Draw vector line art illustrations with Inkscape!

1. Introduction: What was the last thing you drew. If it was a sketch or a line art illustration, I just know the best tool to digitize it. In scape offers a free and flexible vectographic solution to every illustrator. This course is all about creating lineart. We start with understanding how tracing Bitmap works and how to trace your free hand drawings automatically to get the best results. Then we learn and understand the Basie tool and the path editor and create a geometric city illustration. After this, we practice these tools further by vectorizing a hand draw sketch about acute cartoon character. Yes, it is a kitten. Later to achieve your mastery with the Bezier tool, we turn a photo into a trendy one line illustration. Finally, you will learn to design your own custom brushes and use them to create a free hand illustration in scape. If you want to digitize your line art or draw vector illustrations from scratch, join me today and learn these fundamental vector graphic tools. So what's the next thing you will draw? 2. Trace bitmap - pros and cons: Okay. When people are thinking about digitizing an image with scape, they think about having a fast and reliable and most of all automatic solution, and this is the word we are living now. Everyone is looking for a fast solution, and why not? Inkscape can offer a solution for that. That is called tracing Bitmap. This means automatic tracing, which is importing an image, hit a few buttons, and inscape is doing the rest for you, creating a vector image out of your hand drawn artwork. Now, first of all, you need a drawing. Then you need to scan that drawing or photo or made that digital bed map and then import it into scape and let scape do the work for you. So first, I have my drawing and I scanned it, first, I go to import or control, which is opening my folder. I'm looking for this drawing about the poppies I have. And I open it. When scape is importing a BMP image, which means it's not vector, then it is asking if you want to embed the image or link it. I usually keep ticked because this means smaller file size and inscape can work faster that way. On some machines, an embedded file can be huge and slow down a bit the work of scape. Image DPI, I also led on front file DPI is per inch. Means the image resolution. And I'm looking for high resolution images when I want to use the auto tracing tool in scape. Image gendering mode doesn't matter now because the image will be only the source of the trace. Not included in the final artwork, I mean. I hit okay. And this is my drawing here. You will get the same drawing with the course, and I really hope you like it. It's just fast drawing about some poppies we saw on the field with my wife the other day, and I created it on a white paper with a feel tip pen. And this was a brush pen. This is why if I zoom in, you see that some lines are like brush stroke, thin on one end and thick on the other, it's a very nice thing to play with brush pens. I really really like them. So why I want to trace it? Because I want to recolor it, I want to clean image, I want to print it, or I want to use part of it in a vector image or redraw or reshape it totally, which all of these things I cannot really do with a small image on a paper. So If my image is important, let me talk about the two criteria for an image to be the source of automatic tracing scape. There is two things you have to take care. First of all, the image has to be high contrast, and especially so because in this course, we would like to make linear. So I'm focusing on having images on white background with thick back lines and clearly visible. I'm not talking about I don't know, scanning watercolor paintings now or pencil drawings. I'm talking about line art, okay? So black and white line art. So high contrast. High contrast is helping the algorithm in escape to recognize where are the edges of your drawing, and this will rest in much nicer crisper lines, closer to your original brush strokes. Secondly, as I said before at the importing, you need to have a high resolution image for the out trays to work perfectly, which means 150, 300 DPI, and a clean, a very nice clean scan. For this image, I used a flatbed scanner, which is built in in our printer. So I didn't just take a photo with my phone, as I will suggest in other parts of the course. Of course, feel free to do that when you just want to create a base for a sketch, But this to work for this to work, you need a high resolution image. Okay, so how do we two trace works in scape? I select my image and I go to path because whatever is coming out after the tracing will be a path, which means that editable line in scape. I go to path and I hit trace bitmap. And from here, I have some options. Put it here. So I have some options, and I have this preview window. And then if I'm happy with everything, I just heat okay and the tracing happened. It's very fast, really. Set your options, check your preview he okay done. But first, let's go through a bit what is here. We are focusing on single scans, because as I said, on this course, we are not working with colors or different layers of paint. We are only working with black and white linerts. So single scan and brightness cutoff for tracing method is great for us. There are some other tracing method here or at the multiple scans. Of course, you see color grays. Et cetera, but what we do is brightness cut, use the brightness cut of which is set by this brightness threshold, which is telling the algorithm, what is black and what is white for me, what is black and white on my drawing and how I want it to be represented in the vector image. So usually it comes about 400 500 originally, and what if I set it down to 100? I at update and I can check it here. Okay My image got brighter, but so much brighter that a lot of my details are lost. What if I set it to? I don't know, 800, I update. Now the black is black, but some details are lost here because some of the originally white part of the image also turned black. You know where I'm getting with this, play with this and figure out what is good for your image. Somewhere in the middle is great, I think. Hat update. You see the lines are crisper closer to what I had here originally. Now we have some options here. I can set The little spots, the little speckles, if they should be ignored or not, if it should smooth corners and optimize, I leave all of this on because it's up to you to play with them and do your own experiment. I usually leave this on because they are helping with later editing. So everything is set up. My heat update, my preview looks great. I heat okay. Let's see. I close this little window now. Seemingly nothing happened, but Tara this is my traced vector part, and this is my Bitmap image. If I zoom in, in my Bitmap image, you can see the texture of the paper shining through the ink here and there, there are little lines and dirty speckles and dots on the drawing, which are natural for a paper drawing. And it looks nice, but now here it is traced. The edges are following the curves I drew on the paper very nicely, but it is black and it is vector. As you can see, I can click on it with the node tool. It's editable, it's vector based. I can print it, I can use it for later on. I will give you this image as well. You can get it with the course, and you can try tracing it and play with it, so you can get the same results as me or different, have your experiments. But I highly encourage you and I know this is why you are in the course to try it and play with your drawings and have your own results. In the next lecture, I will talk about a bit more about tracing and why I use it and why I don't use it. Okay. 3. Cleaning the traced image and other tips : So tracing is good. Tracing bit mapping scape is so easy and fun and it helps you to achieve your goals faster. So when do I use it, I use it when I want to achieve fast results, and then my drawing is something like this with brushes strokes and nice organic lines and edges. I use this because it's a bit hard to achieve this in kscape alone. I mean, it's easier to do this and get this dynamic nice flow of lines on paper and then trace it here, then try to build it in kscape. Scape is great for creating linear, which is cleaner, also, you can do brush like things like this, I will show you on the end of the course. But sometimes it just flows easier on paper, and that's good. So also, I am using it, as I said before, when I have big plans for my drawings. So if I just want to have a tiny drawing on paper, fine. But if I need it as a part of a bigger drawing or I know I want to recolor it, for example, and this is not line ert but I give it a background, and I make it white. I could print it as a card and Mother's Day card or whatever. It's really opens up a lot of possibilities how to edit this drawing. I just threw a square behind it a rectangle to give it a background. Now, I delete the rectangle and put this back into black. Also, I can clean up my drawing this