That's a nice workaround! Thanks!

Thanks for your replies! I finally figured out what the problem was. Namely, once I drew the shape and filled it, I just Copy-Pasted it (Control-C, Control-V). For some reason, it included the white background (which is supposedly actually transparent). In order to avoid that, I discovered that you ...

I have created a path, then filled it. The background (area between the filled path and the rectangular bounding box) is white. How do I set it to be transparent? I tried setting the clipping path, but it didn't work. The attached image has two layers with the same object.

How do I change the background (canvas) so it shows up with the traditional checkerboard pattern denoting the fact that it is transparent? It's quite confusing that the default canvas is displayed as white, when in fact it is transparent. Thanks for your help!