Inkscape Hands-on Class 04: Camping Poster

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Brandon and welcome to the Inkscape hands-on series of lessons. In this series, we're using entirely hands-on project-based approach to learn how to create stunning digital art with Inkscape, a powerful, free and open-source vector graphics editor. This lesson, we'll create a campaign poster. In the process, we'll learn how to apply linear and radial gradients to objects and modify them with a gradient tool. We'll learn how to use layers to separate objects and the Canvas and how to hide and lock them. We'll learn some special features of the pin tool, including how to use different modes, like this spiral mode, and how to use this shape setting. And we'll learn some more text features, including how to use flow into frame to float text inside a shape, and how to use the Lorem Ipsum extension to create placeholder text. This is going to be our biggest lesson yet, and we'll be learning a ton of very useful information. See you there. 2. Camping Poster: Part 1: In this lesson, we're going to be using a lot of linear and radial gradients. So before we begin creating the poster, Let's quickly go over how these work. First, let's create a shape. It doesn't really matter which kind, so I'll just go with a rectangle. Now, if we open the fill and stroke dialog, in both the fill tab and the stroke paint tab, we have two color options called linear gradient and radial gradient. If we click the linear gradient option, our selected object gets a gradient that by default goes from the fill color at fully opaque on the left to the fill color at fully transparent on the right. We can also see this on the gradient line that now appears in the fill and stroke dialog. These two points on the ends of the line are called stops. We can move the stops around on the line. And we can change their colors by selecting one and adjusting the color in here. We can also bring this stop's alpha channel all the way up to make it opaque. Another thing we can do is add stops, either by clicking this + button down here, or by simply double-clicking the gradient line. We can move this one around and change the color. If we want to delete a stop, we can select it, and either click this - button or press delete. Another way to work on gradients is with the gradient tool, located here in the toolbox. We can use this tool to select and move stops. And we can change the color of a stop either in the fill and stroke dialog or through the color palette. To add a stop with the gradient tool, we can double-click the gradient line on the object. And if we select a stop, we can remove it by pressing Delete. One thing we can do with the gradient tool that we can't do through the fill and stroke dialog is rotate and reposition the gradient line. Also, if we double-click the object with the gradient tool, it will reset the position of the gradient. In the controls bar for the gradient tool, we can choose the type of gradient to use, we can select from different gradients that we've created in our current document, we can reverse the gradient, and we can change the repeat method of the gradient. We can really only see the difference between these two methods if we move the first and last stops inside the object. Here's what the reflected method looks like. Here's direct. We can also use the fill and stroke dialog to reverse the gradient and change the repeat method. The other type of gradient we'll look at in this lesson is the radial gradient. We can either choose it in here or, with the gradient tool, we can choose it in the controls bar, then double-click the object. Radial gradients start at the center and move out to two ending stops. These two ending stops share the same color information. We can also rotate the gradient using the ending stops. The lines will maintain a 90-degree angle between them. If we hold Ctrl, it will snap the angle of rotation. We can stretch out the lines as well. The inner stops on the line share the same offsets and the same color information. If we double-click a line to add a new stop there, it'll add one on the other line as well. Similarly, deleting one will delete the other. With the center stop, we can change the position of the gradient on the object. We can also of course change the color of this stop. If we hold Shift and drag the center stop, it will let us change the focus of the gradient. The focus is denoted by this x here. If we don't hold shift, we can drag the focus back to the center stop. Okay, that should be a pretty good overview of linear and radial gradients. So we can go ahead and delete this object and start working on the poster. Now, for the dimensions of the poster, we're going to use the page here. We'll begin by creating a rectangle that covers it. So first, let's turn on snapping. Then let's drop this down and go to Advanced Mode. And with snapping to page borders enabled down here, we can close this, switch to the squares and rectangles tool with the R key, then we can snap to the top left corner of the page and click and drag down until it snaps to the