Inkscape for Beginners: Custom Shape with a Vector Wood Texture

in today's tutorial I'll be showing you how to create this customized shape with a vector wood texture going over it using Inkscape and at any point in this tutorial you could look down at the bottom left hand side of my screen to see which mouse clicks and keystrokes I'm using so let's close that out and get started the first thing we'll do when we open up Inkscape is open up our align and distribute menu make sure you have last selected chosen from that drop-down we'll go to edit objects colors gradients and Stroke and then from view make sure you have custom selected and we'll go to zoom and we're going to zoom in at 1 to 1 so the first thing we'll do is we'll take our bezzie a pen and click on that and we're going to start we're going to click on the canvas right here and we're going to hold ctrl and bring this line out to about here and then up out to about here and then up maybe one step kind of like that and then click again and you can let go of control and you could hit enter on the keyboard and it's going to create that line the next thing we'll do is we'll go to the Edit path by nodes tool we'll click on that we're going to take this line and pull this up kind of like this right here then we're going to click on this node right here and hold ctrl on your keyboard and grab this handle and make sure that this is coming out at a straight horizontal line it's not going up or down or slightly up like this hold ctrl on the keyboard and drag this out straight word like that and we'll do the same thing down here we're going to hold ctrl and click on this handle bring this one so it's coming out completely vertical or horizontal rather just like that and we'll bring that out to about here I'm actually going to take this line I'm actually going to hold ctrl and drag this up a little bit and want it to be a little taller we want to make it look kind of like that we can go to our arrow tool and click on that and then with this selected we'll go to path stroke to path and then we'll right-click this and go to duplicate and we'll flip this horizontally by clicking this button right here or alternative alternatively you could press H on your keyboard and that will flip it horizontally and then click and drag over both of them and align them align the right edges of the objects together with this button right here kind of like that and it should put them together like that and then we can go to path Union unify them together now let's hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and scale this down a little bit you don't need it that big and then we're going to take the rectangles tool click on that and we'll click and drag over this and create a rectangle going over this line now once you've created your rectangle let's go to the opacity slider and let's bring the opacity of that down in half so we can see what we're doing and let's turn that red for now and let's go back to the arrow tool and let's lower this to the bottom with this button right here lower selection to the bottom click on that so it's below that line and if you see how I created this rectangle here you want to make it so it's slightly slightly less wide than the line and you want to make sure it's going over the top of this line like this you don't want it down here you want it above that line so once you get there let's click and drag over the whole thing and let's Center it up on the vertical axis like that now we can click on this line and we can right click it and go to duplicate and we could flip it vertically by clicking this button up here or pressing V on your keyboard and then hold ctrl and click and drag this line down to here just before it gets to the bottom of that rectangle right there then we could hold shift in the keyboard and click on that first line and let's unify them together by going to path Union and then we'll hold shift in the keyboard and click on this red rectangle and go to path difference and then we can go to path break apart and that's going to break that apart into three different pieces so once you've done that let's click this top piece and let's delete that by pressing delete on the keyboard and do the same thing to this bottom piece click that press Delete on the keyboard now we can take this piece right here and let's hold ctrl and shift let's scale this down a little bit now I made a mistake in creating this is a little too thin for my I'm going to make this a little taller in order to do that I'm going to go to the Edit pads by nodes tool click on that and I'm going to click and drag over this bottom portion of nodes right here so I select them all and I'm going to hold ctrl on the keyboard and click and drag these down to about here ideally you want this thing to be this height right here and then we can go to or create circles and ellipses tool we click on that and we could hold ctrl and shift and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle like that and after we've done that we can click the arrow tool and it can take this circle and put this on the top left corner right here right about there we can right click this go to duplicate hold ctrl on the keyboard and click and drag this off to the right over here so it's in roughly the same position and then we can hold shift and click on the other one so we have them both selected we'll right-click that I'm go to duplicate and hold ctrl on the keyboard and click and drag this down here so it's about in the same position down on the bottom and then hold shift and click on the first two so we have all four of those circles selected and we can go to path Union and then we could hold shift in the keyboard and click on our original red shape right here in the middle and let's align that on the vertical axis and the horizontal axis and with them still selected let's go to path difference and