Inkscape for Beginners: Impossible Circle Vector Design Tutorial

this is met with logos by Nick comm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create this simple impossible circle sort of graphic 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 I'll minimize this and get started here on xscape by the way if you'd like to know how you can make Inkscape appear darkened with these custom icons you see here on the left a link to that information will be in the description of the video so to get started the first thing we want to do is make sure that the view is set the custom and then we're going to zoom in at 1 to 1 it will open up the align and distribute menu with this button up here and then we'll open up the Edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu with this button here so the first thing we're going to do is create a circle so let's grab the circles and ellipses tool and hold ctrl + shift on the keyboard and click and drag on the canvas to create a perfectly round circle like that and then I'm going to take the opacity of this and bring this down about in half and I'll go back to the Select tool up here and I'm going to duplicate this circle by right-clicking it and going to duplicate and turn that red and then hold ctrl + Shift + and grab this bottom right arrow down here and just click and drag to scale this in about that much and once you have it in about that much you could hold shift and click on the black circle beneath it and go to path difference what we're gonna do now is turn on the snap to smooth modes button up here if you hover the cursor over the button it'll tell you which is which you want to turn on the one that's a snap to smooth nodes so go ahead and turn that on and then we'll duplicate this object by right-clicking that I'm going to duplicate and I'll turn this one red and I'm just going to move this off to the right until it snaps onto the left edge or the right edge of this left side of this circle right here like that so we have these two circles lined up like that and what we want to do now is click and drag over both of those to select them both and we could turn off the snap to smooth nodes now and with those both selected we'll duplicate them by going right clicking and going to duplicate we'll go to path intersection and we'll turn that green and what we'll do with that as we'll go to path break apart and then hold shift and click on the green object up here to deselect it and then hold shift and click on the green object down here to deselect that and then everything else should be be selected if you have anything else deselect it after doing that just press Delete on the keyboard sometimes just little fragments I get left over over here on the left and right so all right so the next step would be let me just take a look at this real quick okay so I'm gonna take this green object up here and I'm gonna turn this red actually you know what let me undo that click the undo button oops undo which is up here we're not gonna turn that red just yet first we have to right click that and go to duplicate and hold shift and click on the black object and go to path difference now we'll take the green object we'll duplicate it again right click duplicate hold shift click on the red object path difference will do the same thing down here I'll take this green object down here right click that go to duplicate hold shift click on the black object and go to path difference we'll do this one more time click on the green object right click that duplicate hold shift click on the red object and go to path difference and what we're gonna do now is with the red object selected we'll go to path break apart and then hold shift and click on this red object over here to deselect it and while still holding shift click on this smaller red object to the left to deselect that and the only thing left that should be selected these little fragments and pieces here you'll be you'll be able to see them highlighted but those little bounding boxes and it's these things right here there's little fragmentation I got left over after slicing all of the objects and with them all selected still but you just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of them we're gonna do the same thing over here with the black object we'll get it packed break apart hold shift click on this black object to deselect it hold shift click on that black object to deselect it and we just have the little fragments left selected and we just press Delete on the keyboard to get right so what we'll do now is now we'll take this green object up here and we'll make this red and we'll take this green object down here and make this black so we have the structure of it all set so all we have to do now is unify these things together so let's grab this object to the left hold shift click this black object down below and then hold shift still and click this black object over here so you have all of the three black objects selected and go to path Union and we'll do the same thing with the red objects we'll click on this red object hold shift click the red object to the right of it and hold shift click the red object to the right of that unify that altogether by going to path Union then we can click off of it deselect everything so the only thing we have to do now is well actually one of the things we have to do now get to make the top of this flat you notice here on the thumbnail at the top of this is like flat over here it's kind of like it kind of dipped it down a little bit let me zoom in on that to show you I'll press + on the keyboard a few times and how we're gonna close that up is a well term we'll go back to up here we're gonna turn on the snaps to smooth nodes again and it will turn on the snap to custom nodes as well which is to the left of it I will grab the Bezier pen which is right here or you can just press B on the keyboard to grab that and then just snap it to the top of this object over here which is right there click hold ctrl on the keyboard and bring that line straight across until it snaps where you know what you could let go of control and just bring the line over there until it snaps to that one on the red object and click and then bring this through the center here up around here and back to the starting point we'll go back to the Select tool hold shift click on the black object and go to path Union and then we'll take the red object we'll click on that right click that and go to duplicate hold shift click on the black object and go to path difference now we'll come down here and do the same thing I'm just gonna press down on the mouse wheel and move the mouse in order to come down here move the page around and again we'll go back to the bezzie a pen which is right here or you just press B on the keyboard snap to this circle click snap to this circle click finish the shape going through the inside of the graphic back to the starting point go back to the select tool hold - click on the red shape and go to path difference oops not that difference I'm sorry we'll go to path Union and then we'll click the black object we'll duplicate that right-click that go to duplicate hold shift click on the red object and go to path difference and I'm gonna press 1 on the keyboard to zoom back out to a hundred percent I'm gonna turn off the two snapping buttons right there and I'm gonna click and drag over both of those so I have them both selected bring the opacity all the way up and then just take this arrow to the right and just click and drag that to the left a little bit just to make that a little more narrow maybe about that much that's pretty good and the final step would be to color this thing in with gradients so if you see here I used red and and gray linear gradients for both so click off of that to deselect everything let's click on just the red object and under the fill tab well click the button right here this is linear gradient and I'm gonna press G on the keyboard to get the gradient tool and I'm going to click on this stop over here bring the opacity all the way up and under the fill tab and under the HSL tab I'm gonna come down to the L row and slide this to the left to make that darker maybe about that much I'll take this darker stop and put it at the bottom maybe about down here I'll take the lighter stop and I'll hold ctrl so it locks it to the vertical axis and goes straight up like that put that up there and then we'll click on this black object we'll make this uh maybe 50% gray that's pretty good if you hover your cursor over the shade it'll tell you which percentage it is I use 50% here and again we'll click on linear gradient click on this stop right here to the right bring the opacity all the way up take the L row and slide that to the right a little bit to make bail later we want it to be a light gray not quite white but almost like that that's pretty good let me take that stop and put that to the bottom take this stop hold ctrl to lock it to the vertical axis up there like that go to the Select tool click and drag over all of it group it together and that's it we created our very simple impossible circle icon using Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 26,056

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners, vector, vector design, vector graphics, vector logo, vector tutorial, vector icons, graphic design, learn graphic design, graphic design for beginners, impossible circle

Id: zwBmEJDjNvw

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2016