bottom-right. Let's turn snapping back off for now. If we deselect the rectangle, we can see that the page border is still showing here, making it look like the rectangle has a stroke. If we want to hide this, we can click this button up here to open the document properties dialog. Then, in the Display tab, we can uncheck border down here. Okay, we can go ahead and close this out now. This rectangle is going to be for the sky. The whole bottom two-thirds or so is going to be covered up by things like mountains and the ground. So we really only have to worry about what it looks like in this top area. We're going to make it look like the sun is setting behind the mountains. We want to have it start out orange in here and become more and more blue as it moves out. We also want it to be rounded. This means that our best option is a radial gradient. So let's select the rectangle again and in the fill and stroke dialog. let's click this button to give it a radial gradient fill. Okay, let's first work on the position. We can switch to the gradient tool by pressing the G key, then select the center stop, hold Ctrl and move it up some. Now let's grab this stop at the top, hold Ctrl and drag it down. Then let's hold Ctrl and drag out the right stop some. Alright, for the colors, let's first raise the alpha channel of this stop all the way up. And let's make it a desaturated cyan. Then select the center stop and make it an orange. We can adjust it all again later if necessary. Okay, now let's work on the mountains. For this, we'll use the pen tool, which we can get to by pressing the B key. When we draw the mountains, we only want to use straight line segments, without curves. Sometimes, however, it's easy to accidentally click and drag with the pen tool, creating curves. Fortunately, if we look up at the controls bar for the pen tool, we have these five different modes we can choose from. And the fourth one here makes it so we can only create line segments. The default, which you've been using, lets us create line segments and curve segments. I recommend trying all of these out when you get a chance, and we'll actually be going over the second one here when we draw the fire later in the lesson. Anyway, with the straight line segment mode chosen, let's start creating some mountains. For the first layer of mountains, I'll start out here and create some jagged lines like this. After clicking outside the border over here, we can bring it down around the bottom and back to the first point. And don't worry, we'll be cutting off the excess later. Okay, Let's turn off the stroke of this path. Then go back to the fill tab. We're actually going to give this a linear gradient. But first, let's give it a flat fill and make it a dark blue. Now let's give it a linear gradient. Okay, so we want the top of the mountains to be partially transparent so we can see the sky through them. So let's the gradient tool, grab the transparent stop at the right and bring it up here. Now let's grab the opaque stop, hold Ctrl and bring it down here. Alright, to cut off the excess parts of this path, let's go to the select tool with the S key, select the sky object and duplicate it with Ctrl D, Shift-click the mountain path and go to Path -> ntersection. Okay, now let's go back to the pen tool and create another layer of mountains on top of this one. Okay, Let's turn off the stroke, give it a flat fill for now, make it a bit darker, then let's give it a linear gradient and switch to the gradient tool. We won't be using transparency for this layer, so we can bring the first stop up here, then hold control and bring the other stop down here. For this one, let's raise the alpha channel all the way up and tweak the color. Okay, now we can go to the select tool, duplicate the sky, Shift-click the mountain path, and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. I'm going to hold Ctrl and bring this stop up some more. And the bottom one as well. Now I'll go to the node tool with the N key and adjust the nodes a bit. Let's create one more layer of mountains. Let's turn off the stroke, and for this one, we can just give it a flat, dark blue fill. Then let's duplicate the sky and do an Intersection with the mountain path. We can also add some clouds if we want. For this, let's first zoom in some, then we can switch to the circles and ellipses tool with the E key and create an ellipse in here. And let's make it white. Then let's create some more overlapping ellipses. We're going to be making the bottom of this cloud flat in a minute. Now, let's select all of these ellipses and turn them into a single path by going to Path -> Union. To make the bottom flat, we can go to the squares and rectangles tool and create a rectangle covering some of the bottom, switch to the select tool and select both objects and go to Path -> Difference. We can readjust the size and positioning if we want. Let's give it a linear gradient fill, switch to the gradient tool, move the opaque stop to the top, then hold Ctrl and move the transparent stop to the bottom. Then we can simply add duplicates of the cloud to other parts of the sky. I'll flip this