty much come over for now and hide the image hold ctrl zoom in so we've got these two eyes let's ctrl shift g to ungroup ctrl shift g to ungroup these ctrl shift g and we're going to click on the pupils here i think i called them the irises earlier oops control z turn the opacity up all right so we're going to click on the lips and i just went with like a purplish color for this try not to make him look like he's got lipstick on so what i'll do for this actually is come over here and grab the gradient tool and just click and drag to create a gradient and what i'll do is come over here and i'm going to double click on the fill over here and let's just turn the alpha all the way up which is the opacity and also let's change the color and then come up to the top color here and change that color and right now looking a little bit too much like lipstick but we're going to drag this down so i didn't go too crazy with the detail on this but that looks fine right there we'll grab the select tool and click on the neck here so again i'm going to add a gradient do something like this so we're on the first one here we're going to turn the alpha all the way up and we need to come back to the color we used the skin tone and then click on this first one maybe go with slightly darker and then grab the select tool grab the face here click on the gradient tool and i drew the gradient i believe from about right here but this one i went with the radial gradient and i may need to come over here gradient tool is a little weird in inkscape but right here is where we're going to start the gradient so this is the color that's selected right now so i'm going to go with maybe that color right there and then click on the first color and we're gonna go with a lighter color for that like so all right so next for the glasses here i'll hold ctrl zoom in everything's grouped right now so i don't want to ungrip everything and then have to style everything individually so what i'll do is just click on the group and i'm going to shift-click on this yellow color here and what that's going to do is automatically style everything to the same style and then i'm going to come over and let's change this to pixels if it'll let me and then i'm going to increase this to 2 so that looks better and then let me click off of here for these two i'm going to need to style these elements differently these shapes here so let me grab the edit paths by nodes tool and try to select this shape here so shift click to get rid of that color and we're going to left click on the yellow color and ctrl c to copy that come over here we're going to hover try to select that shape ctrl shift v to paste the styling and now we've got our glasses and the glasses are currently below the hair just because of the order of everything so what i'll do is come over here and i'm going to collapse the eyeglasses group control x to copy that and that's what our guy looks like with no glasses i'm going to come up top here create a new layer and name it glasses click add control v to paste and let me hit control z and go to edit paste in place and now our glasses are going to be pasted on top there and they're going to be on their own little layer too so let's just finish off the styling of these glasses by clicking on the major shape here and what i'm going to do is click to add a gradient and then just click and drag inside here so that'll give us a gradient inside the glasses here so this is a radial gradient let me just double click on here and change this to a linear gradient and let's click on one of the stops here so i went with like a reddish color originally so i'm going to go with the red there click on this side we'll do another red there and i'm going to shift click on these because i actually want the alpha or the opacity to be a little lower so we could see the eyes but not too low and i'll hit ctrl c to copy that and we'll grab the edit paths by nodes tool we're going to click on there ctrl shift v to paste the styling and now we've got cool glasses on this guy ctrl s to save so really a couple of final touches here and that is going to be mainly the lines so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to click on the line here and let's see if i can shift click i don't think i can do all these simultaneously but let's go to path path effects yeah so only one at a time so with the path effects window open let's click off of here we'll click on a path here and then we're going to click the plus button i'm going to scroll down to taper stroke hold ctrl zoom in so as you can see it's going to give us a nice tapered stroke there and you can play around with the settings until you get the final look that you want so that looks pretty good to me what i'll do now is come over here and click on this path and go to path paste path effect so that's going to just paste that exact same effect and let me come over here and if i shift 7 on that yeah it will do the same effect there so that'll save you some time and i'm going to do the same for all these path effects here or all these paths so i'm just going to shift click on all of them and then hit shift 7 so that's going to paste the same effects this one ended up a little wonky but that's okay all right just a couple of finishing touches here and we will be completed so we're just going to shift-click on these two here the jacket portions and then we're going to left-click on stroke we'll come over to stroke style let's change this to pixels and let's try three pixels there that looks pretty good so click off of there and if you want you can also click on the shirt and increase that a little bit we'll go with two on that so to finish this off i would usually add the tapered stroke to the remaining paths so i'm going to hold ctrl zoom in let's get rid of this guide here and i'm going to click on the nose ctrl shift g ctrl shift g i'm just ungrouping all this and inkscape has crashed on me a couple times trying to do this already but i'm going to click to create a new live path effect then we'll go tapered stroke and we're just going to adjust this that looks pretty good so ctrl c come over here path paste path effect and this is going to be slightly different so i'll come over here ctrl c to copy that i'll just copy that effect there and let's copy this effect ctrl c and shift 7 paste it here shift seven and let's come over here and make sure this is ungrouped or inkscape will crash it does not like when you try to copy live path effects so ctrl c and paste them to a group and these two we're going to actually use this one so ctrl c shift 7. ctrl c shift seven all right so there is our finished portrait to export this go to file export png image go with the page option i'm going to keep this set to where it's at hit export and there it is all right that's it for this tutorial hopefully you liked it if you did don't forget to click the like button subscribe to my channel and click the bell icon to be notified each time i have a brand new tutorial you can check out any of the links to my resources in the description of the video but thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Davies Media Design

Views: 1,574

Keywords: gimp, gimp tutorial, gimp for beginners, how to gimp, GIMP 2.10, GIMP, basics, GIMP 2021

Id: I01VvtucmSo

Length: 46min 24sec (2784 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021