way or change it, as I said. I can take the editing tool, the node tool and move some parts of my image. So if for example, I want to put this flower a bit higher, then I select the path and select these nodes, holding shift to select additional nodes. And here is a part which is not selected, I see. And I just grab it here, and pull it up. I already changed the dynamic of the drawing and it's a small change, but you cannot do that on paper. This is why we digitize. Also, what if I want to clean this up? I like this little dots because it gives some movement for my drawing, if I'm not satisfied? What if I don't want to use this part at all? I want to lose this part. Then I take the pencil too and I just a shape. Shape above the piece I want to cut. Let's say this one I want to cut. Then I select this shape I draw. I make it visible, make it red. It's a shape above here. We shift click, I select the drawing itself, and then I go path difference. You see the part I don't need is cut off. If it's a small thing, for example, this little dot I don't want, I just select those nodes and hit delete. It works very well if you just want to change it. That's why you digitize it. I promise I will talk a bit a bit more about tracing. Let's put these aside. And I show you one more tick which I really like and sometimes can be used. And this is why I say sometimes because you can only trace. Remember, you can only trace if you have a good quality image, not small images, downloaded from the Internet because they are very bad and when you trace it, all the details are lost. Also it worse tracing when there are brush strokes like this and it's interesting. But when you want strict straight lines or nice sharp curves, sharp edges, then it's better to trace by hand, and the rest of the course is about that. I will show you how to trace and how to create original line art in scape, following your sketches or your own ideas, but not by automatic tracing. But still, first, I want to show you something more. So let's go to import. There is this little guy. You know, the drill, I just link it. You see it's quite high resolution image. Now, this one I was taking with my phone, you see there is a big difference here, quality wise, this part is darker, this part is lighter. Altogether, it's nice and high quality, high resolution, the background is not perfect. So if I want to trace it, to use this character in a video game, for example, or printed on a T shirt, you know. I go to path Trace Bitmap, and then from single scan, I can see it's nice. I need a bit maybe higher. What if it's lower? No, definitely higher. Here it's already starting to darken up because this part of the image was dark, but here are some nice thickness around the lines. A bit lower Okay. So here is the original. Here is the traced one. Looks okay, has a lot of nodes. This is what happens with tracing, and just to practice, we can clean these parts. I just select the nodes I don't want. There is some dust here and there. And I can go on and clean it up and have this little character, you know, in any cartoon or anything, but It's good only if I want to have him like this, rough on the edges and have this totally hand drawn feel. But if I want to edit it because I don't like the edge here, it takes a huge effort to not huge yeah, considerable effort to move these parts, move them up and down, and like delete some nodes, you know, Like it would be the same amount of work, like it would be on the poppy flowers before that, Yeah, I just need to work a lot with the nodes. But what if it's easier to do it. Here is this trace, there is a great stuff in the new scape, which is tras Bitmap, single scan and this one. Center line racing. Now what I love about center line racing, what it does. It does the same looks the same. But it goes with every line and it gives you one path. Not the two edges, not like here, but it gives you one path. You will see in a second. He, and here is what it is. I give it some more thickness. It looks weird I know. It has some parts because center line racing, for example, with this one, it cannot really work. Little bubbles, little black shapes or this part, it cannot really understand that, but still can delete Okay. Okay. I can delete all the little parts I don't need, but also I can make it. Also, I can move this part easier. Because it only has one line in it. If I want to give him one more little hair here or little horn or whatever it is, I can. I just pull out a node and edit it. It seems very complex now, but in the coming lectures, I will show you how to edit it better. Also, you see where tracing is working, and I hope you see it now that it works on a lot of places, but not everywhere. It's still a lot of work to edit this. Sometimes it's just easier to delete the nodes and do your own work. Another thing you could do after tracing is simplify the image, which means dility the original now. Here is my center line. Here is my normal trace, and I can select it, and you see there is 1 million of nodes in here. And if you hit Control L, it will make it easier. It will make the nodes simpler. It simplifies. Now, sadly, you cannot set up how much more simpler you want your images because it's optimizing and it's calculating the simplicity. But it seriously reduces the amount of nodes. You lose a lot of detail and it has this strange look here and there, but it's easier. Let's see what happens if I do it with the center line. The thickness of the lines is there. I only have two nodes here, for example. So here, I can edit it nicely. It's up to you to use it. I'm just showing it because sometimes with lineart or handwritten text, if I want to digitize to use it in some images. This $0.01 tracing is amazing. Again, what I say use tracing, but it's not the solution for everything. And I hope I can cover the rest of the lineart needs in the following part of the course and I hope that you will see the point in each of the projects we will accomplish together. Okay. 4. Hello Bezier tool! - icons for practice: To be able to create line art in scape, you have to learn to use the baser tool, which is a tool to create curves and straight lines. You can select this pen icon, click somewhere, click somewhere else, and you can create a straight line. If you want a horizontal line or a vertical one, click and hold Control, and then click again. With the right click, you let it go. Let's delete everything, and let me show you is this tool, the bezier tool or Pen tool, why is it so intimidating. So I'm creating a line or another one. Just click click and right click to let it go. Click, click. But what if I start to use the tool first. When people start to use it, they keep holding, click and hold like drawing with a pencil. No, you don't have to do that because it is not very easy to use. Just click around like this to create straight lines. And if you want to create curves, well, there is another tool for that, which is far less intimidating, in my opinion, than using the bezier tool or the pen tool straight on. Let me just delete these lines. And show you how to make it so much faster and easier using the Pen tool and the path editing tool. So I'm just clicking around. I made a Zigzag. Okay. Now with the path editing tool or node tool, how I usually call it because they are little nodes here on the path, you can edit the nodes on a path. So you can edit the straight lines or also curve them. Curve them by grabbing them here with the little handles or grab the line in the middle of where the little hand appears. And you can also click on the nodes, control click them to change them into curves. So you can decide if this node is a curve or a corner. It is so much easier. You will see later, this is what I will do during the whole course. It's much easier to create curves like this. But first, let's go back to create something very simple and straight. Using the square tool, we will create a very simple shape. As you can see now, this is different. This is not what we saw before. The nodes are different because this is object a shape. So I have to go to path, object to path to turn it into an editable path. Now I can do what I did before with the line. Now I can select the nodes, I can scale them, move them around whatever I want. Let's scale the whole object down a bit. Now, if I select these two nodes together, I can move them together, you see. Also, I can clicking this icon here, add a node in the middle. Why it is good because if I move it straight upwards by holding control, I can make a little house shape. Now I draw a door. Again, we go and make the line there that was huge. Now, what I want I have the little house shape and this little door shape. You see it is two different objects. I want to cut out this one from here from the middle. Let's make it a bit smaller and the house a bit is too tall. Nice. Position it, and I will select now both of them and go to path difference or control minus on my keyboard. This is cutting out a nice shape. I could handle this, but it's so much better, so much