one horizontally with the H key and adjust the sizing a bit. For this cloud, I'll press the lower one step button up here to put it behind the middle layer of mountains, but still in front of the bottom one. To cut off the excess parts of these clouds, we can duplicate the sky, Shift-click one of the clouds and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. Then do the same for the other cloud. Okay, the next thing we'll do is add a couple of layers of trees down here. If we go to the pen tool, in the control bar, we have this Shape setting which we can use to affect the shape of the paths the tool will create. The triangle in and triangle out options let us easily create triangular paths and is a great way to draw simple trees. To see how it works, we can choose triangle in, for example, click in here, hold Ctrl and click up here, then right-click to finish the path. As you can see, this creates a triangular shaped path with the base at the first node and the tip at the last node. And the cool thing about this is we can change the width of the triangle either with the scale setting up here, or by switching to the node tool and dragging this pink handle. We can actually create a diamond shape with this as well. We can also still move the nodes around. Let's undo the moving, then let's hold Ctrl and move this top node down some. To be able to modify this further, we need to turn it into a normal path by going to Path -> Object to Path. We can hold Ctrl and drag this bottom center node up some. This will be for the top part of a tree. Let's now go back to the pen tool and create another one of these by clicking down here, holding Ctrl and clicking up here. Let's go to the node tool by pressing the N key, and let's increase the width. I'll hold Ctrl and bring this node up some as well. Let's turn it into a normal path with the shortcut Shift Ctrl C, hold Ctrl and bring up the bottom center node. Let's go back to the pen tool and create one more. Let's make it wider. But this time we'll leave it triangular. Now we have a simple tree shape. Let's now select all of these parts, then open the Align and Distribute dialog with this button up here, and let's align these vertically. Then we can turn them into a single path by going to Path -> Union. And let's make it a dark blue. And by the way, we can use this Shape setting for paths with more than two nodes, as well as with curves. Just to demonstrate, I can switch to the pen tool, put the mode back on bezier, and create a path with some curves over here, and it will also give it a triangular shape. Okay, back on the poster, let's move this tree over here, duplicate it with Ctrl D, hold Ctrl and move it to the right some. We can adjust the size of this one. Let's create some more all the way across the poster. Next, we'll create an even darker layer of trees in front of this layer. So first, let's duplicate this first tree again and make it darker. Then reposition and resize it and create more duplicates across the poster. Now we want to select all the trees in the front and turn them into a single path. Because we don't have any other objects on our canvas that match the fill color of the trees, an easy way to select them all is to right-click one, then go to Select Same -> Fill Color. Now we can turn this into a single path by going to Path -> Union. Let's cut off the excess by duplicating either the sky object or one of the mountain objects, then Shift-clicking the tree path and doing an Intersection with Ctrl *. Let's do the same for the trees in the back. Right-click one, go to Select Same -> Fill Color. Do a Union with the shortcut Ctrl +, duplicate one of the big paths, Shift-click the tree path and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. I'm going to select both of the tree paths, hold Ctrl, and move them up a bit. Okay, we're finally finished with the background, so now let's work on the foreground. 3. Camping Poster: Part 2: Before we begin working on the foreground, we want to be able to lock all the objects in the background so that we don't accidentally change or move them around. This is where layers come in. Layers allow us to keep certain objects, such as foreground and background elements, separate from each other. And they also allow us to lock or hide many objects at once. If we look down here in the status bar, we actually start out with one layer called Layer 1. And to easily add and work with multiple layers, we can open the layers and objects dialog either by going to Layer -> Layers and Objects or Object -> Layers and Objects. In the list here, we can see all the layers in our document. If we click this arrow to the left of a layer's name, we can see all of the objects in the layer. If we select one of the objects in the list, it also selects it on the canvas. Next to an object in the list, we have an eye icon here for hiding and showing the object and a lock icon for locking and unlocking it. If we lock an object, we won't be able to select or modify it. We have these icons for the layers as well, letting us hide and lock entire layers. Now we can't select anything in this layer, which