Hi everybody, I have just started using inkscape and am quite pleased.

I have searched the forum and site for examples of importing ink or pencil drawings and adding color using Inkscape...I have not found much.

I can do it without help, however, I wanted to see if anyone was proficient in this regard or could lead me in the direction of some examples i might have missed.

Thanks for your help!

Hi FM-Draw,

There are a few tutorials around, I personally like this one:
Illustrating Chinese Dragon

And perhaps this forum post will give you some ideas too: http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=534

Hope this helps,
Syllie

Hey there, FM-draw. (is there an AM-draw by any chance, lol?) ^^

In addition to the above excellent material, I'd like to offer a few questions....

How would you like to approach coloring sketched drawings in Inkscape? Are you aiming for photorealism or cel-shading? Are you a tablet or mouse user? Do you favor rich or spartan detail? Can you take as long as you want, or are you on a time budget with your illustrations?

When you're working with scanned drawings, you're basically mixing an inherently raster-like medium into a vector environment, so how you want (or need) to work on it from that point largely depends on the answers to the above.

People who trust their hand-inking more may prefer to simply do a trace bitmap, and then create colored paths using the Fill Tool on a layer underneath.

Others who favor the exactness and editability of the medium may simply do a quick sketch, and then ink it in Inkscape using the Calligraphy tool .

And others who need to draw this quickly, or are interested in using this for animation or other specific tasks where cel-shading rather than variable lineart is ideal, may want to trace the image using vector tools such as or . Course this also opens the door to doing the entire image from sketch-to-finish in Inkscape, but that's a topic for another day. ^^

In any event, glad you are enjoying Inkscape and hope it will help you with many projects to come.

ThanK you both for your help! No Am-Draw as far as I know....Fm is from my musical identity Tarek-FM!! Anyways.....I am a naturally gifted drawer, however, I have never really inked one of my projects before....I love anime and comic style art primarily, so I guess we are talking cel-shading?

I use a mouse, however, maybe it might be a good idea to get a tablet as I am used to drawing with pencils?? Definitely rich detail and no time constaints(maybe this is one of my problems!;))

lolol, well as long as there's no Xm-Draw, he'd be pretty expensive.

Excellent -- I actually do Anime art myself. However, it is strictly "Anime" as in....

http://o-tak-u.today.com/files/2009/07/ ... 6_1280.jpg

...which is beautifully suited to vector, not manga such as....

http://contenidos.terra.com.pe/wordpres ... bato11.jpg

Which is not impossible to do in Inkscape, but certainly impractical. Just like it takes more effort to make a raster-drawing looking vectorized, it takes more effort getting a vector drawing look rasterized, and based on a cost-ben it's better to pick the right tool for the job then wrestle with the wrong one.

Unless you like the challenge (e.g., making complex drawings with a typewriter), in which case more power to you. ^^b

But getting back to you,...

If you're definitely an excellent hand-drawer, but are very interested in diving into Inkscape more than just using it as a fancy "colorer", then my recommendation is to make use of the Calligraphy tool . It'll do your hand-drawing talents the most justice, and you'll get gorgeous lines with relatively low node count and still fairly editable (the fact that you can undo helps a lot). And because your hand is in control, there's also more room for some awesomely rich detail (although a mouse and a little CTRL+D action can get some impressive results done too). ^.^

Like with GIMP or Photoshop, just make sure to keep your lines in a top layer, and your colors in the bottom -- the Fill tool will help with coloring, but for more precise work you might find the and tools more to your liking (just be sure to disable their Strokes).

Any questions, ya know where to post.
Good-u luck-u~! ^__^b

Cheers, great response thanks......this is my first time using a drawing program so unfamiliar with layering.

I have noticed there is layering function within Inkscape, I would assume this is what you mean......

Top layer the inking portion then use use layer function to color in a second layer beneath?

My first experiments in inkscape have had little to do with old fashioned drawing actually, using its other many capabilties actually....the goal is to know how to use the vector graphics engine, supplemented by my drawing skills.

I am also into drawing cars, spaceships, etc....so maybe then I will take a journey into photorealism