faster. Now I have a house. Let's create a tree, just a simple one. Start with a circle. Now with the pen tool, a vertical line, holding control to keep it vertical. And some branches. If you click on this, you will continue the line and then right click to let it go. Now, you can continue a line from the end, but not from here, not from this corner, but I want to grow a branch from here. I will draw a different line, a different path, select both of them, and move them together. There are two different lines. Let's make it a bit longer here. Nice. That's a nice little tree. If I want to keep them together, I select all of them, the circle and the two branches, and with control G, I group it up. I have a tree, I have a house. Let's create something different. Let's make a little car. I start with the rectangle. Make it a bit taller and round the edges by pulling this little node here. Here is a little tip. If you want sharp corner again, click this icon, but now we want them rounded. And again, we will draw another square. It already remains rounded corners. Now we have two little squares on each other, and we go to path Union to merge them together into this little car shape. Okay. Selecting the nodes, I can make them a bit shorter here. I can make the whole car longer if I select the nodes only on this side. You see, I'm holding control, and I just drew a limousine. I'm holding control when I'm moving it because I want to keep my lines nice and straight. Let's create a circle for the wheels. And let me share one more important trick with you. If I scale it down, notice how the thickness of the stroke is also getting smaller. So to correct that, I always have to type the number here how thick I want the nodes. But if I click this icon here, and I let it I turn it off. It means that whenever I scale a path, the node will always keep the same thickness. You see, I scale it up he and it's again the same 1 millimeter line because that one is unticked. This is great if you are designing something with a constant thickness of lines. With Control D, I duplicated the circles to have two wheels for my car, and now I have an issue because I have this horizontal line and it's not looking very good. I could simply select this circle and fill it with white. But what if I don't want a white background for my image for my little car. So that's not a good solution. Instead, I select the car shape, double click here to add another node. Let's remove this wheel just for a second. I double click and now I have two nodes here. I select them and click this icon, which is creating a gap, deleting the connection between any selected two nodes on a path. Now, I put it back and it looks amazing. Now, I just grab the node tool to make some adjustment and repeat the same here. So I add the node, select both of them, click the icon, and make the adjustment. But this time, I just move the wheel a bit to the left. Tara, now I have a little car. I select every part of the car, and with control G, I group it up. So all the parts of the car are moving together when I want them to move together. Now we have almost everything here. House a tree car. What is missing is only a little human. So let's draw simple square around it square for the body, add some lines for the arms. This one I bend to make it more interesting and a straight line for the leg. Now, I want to cut this shorter here, so I draw another object over it, select both of them, and I go to path difference. This will cut it to this half shape. I make the leg a bit taller, duplicate with control D, and that's it. It's fast and simple. And you've created a little man. Just add a little circle for the head and select all of them and group it up. Now you can even take him for a little walk. I think he is too big, so let's scale him down a bit, holding control, and you see the thickness of the stroke remaining the same. Let's go and use the icons and create something bigger in the next lecture. 5. Drawing a cute geometric city - part 1: We created the simple icons before. It's time to move forward and create something more complex this time. Still using simple shapes as a square circle and lines, we will draw a whole city around these little icons. So let's start with the square. It has a bit of a rounded corner. It's up to you to keep it or make it back to Totally cornered. This is what I will do now. First, I go to path and object to path. So now I can edit it. I have four nodes. I select the two nodes on the bottom and click on the icon to remove the connection between them. Now I will draw a horizontal line holding control. And I remove this little house on the side. I don't need it. And put this one, the building on the line. These guys also go over there until I finish my building because this will be a huge apartment building. I'm drawing a few windows. Just a simple square. Let's make it a bit row. Now with Control D, I duplicate it. I do this a few times. Nice. Now, I select all of the windows. And with Shift Control A, you see, I opened a line and distribute window. I can also do it from here. Objects, align and distribute Shift Control A. I use this shortcut a lot because it's much easier than to do it by hand. I just click this icon and it's sorting the windows nicely for me. I don't have to do that by hand. Again, I pull them a bit more apart, put them in the middle. Nice. Now I duplicate all of the windows again and again, to have several rows, several levels for my little building. Now, I select all of them, and with Control G, I group them up. Now if I move it, it will move as one unit. I duplicate the building and the line, and click this icon to send them to the back totally behind the other building. Now it's easy because the inside of the building is a white. But I want to delete the part which is hidden. I want to create true line art, so I don't want to use any feel. You see, if I turn out the field, All the building is transparent, and I can see what is behind it. I could go easy and just keep the feel, but I don't want to do that. I turn of the feel for everything, the windows and the buildings and everything, and delete those parts, I don't want to be there. I just holding shift and control in the same time to click click click and select these windows, and then I delete them. Now I put back the whole group behind, and you see there is this line running down. I grab the node here, and by holding control, I lift it up. Same goes here. This line is cutting through my building. Do you remember what we did with the wheels on the car? Exactly. Double click twice, add two nodes and empty the line between them. Okay. Now if I draw a circle, don't do this, it's just for testing. I draw a circle to show what is behind. You see, there is no field color, not in the windows, not in the buildings. Great. This means I can later add any color I want in the background or do whatever I want with it. Okay, great. I have one house and one house in the background, but I can do more. Let's select again the line and the building. And duplicate it. So I can create some new buildings for myself. I love to duplicate things actually, because I don't have to redraw. I can always reuse what I created before. So now let's position this building. I like it, but it's too uniform compared to the other one. Let's make it a bit shorter, maybe. I just select these two nodes on the top, pull the building down, and erase two floors of windows. I just click click. And delete. Now I have a few lines I have to erase again. You know the drill already. I move this node up. I create two nodes on this horizontal line, I select them and remove the connection from between them. This one I make shorter and we'll do the same here. Select remove the connection nice. With this one, I created the simple illusion that the things are behind or in front of each other. Let's duplicate this building again and make it sitting on the same line. I can put it here. Let's see or delete these windows. Now actually pull this aside. It's much easier to work. Delete the six windows. I said six. Then put it back. Let's delete one more and make the building a bit more narrow. Our block houses are done, and in the next lecture, we finish the little city. 6. Drawing a cute geometric city - part 2: Now, we have the buildings. Let's make this city alive. We can have some trees, cars, and little guys walking around. Let's start with the trees. I just duplicate them with control D and move them around sitting on the lines. As the little icon is still turned off. Whenever I scale a tree to make them a bit different to make them bigger and smaller than the other ones, to make them a bit looking random. Whenever I scale them, the lines are still the same. I duplicate again. Okay. I have to remove this part of the line if I want the tree to overlap and be in front of the building. I do the same as I did before. This tree I can make a bit smaller and with pushing age, I flip it. Now, I add some cars. I make this one a bit longer. Add two nodes, and again, make a gap, duplicate a car