Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Celtic Knot Icon

this is Nick with logos Viacom in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create these Celtic knot icons 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 me minimize this and I'll get started here in Inkscape by the way if you'd like to know how you can make xscape appear darkened with these custom icons as you see here on my screen a link to that information will be in the description of the video so the first thing we want to do is make sure that the view is set to custom and then we'll make sure we're zoomed in at 1 to 1 then we'll open up the align and distribute menu with this button up top here and we're going to want last selected chosen from that drop-down and then we'll open up the Edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu so the first one we're going to do is create a circle so let's come over to the circles and ellipses tool and hold ctrl + shift on the keyboard and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle like that and we'll go back to the Select tool and I'm going to turn on this lock icon and I'm going to change the width of this to 250 so whatever this says in here just highlight that and then type in 2 5 0 and hit enter and then I'm going to convert this to a path by going to path objects of path and then bring the opacity of this down about in half and then I want to duplicate this so I'm going to hit control D on the keyboard to make a duplicate copy of that and I'll turn that copy red and I'll hold ctrl on the keyboard and click and drag this copy off to the right maybe about that much what we're looking at in here is the intersecting area of these two circles because that's what's going to make up these shapes here you notice like these I like kind of like eye shapes or Leafs kind of that's what we're going to make out of here so once we've done that we'll click and drag over both of those and click on it again to get the rotation handles and hold ctrl on the keyboard and rotate this clockwise 4 steps so I'm going to hold ctrl grab this corner arrow 1 2 3 4 and then I want to duplicate that by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and then I'll group it together with this button up here group selected objects and I'll flip it horizontally by clicking this button and then hold shift and click on this black circle right here and then click on the button over here that says align right sides and then we can hit the ungroup button and click off of it to deselect everything so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take this black circle and just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and I'll take this black circle and I'm going to duplicate that by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and hold shift and click on this red circle over here and go to path intersection and there we have one of the shapes right there so I'm going to do the same thing over here to this circle let's click off with deselect I'll click on this circle ctrl D to duplicate it hold shift click on this red circle and go to path intersection and what I want to do now is I take this black circle and I'm going to press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and I'm going to click and drag over both of these objects right here and I'm going to flip them vertically like that and then I'm going to duplicate them by hitting ctrl D and I'm going to go to path intersection and I'll turn that object green and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to turn on the snap to cusp nodes which is up here I'll take this red object I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and I'll bring this up here and I'll click on it again to get the rotation handles and hold ctrl on the keyboard and rotate it around until it's sitting upright vertically like that and then we could take this object and take this bottom corner and snap it to this corner right here so we'll just take this and snap it into that corner and then we can click on that green object beneath it to uh and delete it so to make it easier I'll just lower this red object one step lower selection one step and then we can click on the green object and press Delete on the keyboard and we now have the foundation of the design so now we just got a finish finish up what we started here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to click and drag over all three of those shapes and I'm going to give this an outline kind of like you see here it's kind of if it's made of an outline so to give that an outline I'm going to hold shift and click on the color black or 90% gray and yours may not be as thick as mine but we're going to change that over here we'll come over to the stroke style tab and the width mine was preset to 17 because I was using this previously and that's actually a pretty good width I'm going to leave that just how it is maybe actually a little little thinner I'll use 14 and I'm going to give this around to join and a rounded cap and then I'll go to path stroke the path and then I'll click off of that deselect everything so what we have to do now is make these certain edges overlap and underlap with each other so before I do that I'm going to take each of these individual objects and give them different colors just to make what we're going to do next easier for you to understand so I'll click on this object I'll make this red I'll click on this one make that green and click on that one make it blue that makes it easier to visually differentiate these three different objects so you can understand how what I'm going to do next work so let's click off of that to deselect everything let me go back here and see how it looks okay so we have this line right here overlapping this one so what I'm going to do is I'm going to zoom in on this right here I'm going to press plus in the keyboard a few times whoops press plus maybe three or four times to zoom in I'm going to take this red shape and I'm going to duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and I'm going to go to path out set and that's going to make it a little thicker all around the edges but I want to do that a few more times to make it a little thicker so instead of clicking on path out set over and over again we can use the keyboard shortcut which is control zero so it controls zero again maybe a third time control zero and that should be good so three out sets and what I want to do now I want to take this area right here and use that to punch a hole through this green shape so let's go to the Bezier pen which is over here or you just press it B on the keyboard and I'm going to draw a shape going around the red section around the where the red section and the green section intersect I'm going to draw a little shape going over there going around that and I'll go back to the Select tool and I'll hold shift and click on the red shape and go two paths intersection and then I'm going to duplicate this by hitting ctrl D and hold shift and click on the green shape and go to path difference and we're also going to have to do that to the blue shape because if you move this out of the way you'll see it's going through there so what we do now is with this one selected we'll click on that and then hold shift and click on this blue shape and go to path difference and you can see now it's it's kind of like overlapping let me zoom back out and show you so what we could do is we can click off of that the deselect what I'm going to do is I'm going to go around to the next two shapes and do the same thing