then we'll end up with the shape kind of like this this is the shape we are intending to make here what I'm going to do now is put a border around this shape in the shape of that shape so in order to do that I'm going to right click this and go to duplicate I'm going to lower that to the bottom with this button right here and I'm going to come to the stroke paint tab I'm going to turn that on with the blue button and I'm going to go to stroke style and I'm going to try out a 25-point stroke first I'm going to type 25 and hit enter see how that looks ok that's pretty good once you get there let's turn that into a path by going to path stroke the path and then we can let's turn that green first so we could differentiate it and then let's right click this and go to duplicate and let's lower that to the and come back to the stroke paint tab and let's give that a stroke once again and it should automatically default to a 25-point stroke or whichever number value you entered there previously and once you've done that we can go to path stroke the path and then let's zoom in on this left side of the shape right here you could hold ctrl in the keyboard and use the mouse wheel or you could press + and - on the keyboard and that'll zoom you in as well now let's take this green shape right here and hold shift in the keyboard and then click on the black shape so you have them both selected and go to path difference now you press one of the keyboard to zoom back out to the normal size and let's click and drag over this whole thing and let's bring the opacity on that all the way up and then let's take this shape right here let's bring that off to the side we got to get rid of that border on the inside we don't want that so for this let's bring the opacity on that down and let's go to path and break apart and it's going to break that to a bunch of little pieces and what we're going to do is click off of this to deselect everything and let's click these two pieces in the middle and delete them you click on them and press the Delete key and then once you get down to these last two pieces right here click on the first one hold shift click on the one behind it let's go to path difference then go press 1 on the keyboard to zoom back out and then we can turn the opacity on that all the way back up and hold shift in the keyboard and click on the red shape we can Center that up on the vertical and the horizontal axis and let's turn that a dark shade of brown so that's how you can create a customized shape with the border around it using Inkscape what I'm going to do now as an added effect I'm going to give this a vector wooden texture and I'm going to do that by importing a raster image of a piece of wood and I've provided a link to that in the description if you go to that link and save the image into a folder where you can easily access it once you've done that we can go to file import we could find that image it should be wood to PNG click on that to import what have imbeds selected click ok now let's bring this off to the side and let's play with that a little bit I'm going to press it down on the mouse wheel so I can pan the page over like that or you could just use the arrows that I mean the UM the sliders on the side and bottom of the BIA the page here once we have that selected let's go to path and let's go to trace bitmap and from this menu we're going to select color quantization and let's bring the colors all the way down to 2 and let's press update so we can get a preview of what that's going to look like okay as you can see in this is a preview menu it's not showing anything so we got a try color try using three colors and then press update and as you can see now it's created a vector tracing of this wood texture right here however it's going to create a vector object that goes negative to the vector object we want so what we're going to do is click on invert image and click update and what I just said will make more sense once you see this that's what we want right there we want these shapes this pattern in the texture to become the vector object so once this looks like this on your preview menu go ahead and click OK and this may take a minute and then you'll see it creates a black vector image on top of that piece of wood now let's close out of this menu we don't need that anymore and let's take this vector graphic and move this off to the side and let's click on our original raster image of the piece of wood and let's press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that we're done with that now what we've done here is we've taken a piece of wood we've taken a raster image of a piece of wood and created a vector texture out of it and I'm going to show you what I mean right here if we go to the edit path by nodes tool you can see this is a vector graphic that we can manipulate accordingly so I'm going to go back and zoom out and I'm going to hold shift in the keyboard and click on this piece in the middle and I'm going to Center that up on the vertical axis and the horizontal axis and then click off of the graphic to deselect everything now let's click on just the piece of wood texture right here and hold ctrl and shift and let's scale is down so it's just a little bigger than that shape in the middle there we wanted this to be about about that big and then we could press shift and alt on the keyboard and click again so that it selects that would that uh that brown shape in the center and with them both selected let's go to path and DIF and you can see we're pretty much done now you can use this as a button or you know some kind of a piece for a logo or whatever else you'd like to use it for so if you have any questions just let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 50,775

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners

Id: ztL3ztmYLVk

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2015