again with control D and sit it here. Now, let's put some people here and there. This is the part I love in vector because it's like playing with little puppets. It's really like building in legos. Maybe I put another person here and flip it like they are shaking hands or holding hands. You see, this is what illustration is about, in my opinion, is about building stories, even if it's with such simple things as these. I can put these aside now. Now I select everything and make the lines a bit. So adjust the thickness of the stroke. Maybe a bit too much. Nice. The only thing is missing here is maybe a sun. I remove the field is just a simple circle. Now I duplicate it, and withholding shift and control, I grow it. Now I convert it to a path, select these nodes and remove a part of the path. Again, double click to add the new node and remove a part of the path. Again, here, I select even with three, and it works still. Why I did this because I wanted to have circular sun rays, not the usual sun rays we see on drawings. It's like a hot summer sun. I grouped it up so I can move it, and now I create some little clouds here and there, how we did with the car. These squares are even more rounded, and then I go to path, union and merge them into one. Scale them and position them. I duplicate it and flip it with H. I flip it horizontally, and I can play with it making, making longer, just to create a different cloud from the one I had before. I put a little circle here and merge it together with path union to have a different shape of a cloud. Nice. I have my little city. I'm fairly satisfied. I hope you like yours too. Now, I select all of the objects and with control G, I group them up. It's a huge drawing. I scale it down a bit. But now the lines seem thicker, so I make them a bit lower. You see this can be also applied to groups or a group of selected objects. Great. Now it looks how I want it to look, and this is a day scene. How about creating one in the night? Let's duplicate it. And we shift control G, I put the group apart, and my first move is to remove the sun. Actually, I just remove this outer ring, duplicate the sun, make it smaller. Put the little circle over the previous one. Zoom in, so you see it better. I select both of the circles and with path difference, I cut it off. Now, I have a nice moon shape. I had some very little circles. Okay. When you hold an object and move it around and push space, you can stamp it around one by one. I just group everything together, and we shift clicking. I color all the outlines white. Now, don't be afraid they didn't disappear. They are just not visible on the white background. Let's draw a blue square behind a rectangle. Send it behind with this icon or pushing the end key. Now my little night city is visible. Let's select a few of the windows. And light them up with some right color. Now it's very interesting. My little people also are white for some reason. Let's remove the feel from there. Now I have a nice image about the same city in daylight and in night. I enjoyed creating this simple geometrical city. In the next lesson, we will make something even more interesting. 7. Manual tracing - cartoon cat part 1: In this and the following lecture, we will practice how to digitize your own drawings. For this, you don't have to scan them. It's enough to take a photo with your camera or your phone and just import that photo and draw over it here in inscape. We will use the pen tool mostly, and then the path tool, the node editing tool to achieve the effect what we are looking for. First, we are importing file import and look for the drawing that we want to draw over. We are going to use it as linked. So it's linked into the SVG file in scape. That's it. It's a simple drawing. And if I zoom in, you can see that the lines are not very straight because I was drawing it on a wide paper with a simple felti pen. So if I want to draw over it in scape, my idea is the drawing is that I want these lines much nicer and smoother. So I will use the pen tool and the path tool to achieve that effect. I am clicking here and here. And as I told you earlier, I'm not looking into curving that node. First, I just will work with polygons. I will color this stroke to orange now and make the opposity lower around half. So I can make it a bit, so I can see the line I'm drawing, and I can also see the line I was drawn previously, so I see what is under it. So I could click click, click around here, you see, and create this polygonal line, and then delete these nodes and then reshape them, but. What I can do, and I think it's better to do is just if the curve is so nice as this one at the head, I just click to the two end and then right click to let it go. I have one straight line, and then I just bend it with the path tool. If needed, add some additional nodes here and there, like maybe here in the corner, double click and add the node, but still keep it simple and curvy. Remember, that's the basic rule, I think for dynamic line drawings in scape. The last node a path has, the more dynamic it appears because it's less wavy and less distracting. Also curve this one with control click and just shape the ears. I pull it down and added another node. I just want to follow my original drawing. That's a nice curve there. Let's see the other ear. Click, click. I could click here and go or go straight down, but I'm sure it will need at least one or two extra nodes. So I stop here. And with the path tool with the node to double click on the top. To fix it. Control click to curve it a bit. I'm pulling this little node handles to achieve the curve I'm looking for, and if it's not working, I just add the new node. This one will be quite easy as well. It's just a straight line, and I curve it here on the top to create this little hook in the ear. Let's work a bit more on this line, and follow the head. I like to keep these little gaps here and there because for me, that is making the drawing more alive and more interesting. I don't close the gaps when I don't have to. This is just one nice node here, and I show you a trick. You can actually click here in the stroke style to decide which type of end you want to have on your node. For this drawing, because it's a cute cartoon character, I want it rounded. That's what I do. Let's make the little eyebrows. We can make it, so it's still a stroke, but it's thicker. With control D, I duplicate the eyebrow and pull it over to the other one. I change the shape a bit, so it's not exactly the same. But if you want to keep it the same, it's up to you. It's also up to you. If you want to draw this little kit and you can, I will give you the drawing. But if you want to start with your own drawing, it's even better because you will have more fun and you will see your own drawing coming to light in a digital form. Just click click and doing a straight line and pulling it down and that's the eyes and also I doubling it here, duplicating with control D and shaping it a bit more to the shape of the Now onto the nose and the little mouth. Now, the only thing you cannot draw with the path is a fork. So you have to do line till here. Draw the nose, you can draw the nose and one of the lips like this. And the other side, the left side of the lips, you have to draw later on. So a tree branch, you cannot draw this y shape or a fork in a tree branch. You cannot do it here, so it has to be two parts. The nose, I keep it one part because. I could have the nose even separate if I want to. Now I just click click like with the eyes and I draw the separate shape for this part of the mouth. I like this little character because he seems very content. Now, there is a tiny gap here. It's almost not visible, but I still double click the path and pull it down to keep this line in flow with the vertical with the vertical line above it. It's like when you are drawing and aligning two lines to each other. This is the same thing I do. It's a small detail. But it was bugging me so I was fixing it. Let's zoom out and see what we have so far. We can go to view and switch to outline. This is what we have. Obviously, the red square showing the beat Map image which we imported. So it's not visible in this view but I can see my lines are nice and flexible, and obviously the strokes don't have the colors and the thickness. So now I switch back to the normal view and continue with my work. I click here as well, just a few times. I only need like three four nodes to create this shape. I have to add an additional node here on the neck for sure. Double click to add an additional node. That's nice. And use the handlers to the little node, the handles to perfectly align this to the shape. Now let's do this with the left part as well. Double click. I like this one, how it looks on the left and align it here. This is great practice to follow a line you drew before. This is a great practice to work on the pen tool. Now I just draw the pull over. Just click and click here as well for the arms, click and click and the little sleeves. Now I have at least five