so this one's going to be going over this shape here so let me zoom in on that press plus oops plus in the keyboard a few times click on this green shape hit control D then I'll out set this three times just like I did over here hold control and hit zero three times one two three go back to the Bezier pen by pressing B and draw a shape going over the going around the intersecting area like that go back to the Select tool hold shift click on the green shape and go to path intersection and then we'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and hold shift click on the blue shape path difference and go back to the green shape and hold shift click on the red shape and go to path difference and then finally we got to take this one down here and overlap it over this area over here so we'll take this blue shape click on that control D to duplicate that and we're going to out set that three time so hold ctrl and press zero three times one two three press B to get back to the bezzie a pen draw a shape going around the intersecting area go to the Select tool hold shift click on the blue shape and go to path intersection control D to duplicate that and hold shift click on the green shape and go to path difference and then click on the blue shape hold shift click on the red shape and go to path difference and I'll press one on the keyboard to zoom back out to a hundred percent and we can click off of it to deselect everything what I want to do is click and drag over all of this and hit control D on the keyboard to duplicate it and go to path Union and then hold ctrl and just move this off to the right and we could bring the opacity all the way up and make that dark grey or whatever color you'd like and there we have the original shape so the next one is with the circle intertwined with it so we'll do that next so we have this one we'll just leave that out of here we'll just leave this off to the side for now we're going to we're going to do the same thing over here but we're going to create a circle going through this thing overlapping and under lapping with each individual object so I'll go to the circles and ellipses tool and hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle and let's turn off the fill color by clicking on this X down here bring the opacity down in half and we're going to want to make sure that the stroke width is set to 14 or whatever whatever size you used over here has to be the same in order for the thickness of the lines to be consistent with each other and let's go back to the Select tool and up here where it says effect make sure you have this box to the far left turned off if that's turned off we'll be able to scale this thing up or down while maintaining the stroke size if we turn it off the stroke size is going to change as we scale which we don't want so make sure that's turned off and I'm going to bring this over here and you know let's turn off the snap to custom knows we don't need that and I'm going to hold shift and click on this green object and I'm just going to make sure it's centered on the vertical axis click off with the deselect and then I'll hold ctrl and bring down this black ring a little bit you just want to make sure it's you know spaced out evenly in there and I'll even hold controlling shift just click and drag to scale it down a little bit like that and that's pretty good you just want to make sure that you have this open space here that it's somewhat even on each side which you can see here it's not so I'm going to hold ctrl and move this up a little bit looking at this empty space this empty space in this empty space we want them to be somewhat somewhat equal and that's let's say that's pretty good right there so I'll leave that how that is and what I'll do now is I'll convert that to a path by going to path stroke the path will go back to the image here we'll see the first one starts out going under this shape so let's press + on the keyboard a few times to zoom in and I'll take this red object I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D I'm going to out set that three times by holding ctrl and pressing zero three times one two three grab the Bezier pen by pressing B and draw a shape going around the intersecting area just like that and go back to the Select tool hold shift click on the red object and go to path intersection and then hold shift and click on the black ring and go to path difference and now we can take this black ring take ctrl D to duplicate that and what we have over here now it's going over that shape so that's what we're going to create now with with that duplicated copy I'm going to hold ctrl and press zero three times one two oops one two three press B on the keyboard to get the Bezier pen draw a shape going around the intersecting area like that go back to the Select tool hold shift click on the black shape go to path intersection and then hold shift and click on the red shape and go to path difference and what's next here is uh we have the ring going over this object and now it's going to go under the green object as you can see here so we'll take the green object click on that control D to duplicate that out set that three times hold control press zero three times one two three this is pretty repetitive I'm pretty sure you'll get the you'll have this memorized by the time we get through this tutorial and I'll press B on the keyboard to get the bezzie a pen and again we're going to draw a shape going around the intersecting area and this is pretty repetitive we're going to be doing this just going around the other two objects as well so I'll just go over each step individually just just in case you don't have it memorized by the time you get through this so go back to the select tool hold shift click on the green object go to path intersection hold shift click on the black ring path difference and now we can duplicate the black ring by hitting ctrl D out set it three times hold ctrl 0 1 2 3 press B to get the Bezier pen draw a shape going around the intersecting area go back to the Select tool hold shift click on the black object and go to path intersection hold shift click on the green object path difference and next up we have the object going underneath this shape we only got two left so we have this one going under so we'll take the blue object ctrl D to duplicate that out set it three times by holding ctrl and pressing 0 1 2 3 presses be for the Bezier pen draw a shape going over the intersecting area back to the select tool hold shift click on the blue object path intersection and then hold the shift click on the black ring path difference and now we're just going to have to duplicate this black ring I only have to say all of this stuff one more time so ctrl D to duplicate that black ring out set it three times by holding ctrl and pressing 0 3 times 1 2 3 press B on the keyboard to get the Bezier pen going over the intersecting area now go back to the Select tool hold shift click on the black object path intersection and then hold shift and click on the blue shape and go to path difference let me compress one of the keyboard to zoom back out to 100% click and drag over all of this unify it together by going to path Union bring the opacity all the way up and make it whatever color you like and that's it we pretty much have it those hair how you can create these Celtic knot icons using Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 48,834

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, celtic knot, vector celtic knot

Id: m0O_1L5YxOQ

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2016