is what we want. Another thing we can do in here is rename a layer by double-clicking its name and typing something else. Let's name this one Background. We can name the objects as well if we wanted, but it's not really necessary at the moment. Let's now add another layer for the foreground elements. To add a layer, we can click this button at the top with the + sign. Here we can give it a name such as Foreground, and choose where we want the layer to be positioned. We can either put it above the current layer, below the current layer, or make it a sub-layer of the current layer. Because we want all of the foreground objects to appear on top of the background objects, let's choose above current and click Add. And now in the list, we have a Foreground layer above the Background layer. And actually we can reposition layers and objects in this list by clicking and dragging them. Okay, for the foreground, we're also going to work with sublayers. Sublayers will allow us to keep certain parts of the main layers separate so that we're able to lock them. To add a sub layer to the foreground layer, let's click the Add button again, name this one Ground, choose as sublayer of current for the position, and click Add. Now if we click the arrow next to the foreground layer, we can see that we have a ground layer inside it. Let's select the ground layer. Let's create an object inside it for the ground. For this, Let's turn on snapping, then switch to the squares and rectangles tool, snap to the bottom left corner of the page, then drag over until it snaps to a point on the right side of the page and release. Now let's turn off snapping with % key, grab the rectangle's top-left scale handle, hold Ctrl and drag it up to above the base of the trees. Okay, for the color, Let's give it a linear gradient, switch to the gradient tool with the G key, and move the first stop to the top. We want the stop to not go past the border of the object, or else it won't blend in with the trees correctly. Okay, now let's grab the other stop, hold Ctrl and bring it to the bottom. We can use the color picker in the fill and stroke dialog to make this the color of the front-most layer of mountains. That should be good. Okay, now we're going to create a brighter, squiggly path in here, where we'll draw the camp site. For this, let's switch to the pen tool, make sure we're on Bezier mode, change shape back to none, and let's create a squiggly path on the ground. It doesn't really matter what it looks like. This is just to help make the camp site stand out more from the rest of the ground. Let's turn off the stroke, give it a flat fill color, and use the color picker to make it the color of the front- most mountains. Now we can select the main ground object, duplicate it, Shift-click the path we just created, and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. Next, we'll work on the camp site. Let's first go back to the layers and objects dialog, and let's lock the ground layer. Now let's select the foreground layer and create a new sub layer inside it. Let's call this one Campsite. And let's make sure we have it selected in the list. Alright, let's begin by creating the tent. For this, let's go to the pen tool and create a triangular path on bright part of the ground. Let's turn off the stroke and give it a bright orange fill. Now we can go to the node tool and adjust the nodes and curves a bit. I'll drag in both of the side segments some. Next, let's go to the select tool and duplicate this path, and let's bring it back here. Let's make this one a bit darker. Now we want to close this part between the paths. To do this, we can turn on snapping with the % key, go to the pen tool, snap to this cusp node, then to this one, click inside here, and snap to this cusp node, then this one, click in here and click the first point again. We can turn snapping back off, switch to the select tool, select these two paths and do a Union with Ctrl +. Let's press the pgdn key to move it below the front of the tent. I'm also going to switch to the node tool and adjust some things a bit. Let's also add an opening with a flap on the front of the tent. For the opening, let's turn on snapping, switch to the pen tool, snap to the cusp node at the top point here, and snap to the path down here, then over here, and we can snap to the line midpoint here if we want, then back to the first point. Let's turn off the stroke, and let's give this a really dark orange fill. We also want to cut a duplicate of this path out of the path behind it, so that it doesn't show through here at the bottom. To do this, we can switch to the select tool and duplicate this path, Shift- click the bottom path, and go to Path -> Difference. For the flap, we can switch back to the pen tool, snap to the top point again, then click in here, snap to this point, and back to the start. Let's turn off the stroke, and give it a bright orange fill. Let's turn off snapping, switch to the node tool, and drag this bottom segment up to give it a curve. We can also add a shadow here. For this, we can turn snapping back on, switch to the pen tool and create a