different shapes very squared, but I just fix them up. I'm control clicking here on this edge and pull in the node handler, so it's not so baggy. I keep this little gap here. I like that. Again, contra click that node. This is too straight. I can move it a tiny bit just to make it more organic. This one, I have to pull down and contra click those nodes so they are curved on the end. Same here. Let's bend it and contra click the end, so it's not very sharp. And here as well, let's fix this nice little curve at the bottom of the jumper. I take care that the end of the nodes are not hanging out like this. You see, so they are overlapping, that's fine, but they are not hanging out on the other side of the nodes next to them. You see same here. So the nodes are hidden behind the path. Okay. Let's fix the leg. It's basically the same again, three little nodes, curve on the bottom, curve here to make it a bit more interesting. Control click that one on the bottom, and that's it. Now let's make this part, bend it a bit and this vertical line between the two legs. Keep it behind the path. Here as well. Let's see where we are now. Do the feet. It's a few clicks, Contra click here on the end to make it curved and bend this one up. It's okay if it's not following perfectly, but I like to pull this one down. It's a nice curve here. Again, put the node behind the path. Let's see where we are now. I like it. I hope you like it too. Let's continue in the next lecture. 8. Manual tracing - cartoon cat part 2: Let's continue with the tail of the little cat. I could just click here on the end and bend it nicely. As I always said, creep it dynamic. Okay. I contro click the nodes here on the end. Double click here, I think to add another node. We will see in a second how it works out. I'm constantly experimenting, and you will do the same in the meantime get used to it and create dynamic little linear drawings with less nodes. Why double clicked after all here on the top, because I need that to follow the curve. Now I want to do the same here. Double click there, pull it in, and fix that curve here with this handle. Okay. You see, I can create the same exact line as I was drawing by hand, and if it's not the same, it's because I decided so. You should do the same. So your sketch your drawing is not set in stone. You can always draw it in digital. That's why you digitize it. Okay, the tail is nice. I really like the shape. As this little cat is a cartoon character, I was drawing these little lines here to add some movement to it. I duplicate the tail with Control D, add some extra nodes. Delete the nodes I don't need here on this one on the end. This one as well. So I reduce this path as a part of the original tail path. I reduce it to create this little band. I can still shape it if I want, or I could draw it with a few clicks from scratch. But I like it that I can duplicate what I created before. With this one, this is so tiny, I just click and click and bend it a bit for good measure. Okay. Now let's see what we can do with the hand and the luggage. The luggage is just a few clicks because the basic shape of it is a square. So I'm contra click here on the end here as well. Here as well, and I fix the shape. You see when the handles are horizontal or vertical, then the line is vertical nicely. Here, I just double click and add the node and pull the node up to create the horizontal part of the luggage and control click here and fix this part on the top and on the side as well. As you see, I'm constantly zooming in and out using the mouse wheel, hold control zoom in and out with rolling the mouse wheel up and down. This is what I always do because I want to check what is happening on the big scale. I pull this one down and I do the same on the left side, node up and pull the path down a bit to create this knife curve at the handle. Now I can continue this line. If I select this little node here. You see, it's here by the pen tool, I can just continue it, and this is the same. I bend this line, and I do the same on the right side. Click here, draw it to the hand, bend it curve it, and play with the handles a bit to keep this nice curve. Now, again, I click here to continue my line and click here until here to make this part of the handle. I contra click that node. Good. Now, draw this little shape at the thumb. Okay. And this as well. I could draw the whole hand in one, but why bother when the lines, the path are touching each other so nicely. That's why I didn't finish the part here as well at the handle because it's covered by the line coming from the hand. Just a few clicks here to finish off the fist. I put these two parts of the path down, Contli the node in the middle and make the path a bit bandy. There's one tiny line missing here only. You see this part of the trouser behind. Again, I'm fixing that no line is out of the path. Now, I just have a few tiny lines and the whiskers. I will skip my signature. You don't need to draw that. I mean, if it's your original drawing, please include your signature. For me, is just for helping you to learn this process, so I will not bother with that now. I just draw a little band and duplicated it with control D, and then I shape it to this one, duplicate again and rotate it here. And you see I'm not following the lines so tight down there. Okay. Here, I want to have a line which is very parallel with the chest, like he is breathing in and he is at ease. Here as well, I want to curve which is loosely following the edge of the ears, and it's time to draw the whiskers. I just create one, bend it a bit, and I duplicate it with control D and rotate it by holding shift. When you hold shift with rotation, it will rotate around one corner. Again, duplicate it rotating it match one to the drawing and delete the node there if it's longer than it's needed. Or just grab the node and resize it. Here, this one I want to make different, I make it again to make it a bit more curved, duplicate it, rotate it, And again, duplicated, rotated, and this one is a bit longer, so I pull it up a bit. But I like it that they are not all the same. So I like to put some life into the drawings, making it longer here shorter there, so it's not repeated. I repeat it and I duplicate my elements, but I'm making them a bit more random. And I pull this aside, so the original is here on the left, and you can see that our drawing is coming together perfectly. Let's select all of the elements and make the lines 100% opacity, so they are not transparent and click on this dark color shift click on this dark color to make the lines look like the original. With Control G, I group them up, so they are now one group, or you could right click the selected elements and select group to group them up. If I move it here, you can see it is resembling the original perfectly. Of course, the digital lines are much cleaner, but still also we kept it dynamic as the original felt drawing without these little ragged edges. It's much cleaner, but still dynamic. That was my original goal. I hope you enjoyed drawing this. Now I feeling like a street gambler. Okay, which one is the original, which one is the digital? So I want to show you why we were digitizing it because with one click, I can make it red. With another click, I can make the lines thicker. I can take it apart. I can make parts grow or shrink. I can pick another color, and that's the idea behind digitizing a drawing with scape. I take the time to draw over this little part. If I pick lines this thick, I can even plate, so delete some elements, move some elements to keep these gaps. You can do that too, and feel free to do that recolor reshape your drawings because this was the goal all along. You have full total control over the lines you created. Congratulation. You just digitize your artwork. 