• Introduction
• Manual has moved!
• Why use Inkscape?
• Professional Software
• About this Book
• Installing Inkscape
• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Gnu/Linux
• Getting Around in Inkscape
• Interface
• Managing the Workspace
• Drawing with Geometrical Shapes
• Ways of Drawing with Inkscape
• Shape Tools
• The Selector Tool
• Squares and Rectangles
• Circles, Ellipses and Arcs
• Stars and Polygons
• Spirals
• 3D-Boxes
• Freehand Drawing
• Freehand Drawing
• The Pencil Tool
• The Pen Tool
• The Calligraphy Tool
• Boolean Operations
• About Nodes
• Editing Paths
• Stacking Order
• Align and Distribute
• The Node Tool
• Tracing an Image
• The Tweak Tool
• Color
• Colors
• The Color Palette
• The Fill And Stroke Dialog
• Custom Colors
• Copying a Color
• Creating Gradients
• Creating a Mesh Gradient
• Using Patterns
• Modifying Patterns
• Creating Custom Patterns
• Strokes
• Markers
• Ordering Markers, Stroke and Fill
• Customizing Markers
• Text
• Text
• Writing Text
• Styling Text
• Changing Text Color
• Moving and Rotating Letters
• Putting Text on a Path
• Flowing Text into a Frame
• Creating Custom Fonts
• Advanced Techniques
• Beyond the Basics
• Saving Your Work
• Exporting a PDF File
• Exporting a PNG File
• Exporting to other File Formats
• Importing Pictures into a Document
• Importing other File Formats
• Copying and Duplicating Objects
• Cloning Objects
• Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts
• Clipping and Masking
• Filters
• Extensions
• Live Path Effects
• Where to Go from Here
• Test Chapter (for trying out styling)

Shape Tools

Geometric shapes, despite their simple look, are useful for many drawing techniques (and not only vector drawing). With path operations (Union, Difference, etc…), you can quickly get awesome results from some elementary shapes. You can even further improve that with path tools. Both path operations and path tools are detailed in later sections.

Let's draw some geometric shapes. All the shape tools follow similar rules to let you create and edit your shapes. But each tool has specific options: for example, a circle can become a pie wedge, or a rectangle can have its corners rounded.

To create a geometric shape:

• enable the relevant tool from the toolbar (by clicking on it);
• press the mouse button and hold, while you drag the mouse;
• release the mouse button to display the shape.

Click and drag to create a shape.

Once the mouse is released and the shape is displayed, various handles will become visible. Many, if not all of Inkscape's tools use handles, for one purpose or another. But it's the handles of the geometric shapes which are used for creating many fancy and exciting effects. The handles may be tiny circles, squares and/or diamonds. Sometimes, the same handles can be available for different tools. We will learn more about each handle's function in the following chapters.

Primitive shapes provide handles as squares, circles or diamonds.

Many features of Inkscape are accessible through keyboard shortcuts, and sometimes only through key shortcuts. While drawing your shape:

• press the Ctrl key while you drag the mouse, with the Rectangle and Ellipse tools, to create squares and circles;
• press the Shift key while you drag to draw from the center, rather than from one corner.

Try drawing some shapes, with and without those keys to get an idea of how they can be used.

Sketching a cloud from ellipses.