triangular path connecting these two nodes, turn off the stroke, give it a flat fill, use the color picker to make it the darker orange of this side of the tent, then press the pgdn key to put it below the flap. Now we can turn off snapping again, switch to the select tool and select all of the tent parts, and let's group them together with Ctrl G. Okay, we're finished with the tent. So let's work on the fire now. If we go back to the pen tool, the second mode option we have up here is the spiral mode. With this mode, we can create super smooth curves by simply clicking points in the canvas. If we want to create a sharp point here, we can hold Shift before we click. Okay, let's undo this path and see how we can use this to draw fire. To begin, I'll click in here, then here, and I'll create a corner here by holding Shift and clicking, then click down here, then hold shift and click here, click up here, hold Shift and click here, and I'll basically continue doing this, normal clicking once, then shift clicking. When I get down here, I'll bring it back around to the first point and close it off. And the great thing about this is that we can go to the node tool and adjust the nodes and it will maintain the smooth curves. Okay, now let's go to the fill and stroke dialog and turn off the stroke. Then let's give it a flat fill for the moment and adjust the colors some. Let's give it a linear gradient, switch to the gradient tool with the G key, move the first stop to the top and the last stop to the bottom. Let's raise the alpha of this one all the way up and change the color slightly. Alright, now we can go back to the pen tool and create another layer for the fire. Let's start outside and below this one. We'll cut off the excess later. Let's turn off the stroke and give it a linear gradient, switch to the gradient tool, bring the first stop up here and make a yellowish, bring the other stop down here, raise the Alpha all the way up, and make it an orange. Let's go back to the pen tool and create one more layer. For this one, let's turn off the stroke, and let's just give it a white fill and lower the opacity a bit. Okay, to cut off the excess parts of these, we can switch to the select tool and duplicate the main path here, Shift-click one of the others and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. Then we can do the same for the other path. Alright, let's also turn the main fire path into a normal path by selecting it and going to Path -> Object to Path. This will prevent the curves from getting messed up if we move it around later. Now let's select them all and group them with Ctrl G. And we can resize and reposition it some. Let's now add some smoke coming out from the top of the fire. For this, let's go to the pen tool and switch back to Bezier mode. For shape, let's choose Ellipse. If we create a path with the Ellipse option, it will make the path elliptical. However, we might have to lower the scale setting up here in order for it to look right. Like with the triangle in and triangle out options, we can use the node tool for more accurate control over the width. Let's go back to the pen tool and create a few more of these. Let's now select all of these, turn them into normal paths with Shift Ctrl C, group them with Ctrl G, make them white, and lower the opacity some. I'll also readjust the size and positioning a bit. Now let's select the smoke group and the fire group and group the two together. Okay, next we'll add a couple of glow effects to the fire. For the first one, let's go to the circles and ellipses tool, hold Ctrl and create a circle covering the fire and the smoke. Let's give this a radial gradient, and add a blur to it with this blur slider down here. As you can see, this makes the fire look like it's glowing. Adding a blur to an object also increases the size of it, as we can see by the bounding box. Let's go to the select tool and click this button up here to move this object to the bottom. Then readjust it if necessary. Next, we'll add another glow effect to the ground under the fire. For this, we can create an ellipse at the bottom here. Let's give it a radial fill as well. Let's select the center stop and make it a yellow. Then let's select one of the other stops and make it an orange. We can go to the select tool and adjust the size if we want. Let's press pgdn to put it below the fire, but not below the large glow object. All right, to finish up the fire, let's add some wood down here. For this, I'll switch to the pen tool, put Shape back on None, and create some simple rectangular shapes. I'll turn off the stroke and give this a fill that's the same color as the ground down here. Then I'll create another one of these, turn off the stroke and make it the color of the front layer of mountains. Now I'll create a few more. Alright, let's select all of the pieces of wood and group them with Ctrl G, and press pgdn to put it below the fire. I'm going to readjust some things here a bit. Now let's select all of the fire objects, being sure to also get the large blurred object, and let's group them with Ctrl G. Okay, we're almost finished now. The last