9. One line portrait - straight lines (part 1): In the following two lectures. We will work on practicing more with the Bazer tool, and to this, I will import an image and draw over it. I Let's find the folder. And this is a free stop photo from unsplash.com. I just link it, which means it will be not part of the document. It's a very easy way to import photos into scape. It's huge, so I zoom out, and then I scale it down a bit. Okay. And we will not use this photo as a photo. We will draw over it. It doesn't make it less artsy. It's still your art. You can draw over it with the pant. We will do what I was talking about a few lectures ago, click click click straight lines to go around the edges to go around the drawing. I could use instead of a photo, I could use a sketch or a drawing as I will in other Uh, as I will in other lectures too. Now, I just pick a point and start there. I think I will start around the shoulders and the hand. That's very major, and of course, very major part, and of course, around the face. So I just plan my route around the space of this lady. I do. One or two lines. What I want to do is just click. Click, click with the mouse. So don't hold it. Just click and release, click and release, straight lines. When we stop, then we can adjust the lines and create curves out of them. These type of drawings are very trendy now, if I may say, so you can create your own portrays about yourself, about friends and families. So this is what we try to achieve now. I will make a loop here. And row until the end of the I'm taking address here. Come back around here, make some loops here and there when I have to turn. I try not to straightly back tracking the lines I did. This type of one line drawings work because you have to go and create loops. I'm cheating a bit here on the top of the mug because I don't know how to make it any cleaner, but it will look good at the end. Let's color it to something different. This red is more visible. Okay. And I can play And just for now, let's clean this part here. In the same method we use before, select the two nodes and delete the part between them, and I continue the line here on the left. Or I will decide it later. That's what I like in vector. You don't have to decide on the spot what you want to do. Why? Because you can go back and continue the same line later on. Just click on the end of the line with the pen tool or the node tool, and it will work. I just went around the head here. Come up here on the shoulder, and I will use this line to go and zoom in a bit and create the eyebrows and the eyes. Here I can make a good amount of loops. I go around here. Nice. Let's draw the nose. I will make a loop here at the top of the nose to give you some structure and up here and draw around the other eye. Remember, whatever you want to stop or take a break, just do. Right click to let go of the line with the pen tool and then continue by clicking on the end of the node. So very minor wrinkles she has. And then I go back down here. Okay. And I figure out how the lips are looking. I'm not sure about this one. I just right click and let it go. Last few nodes. I delete those few parts of the line. Now, let's see where we are now. Maybe this one I can pull apart and you see just elongate this one. Make a loop around here at the chin and use this opportunity to close the line there and go up. Remove This is what we have so far and in the next lecture, we continue. 10. One line portrait - adding curves (part 2): Now, continuing, we will work on this more polygonal drawing now and practice more and more of how to work with curves. I first make them a bit thicker so we see what we do. Adjusted the thickness of the stroke. Basically in this lecture, I will just click the nodes. Not all of them, though. I control click and fix them and align them more to the drawing. I will work on the nodes here and there, but have some corners. Okay. Because if you turn all the corners into curves like change all the nodes, then you will lose a lot of detail. Here I want to do this because I want to work on the loops here and there. Even delete nodes, make this one a bit shorter. Quantroclick this one, but keep the node up there at just the edge of this one, Seelect these nodes and just delete them. Around the ears, and the face, I have to contro click to create those moose shapes. And as you see, I delete nodes here and there. Why? Because the less less number of nodes path has, the smoother it will appear. If a line has several little nodes, then it will look bumpy and uneven. I try to have as few as possible. I just contro click around the eye to make those parts curvy here at the nose as well. Now, this will be a nice big loop here drawing the tip of the nose, Steel control clicking, control clicking, bending the parts where it needs. I'm removing some of the overlaps. As you see this lecture or these two lectures about drawing a face, it's a bit complex, but I don't want you to follow it step by step, node by node. You can draw over the same photo as me. You can pick any of your drawings or anything to create this one line type illustration. I just want you to practice and have fun with curves, and don't be afraid to use these curvy lines to express yourself. Okay, so just have fun. I still keep on clicking though, and bending this part and moving nodes because here on the top of the mug is a bit complex. There are too many loops. But it's okay I will have a better hand drawn feel to it. I definitely bend the nodes here because I want to have a curvy feeling on the hair. It cannot be straight, and it cannot have straight corners in this drawing. Contro click here, and fix the other eye as well. When the little hand appears, you can pull lines and the edges as well, not just corners, use that as well. You see contro clicking here will create the waves of the ha have the shoulders here and fix the top part. Okay. Let's see what we have. I'm quite satisfied. It is smiling. It's definitely a human being. It is what I wanted to draw. There are still some parts to fix. Let's make this tip of the nose a bit smaller. Create some curves here. You see deleting nodes again, it's keeping it simple but also more dynamic. The path is more dynamic, the less nodes it has. Let's see how to fix here the hand. Just contro click and fix it. So the fingers are not so blocky. As you see now, it's not about sheepishly following the outlines of photo. It is about creating illustrations. I'm pulling some parts up here, changing some proportions to have a proper illustration. My next step towards that is to fix the fix the lines, to create the illusion that this was drawn with one line. First, I want to connect these two parts. To that, I continue this line curve it a bit and select the N nodes here. Okay. Okay. And join them with this icon. It's the same what we used before, but this time we are joining instead of deleting a part of the path. Now I can even delete the nodes. You remember to make it more dynamic and fix the shapes. Now I have some open ended nodes here and there, some open ended lines. Let's work on this one here on the top, can pull it down. But actually, I'm missing this part of the head, so I have to fix that somehow. Let's continue and make it longer here actually. Good. Let's delete this node again. Nice. I want to add the node here and delete the N node to create a gap. As you see, I have three lines now. How to make them one again. I have to do something about this part for sure. First, Let's delete some nodes here and make it more dynamic and connect this node to the other one. To create a loop here to make the drawing continuous. I select the path, select the N nodes, and connect them. No, I contro click these nodes to create a curve. Don't be afraid to make mistakes with the path. I always do just push control Z to undo your mistake. Okay, looks nice. Now it's one line, and there is only one other line here on the top, which is, at the end of the lips, so I can do the same move these and select these nodes and connect them. Now I can create a little loop here or unop a bit. I will have it in a second. Great. If I zoom out and move my lines, everything is one line now. Perfect. This was my idea all along. It starts from the cup, goes around and finishing at the hair line. I hope you enjoyed this illustration and please if you did share your drawing with me. Let's color it a different color, so it's better visible. Yes. I'm very satisfied with this one, and I hope you like this exercise. Okay. Okay. 11. Create custom brushes in Inkscape: In this lecture, I will show you how to create amazing unique brushes in scape using the pencil tool and how to use the pencil tool in general. It's called the free hand tool or the pencil tool as the icon shows, and you can just create simple lines with it. I think the pencil tool is the first tool people grab when they start to use scape because it's so familiar. You just pull it and create a line with it, and that's it. Let me turn this into a stroke and show you how amazingly smooth line I can row with my mouse in scape. Okay. It's a bit of a lie, and I will tell you in a second. But first, I want to show you how easy it is to edit. Because whatever you create with the pencil tool, this line is already a path. You see it's nice and smooth and I can edit out the curse. So I don't have to go to path object to path like I did before because this is already a path. Okay. So why I said that I was a bit of a lie when I said that I can draw such smooth lines. It's because usually when we draw with the pencil tool, you set the smoothing high. What is high, 20, 20 something is high. It means that it will smooth out my lines. If I make it lower, you can see already some extra nodes are appearing. What if I set it even lower? What if I said it to absolutely down. You see, my drawing is looking already a bit shaky, not as smooth and beautiful as it did before. So whatever you draw with the pencil itulscape take care about the smoothing. If you want to keep the little details and shakiness, actually, the cursor following your movements perfectly, then take down the smoothness. If you want beautiful dynamic lines, take the smoothness up. But notice that there is a lot of things that will disappear? A lot of details. Okay. And why am I talking about