Digital Art with Inkscape – Giving the Drawing Colour

Over the last few months I’ve been experimenting with approaches to create illustrations in digital and I’ve been sharing these. I’ve also been keen to work out how to take and improve on hand drawn sketches and ideas and bring them into digital too. Key to this has been learning how to use Inkscape or at least to get by with it and find out what it can do. This is the first in a series of posts which I’m hoping will help others to pick up the same techniques I have and bring their own creations to life.

Firstly anyone wishing to follow this will need to get their hands on Inkscape, this isn’t a problem as it it open source (i.e. free) and should be able to work across a range of platforms. In order to find out more and download it have a look at https://inkscape.org

Also if you want to find out more and can’t wait for me to write my posts there’s the Inkscape manuals:

Inkscape Manuals

There’s also the Inkscape Wiki:

Inkscape Wiki

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In the last digital drawing post ( InkScape – Creating the Drawing ) we created our drawing, a kind of goofy little Minion:

Even though he has a smiley face he’s still looking kind of bland so is in some need of some colour.

Do do this we need to use the Fill tool Digital Art with Inkscape Part 1 – How Inkscape Works shows us where to find this. The way the Fill tool works is a colour is selected either before or after clicking on it and it will fill an area bounded by lines with that colour. What this means is that any gaps will make the colour leak everywhere. So watch out for that.

First off the eyes want filling in:

1. Select Black for the pupil and then select the fill tool.
2. Click the fill tool in the centre of the eye and it should be nicely filled. You’ll notice there’s a thin white boundary – I’m not sure how or why this is yet.
3. With the Fill tool still selected press ESC once.
4. Click on the colour for the eye and fill it. ESC needs to be pressed first to break the link between the last filled shape, if you go ahead and select a new colour then the last filled shape will change to that colour.
5. To correct any mistakes press CTRL + Z to undo.

Now for his body.

1. Fill in the body colour with a bright Minion yellow.
2. Do the same for his outfit, making it a nice blue and don’t forget his buttons.

Make the hands, feet and goggles band black and et voila!

Once almost convincing and colourful Minion.

Let me know what you think of these posts – are they useful or not? Want to know something specific then ask me in the comments.

Also have a go yourself and let me know how it goes!

Simon’s Space

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