thing we have to do is add some text. First we want to create a new sub layer for the text. So let's go to the layers and objects dialog, select the foreground layer and click the Add button. Let's name this one Text, and with as sublayer of current chosen for the position, let's click Add. We can also go ahead and lock the campsite layer. The first text we will add is a curved title or slogan at the top of the poster. We learned in the previous lesson that we can curve text around a path using the put on path feature in the Text menu. Well, we can actually do this with shapes too. Let's go to the circles and ellipses tool, hold Ctrl and create a large circle up here. We can go ahead and raise the opacity all the way up. We're actually going to be stretching this out into an ellipse after we put the text on it, but we want to keep it a circle for now, or else it will make it difficult to center the text on it later. Now let's switch to the text tool, click in the canvas, and I'll type something cheesy like, let's go camping. For the font-family, we want to use something with thicker letters. And actually, another way to change certain features of a text object is with the text and font dialog, which we can open with this button up here. Here we can set the font family, font style, and font size. However, it doesn't actually change the text object straightaway. Instead, it shows a preview down here so we can decide if we want to use the chosen settings or not. For my text, I'll go with chunk five as the font family, but feel free to use whatever you want. And after checking the preview, I can click apply to apply the changes. And by the way, we can also change other features of the text object in here, as well as the text itself. And in order to center the text on the circle, we also need to change the alignment of the text up here to centered. Alright, now let's go to the select tool, hold Ctrl and scale up the text objects. Let's make it white. Next let's hold Shift and select the circle and go to Text -> Put on Path. Then we can select just the circle, click it again to get the rotation handles, hold Ctrl and rotate it until the text is at the top. Now we can click the circle again to get back to the scale handles, hold Shift and stretch it out. We can also move the ellipse and it'll move the text as well. And we can double-click the text object to switch to the text tool and change any of these settings if we want. I'm going to make the size bigger. The problem now is that the cloud under the text here blends in too much with the text. So I can go to the layers and objects dialog and unlock the background layer for the moment, then go to the select tool and select the cloud and lower its opacity some. I'll lower the opacity of this one a bit as well. That should work. We can select the ellipse and turn off its fill color temporarily in order to see everything better. Okay, I'll give the ellipse a fill color again and also lock the background layer again. Alright, when we have the text the way we want it, we can select it and turn it into a path by going to Path -> Object to Path. Now we're free to delete the ellipse. Now let's select the text again, and in the align distribute dialog, choose Page as the anchor, and let's align the text vertically with the page. All right, finally we'll add some information text at the bottom of the poster. For this, we'll use the flow into frame feature in the Text menu. With this feature, we can create a shape, then a text object with a lot of text, select both the text object and the shape and go to Text -> Flow into Frame, and it will use the shape as a frame for the text. If we resize the shape, the text will flow accordingly. Alright, so we can delete these, and let's create a rectangle at the bottom of the poster. I'll raise the opacity all the way up, and let's go ahead and align it vertically with the page. I'll also change the anchor back to last selected, for later lessons. Okay, for the text, we can type some real information if we want. But as this is just for demonstration purposes, all we need is some random placeholder text. And a great way to create placeholder text is with the Lorem Ipsum extension, which we can find by going to Extensions -> Text -> Lorem ipsum. Let's go ahead and check live preview here. What this does is it creates placeholder text with the number of paragraphs and sentences per paragraph chosen in here. And it uses a selected shape as the frame for the text. We're going to be making the text bigger later. So for the number of paragraphs, let's just go with one. And we can try adding a few more sentences. That should be good. Now we can click apply in here and close this out. Next, we can select the text and make it white, then go to the text tool and increase the size a bit. We can also set the alignment to justified to make the text flush with the sides of the rectangle. We can turn it into a path by going to Path -> Object to Path, and delete the rectangle. And that should do it for our camping poster. Thank you very much for joining me in this very long lesson, and I'll see you in the next one.