the pencil tool? Because when you draw with the pencil tool, you can set the line style, the stroke style to non, which is just a line. Or you can say triangle in triangle out to create a line with a triangle stretched along it. You see this looks like a brush already. So the presets are already great. I could really draw something nice with it. I can using this ellipse, for example, I can draw a little. I could ink a whole cartoon character. I like it. But what I want to show you, I think is even more creative and it can have a lot of fun. You can have a lot of fun with it, actually, and it can have a lot of impact on your art. So let's create rectangle and turn it into a path, object to path, and then just select it and hit Control C to copy it. Put it on the clipboard. Control C. And then when I'm using the pencil tool, select the shape, select from clipboard. So whatever I draw now, it will be this exact rectangle path of rectangle stretched along the line. And if I edit it, when I edit it, dit this path, it will move with it. It's amazing. When I first learned about this one in Inkscape, I was like, Wow, I can create my own brushes. I can make anything for inking. And not just that, if you look at this, there is a dot here, here in the triangle, which is not there, the first line. Also, it's here. I can set the thickness of the line. Even after I was drawing it, I can edit the shape of the line a bit, like how thick I want it, and I can do the same with my drawing, the square I used here. Let me fix it a bit. Okay. So I can edit the nodes. I can move the path up and down. I can reshape it a bit, and I can play with the thickness of the drawing applied along the path. Okay? And whatever I draw, it will be next in the next line, it will apply the same and same path, and also it will keep the same thickness. So let's get back to zero, so don't use anything and make a weird path, just a little puff cloud, whatever it is. Let's make it a bit even more rough. I delete it and I make something even more wavy with less smoothing, nice, control C to put it on the clipboard. And use the drawing from the clipboard along the path. And here it is. This is our first stroke with an applied brush. It's not called a brush officially, but this is what we did. And I can play with the thickness, I can play with the shape of it. And yeah, I can use it in any drawing. Just imagine the possibilities. You have a sketch, and you just want to paint it in this that style in it in this that style. Then you just put it into scape and create another brush. I will show you another one. So let's go no. And zigzaggy path, a bit of the opposite of what we did before. Copy it, obviously. Put it on the clipboard. Just control C, it's on the clipboard, and then I go back to the pencil tool and ask scape to use what is on the clipboard. That's it. It's a different path. It looks different than the previous one. It's the same shape of the line, but the brush is different. You see, I can play with it, I can create cartoon like effects of cartoon boxes with this. I could in a whole comic book if I really want to. So I scape has only a few default brushes, this triangle in triangle, but you can do so much more. Let's again create something different. And this is just me playing around and being creative with this. I'm also experimenting, how would this line? How would this line look? I'm just creating now a little dots, and then I go to path union to meagre them into one path because you can only select one path to be applied on the pencil. And the pencil tool. I select this one. Rotate it a bit, so I know that this will be applied when I pull the pencil from left to right, control C and put it on the path. If you don't believe me, is it really the same shape? Let me draw a very, very short path. You see, it is the same path I did before, these little dots merged together. That is the same object stretched along this line. Let's just keep this one to show you how many different path I can have. Again, I can play with thethickness here. Even after I was drawing the line, I can create different thicknesses. I already have a few line versions, but let's get back to this and create some more. One of my favorite is this one. It's thick in the middle and on the edge, it's has this brushy splatter effect. And again, just be creative with it. Let me make a little hole here even. Just made a select both of them, and I go to path difference to cut a hole in this, and then select all of them and go path union. It's such an easy shape, you know, I'm not sweating it, and you shouldn't do either, because this is just fun and being creative with the shape and then see how it behaves when you want to use it as a brush. So you know the drill now, control C and put it on the line. Nice. This is good as a straight line. This is good as a bend as a curve. I could imagine this could be the eyebrow character or use it on some very thin line here and there as a shading as a face. Would be very, very nice. Let's move up with the other ones. What else? What can I do? What can you do? Let's create the same slatory effect, but in triangle shape. That's a grand triangle I created because I can do the same thing as they do with triangle in and triangle out. But now it it's a brush. So it's more random looking. Let's put the smoothness up a bit, so there are no little wavy parts in here. You see, amazing, it looks like I'm really just using a brush. This one already looks like it could be part of a little cartoon character. Okay, so this triangle is just a bit different than this one. So when I'm using triangle in triangle, it's using the same effect. It's just my triangle is a bit, funky. Let's create something even more different than combine this triangle with the little dot things I made. Let's make it a splattery grindy triangle. Just create some dots here and there, but arrange them in a shape of a triangle. So what I'm aiming for and on the left, it's a bit thinner and on the right is going thicker and thicker and how it will splash. Now, select all of them and go path union to measure them into one path because this effect is only working if you select exactly one path. Okay? So just control C to put it on the clipboard. And again, ask them to use it from the clipboard, and this is how it looks. You see, you have the triangle effect and it is a bit sketchy. Brushy, so it is not as sterile acids with the triangular scape has. If I make it thinner, it looks like I'm using a filty pen even. This is how much I have now, and I think the possibilities are really endless. You can play with so much. But this was my triangle in. If I duplicate the original shape and flip it around, draw a bit on it still to make it more interesting, Yes, like this, had some corners here and there. Merge it together with control plus or path union. You see? Now, I can control C, so copy it on the clipboard and try how it looks if I'm drawing the same thing. You see, now the triangle is flipped. It's coming from right to left instead of left to right. Okay. So many possibilities. Let's do something with circles. You see this one is an ellipse. This is a basic form you don't have to do it. But if you want to play with ellipses, you can still create this little puffy cloud. What if on the edges is thiner in the middle, it has this puffy effect. I'm just drawing a few eps circles on each other and I merge them together with path union. Make it a bit smaller, control, and I'm eager to see how it will look. From clipboard. Okay, Los nice enough. Hope you had fun created these interesting brushes, and I hope you created yours, play with it and enjoy them and create new ones because in the next lecture, we will put them to use. 12. Drawing a whale with the pencil tool using custom brushes - part 1: During the previous lecture, we created some amazing brushes and I kept a few of them here so we can put them into use. Let's see, first, I import a drawing of mine. It's this one. It's a sketch about the whale. I just link it, put it in here. As you can see, I can rotate the image. As you can see, it's a very, very simple image about a he and it's not scanned. It's nothing special. It's just a photo I took with my phone. So to draw it over, you don't have to have super high quality images. But the image has to have some lines to draw over with these amazing brushes we have. I will use these brushes because they are a bit distorted, they have splatters. They are not a simple triangular or simple line, and they will help me to follow the lines of the whe it would be an ink painting, or if I would use a felt pen. Okay? Let's try it. Set the color first. Okay. I already copied one of the elements, and let's see how it looks. The thickness is nice. I could be a bit thicker. But it would be nice for the eyes. This is where we start. Let's see. Nice, it's dice and dynamic. The smoothing is good. Again, I just do what we did in the previous lecture. I am drawing with the pencil tool. I am drawing circles, ellipses, and little lines, and the pencil tool is applying this brush. I copied onto the clipboard. Start here. I'm not pretty sure on the shape here because it's just a sketch. Maybe it's too thin on the end. Let's see. Yeah, it's maybe to wavy and too thin here on the top of the mouth. So if I remove a few elements to make it shorter, then it would be a bit better. Okay. Now, with Control C, I delete the line and let's try with this one. With Control C, I copied another shape. Yeah, it's a bit better. But now too straight. But hey, this is us being artist and experimenting. I did it a few nodes and adjust them. It's better because the thickness is nice. Also I can bend this here. So this one could be still working here. Let's see. Together with the mouse, and I will continue down here, and I stop here and there, so my brush can have a start and the end. You know what I mean, it's that I don't want to use just tiny strokes or or very long ones. I try to stop here and there and restart my lines if needed. This one could pull over. But this one after the pins of the wheel it has to be a huge stroke for sure. Let's copy this one and use this brush next. Let's see how it looks. Not this one. I don't need the color. I set back the color because previously, accidentally, I picked up a gray one from the paper. Okay, I looks nice, but this part is. Okay. That one could be deleted, maybe or add the node here actually. Using brushes like this is a great way to keep your drawing organic. So I'm not looking for the perfect perfect band. I redraw and experiment and play with the brush is what I have. What I do now is I try to flip this stroke because I want to pull from left to right. So I was actually flipping the brush, control d to duplicate, flip it, and use it. So it's a triangle going from the left to the right. The other way around. If I pull from this direction, it's thicker here, rather, how to say, where the fin is closer to the body. Same here. For me, playing with lines like this, this gives a feeling that on the end of the fin, it's a bit thinner where the thickness of the muscle is here under the fin or closer to the body. It looks nice. It looks like a little wing actually. Let's start from here. But with the pencil tool, let's start from here. I stop there because I know if I would like to do the tail as well with one stroke, it would be very thin. So I will work on that connection there a bit more. I pull this in here, so I want to keep the rough edges on the brush, but I also want to connect it there. Nice. Time to time I'm zooming in and zooming out to see what I created. How does it look. With control and the mouse wheel, I'm zooming in and out constantly. Now, let's do this huge thick line on the bottom. I want to keep the bottom lines. I want to keep thicker than the ones on the top because for me, that is giving weight to the drawing. This is a line where there should be shadow. This is a line which is on the bottom and is holding the weight of the whe. It's leading the eye of the viewer as well. I like to keep the bottom part thicker. And by the way, I will give you this sketch. If you think it's good enough and you want to draw this sketch, please go for it. But also, obviously, please feel free to draw your own drawing ink your own sketching scape. Okay, looks nice. It has a very nice dynamic shape here and I really like that, how it turns out. I can still work on the thickness here and there. You see to make it even heavier here on the bottom. In the next lecture, we will add the additional lines and do the tail and the other fin. Okay. Okay. 13. Drawing a whale with the pencil tool using custom brushes - part 2: Okay. Let's continue with the tail. Here the brushes will be very nice and visible because these are quite short lines compared to the long ones on the back and on the belly of the whale. I'm using this brush now. Let's see. Yes, much better. Again, like in the previous video with the fin, this part is and then the line is getting thinner on the end, closer to the edge of the tail. Should I merge them together here somehow, I mean, not the path just visually a bit? Yeah, maybe that's interesting. You see, I really like the dynamics and the thickness there. Let's do this short line. Make it a bit th. And this one is very nice. As I said here, you can see the brush very nicely. Okay, I can make it even thicker to make it more visible, and that's helping to create a little shadow here on the edge. Okay still nice and visible. And now it's time to connect these lines or make a visual connection, which again, means that they don't have to touch, it just looks like they are touching. So I start from here, and here it is a bit thicker, but on the end on the right side is thinner again. Let's play with the shape a bit more. Or actually, I can use this one because that's thinner on both ends. Let's try this. Much better. Just let's make it thinner and delete some of the nodes. Again, when you're using an elliptical shape for your brush, then both of the edges will be thinner and the middle will be thicker. So it's nice to know where you want to use that brush. This is why I have several triangles and ellipses just in my type, not the original ones coming with ink. So I can play with them and be creative with them because the whole process here is a creative game. It's coming together nicely. I still have to draw the fins and some more lines I would like to add later. But if I move the image aside a bit, you can see it's nice and clean and it's much cleaner than my original sketch. The eye could be a bit smaller, was too big for me for a he but I really like these lines and I have to finish that lower one to finish the shape of the whale and make it recognizable. I just grab whatever brush is in now and it's not really good. Okay. It's strike with the triangle out of my own creation, actually. Let's see. I make little waves here and there on purpose. What I do is it's thicker here on the edge which is closer to us and on the edge is closer to the part or the far away part of the blade. Remove some nodes and fix the shape. Okay. This one I move into the line. It's nice and clean. I like it. I hope you also are satisfied with your own drawings. I will create a new brush now, I think, because these lines, I want to have them a different texture. Maybe this one would be nice, but I think I will need a different brush. This time, I will create one which is again, built from little pieces as we did in the previous lecture, little dots and little speckles here and there. But what makes this brush different than the others is that as you see, the top is smooth and almost straight, it's curved, but it's like no little dust and particles there. As on the bottom, I make a lot of details, circles. And now I just select all of them and merge them together with control plus or path union. Now, this is one shape, make it a bit smaller. So if I make a line with this, suppose it the top will be nice smooth curve. A on the bottom, it will be more rugged with little particles. Let's see. More or less there. Not enough. I take yet another try on this, and I just cut in little pieces. I just do a zigzag select both of the shape and I go path difference and you see I'm cutting nudges here and there. Let's see how this looks. Because now I have a shape like a sow blade. Let's see, control C and put it on the path. Okay, much better. This now looks like a real brush stroke because those little cuts, the triangle shaped cuts I make are actually bent over the whole line, and they are elongated along the line, and they are very nice. You see, it's clearly a different type of brush like the ones I used elsewhere on the drawing. I said the thickness, and now I just draw some lines or duplicate some of these to have the feeling I'm looking for for the value of the wheel. It could be much though. Yeah, so they are more visible. You can notice that sometimes I'm drawing the line from left to right and sometimes right to left, and that's also changing how the brush is applied on the path. Altogether, I'm satisfied with it. It looks like an old edge, an etching or a linlic more of like copper edge. B nice fuzzy lines as well? And if you want, you can row this veil, as I said, but you can also feel free to create a portrait or create anything actually with these lines. I really, really would like to see your work. Let's work on the shape a bit more. Maybe it's too circular, but I'm okay with now. Maybe I can work on it later. But as a fast sketch, I'm satisfied because I created something that looks like actually painted with ink. And if I remove the square, I could select these objects and group them up together and have something like I had in my mind when I created the sketch. This will be not finished now I see because I can keep adding little details and little elements, but I let you do it for yourself. I hope you enjoyed this process of creating something more traditional looking artwork line art in inscape, I just group them up and here is the finished drawing for me, please share your artwork with me if you created your own.