The vector editor Inkscape is what some might call a best-kept-secret among open source projects — in part, because few people outside the graphic design community have any experience working with vector artwork; also, in part, because it’s so powerful that it can seem intimidating at first blush. Here are a collection of Inkscape resources you may find helpful in learning Inkscape and in expanding your skill set.

INFORMATIONAL RESOURCES

Documentation and manuals

The official Inkscape documentation is the place to start if you’re new to the program. The site links to official tutorials in more than twenty languages, and to the wiki-based reference for the app commands, tools, and features.

But don’t stop there! The FLOSSManuals book on Inkscape is another first-rate introduction to working with the toolbox, Inkscape’s paths, text, object manipulation, and effects.

Also a worthy starting point is Tavmjong Bah’s Inkscape: Guide to a Vector Drawing Program. Like the FLOSSManuals book, it takes a systematic approach to Inkscape’s features — including understanding how primitives like paths, objects, and bitmaps interact with each other. Both of these guides are completely free, and they are both works-in-progress that are updated regularly.

Finally, the Inkscape wiki has a special introductory section entitled Inkscape for Adobe Illustrator users that sheds light on the similarities, differences, and special features of Inkscape for people who know vector artwork but simply aren’t familiar with the tool.

Tutorials

While the links in the first section attempt to be comprehensive guides to using Inkscape, there is a lot more information contained in smaller, focused tutorials that walk through a particular editing task or effect.

Though you can search for tutorials with any Web search engine, the best place to start is probably The Inkscape Tutorials Blog, which publishes a regular feed of detailed tutorials, with step-by-step instructions. The publication schedule isn’t fixed, with most entries sourced from individuals’ blogs that you would otherwise have to hunt down on your own, but the archive contains a library of high-quality content.

Fedora Project artist Nicu Buculei also publishes a blog focused on tutorials, which you’ll find at howto.nicubunu.ro. Many of Buculei’s tutorials jump back and forth between Inkscape and other free software tools like GIMP, so you’ll want to look into those too, if you haven’t already.

Next, you should pay regular visits to the Tricks & Tutorials section on InkscapeForum.com, where readers post links to tutorials and write their own. As you might expect on a web forum, the discussion following the initial post on a particular tutorial thread is often as enlightening as the tutorial itself.

In addition to the list in the official documentation above, the Inkscape wiki has a Tutorials and Help page, which not only lists known tutorials in multiple languages, but contains a “tutorial ideas” section where people post topics they would like to see documented — and others often reply by posting a link to a completed tutorial.

Inkscape has grown in popularity enough that third-party tutorial link sites have started adding it as a category, and this is another good way to find new tutorial content. Tutorial-index.com and Pixel2Life both have dedicated Inkscape sections.

Last but certainly not least, it never hurts to do a blog search on the topic of Inkscape Tutorials — you’ll frequently discover individual posts where an author curates a list of high-quality tutorials, even if that isn’t the focus of the blog as a whole. For example, 35 Tutorials to create amazing Vector Graphics using Inkscape and 15 Fantastic Inkscape Tutorials for Creating Awesome Vector Art both come from general-purpose blogs.

Videos

A special mention is probably deserved for video tutorials, which can offer a very different approach to communicating how to implement a particular technique. Here, the clear leader is screencasters.heathenx.org — although, as with written tutorials, you can apply the same rules and find other excellent content at other sites, such as th3techies.com.

Blogs

In addition to dedicated tutorials, if you are serious about learning Inkscape there are a several well-written Inkscape blogs worth following. The list includes the blogs of several artists and authors whose work regularly appears in the tutorial and manual sections, such as Tavmjong Bah’s blog and Nicu Buculei’s blog. Also worth subscribing to are GrimeGraphics and the #Inkscapers group on DeviantArt.

You should also check out Planet Inkscape, which aggregates the blog feeds of more than a dozen Inkscape developers and artists — not only is it the best way to learn about new Inkscape features, but most of the developers are Inkscape users as well, so they frequently have creative content to share.

Finally, take a look at Libre Graphics World, an independent news site maintained by photographer Alexandre Prokoudine. LGW covers all aspects of open source graphics, including not just vector design but raster graphics, photography, 3-D, typography, and much more. But even if all you cared about was Inkscape, it is often the first place to read about Inkscape news, reviews of new releases, and interviews with developers.

Forums

Of course, nothing beats interactive discussion with other artists. For this, you need to go to InkscapeForum.com. On top of the tutorial board mentioned earlier, this is the place to be to ask questions, showcase artwork, get tips and help from other Inkscape users, and learn what’s new-and-upcoming in Inkscape development.

Another important discussion site to check out is the . Like the LGW news site, it is focused on more than just Inkscape alone, but it has a dedicated vector graphics discussion board for Inkscape and similar programs.

Brush resources
Aside from instructional resources like tutorials, another way to expand your Inkscape skills is by picking up new content and tools. In the Illustrator circles, for example, you’ll find a lot of discussion about sharing brushes. That’s because Illustrator supports using custom brush shapes, which users can copy and exchange with one another.

Inkscape does not use the same approach, but you can achieve many of the same results with Inkscape’s paths, tiled clones, and raster images. The Wikihow article Use Brushes in Inkscape explains the different techniques and shows examples of each.

A more in-depth explanation of Inkscape brush behavior can be found in Buculei’s Grungy Brush Tips and Tips for using brushes in Inkscape. This way you can turn any image — vector or raster-based — into an Inkscape brush.

TOOLS AND CONTENT RESOURCES

Color palette and swatch resources

Inkscape supports user-switchable color palettes (and is moving to support swatch books for gradients and other texture samples on a per-document basis). But you’re not limited to just those that ship with the Inkscape binary.

You can import palettes from other open source apps like GIMP. This post explains how, including how to find good GIMP palettes, and there is even a video demonstrating how it works.

You can also design color schemes with Agave and use them in Inkscape, or import them from other formats with SwatchBooker and save them for use in Inkscape.

There are even cool tricks you can employ like generating a color palette based on a raster image such as a photograph, then saving it locally.

Scripts, plugins, and extensions

Some of Inkscape’s most impressive features come from its extensibility with plugins and user-written scripts. The definitive guide to finding Inkscape extensions is the Extension repository on the project’s wiki. There is also an Extensions wiki category that occasionally catches other pages you will want to see. There are around fifty extensions currently listed.

Scripts are a little different than extensions; for one thing they are easier to write, and you can use common languages like Python to create your own. Here again the wiki has a guide to getting started, plus a detailed tutorial on using Python.

Often new Inkscape releases roll what used to be extensions into the official application as new effects, so you can find a lot of helpful tips on new extension in the Effects reference — which is also a great way to learn about the tons of different special effect functions Inkscape supports.

The Inkscape Resources section on InkscapeForum.com is another essential place to look for scripts and extensions. Forum readers regularly post new work that they themselves have created, plus link to scripts and extensions found elsewhere. For example, you can find a extension to export TIFF and PDF output in CMYK color spaces, and an extension that replaces fonts within an Inkscape document.

Art resources

Most of what we have talked about already is very Inkscape-centric, if not outright Inkscape-specific. But there are far more design resources out there for you than just those created for this application in particular.

For example, the Open Clip Art Library is an online community of user-created artwork — in most cases, the term “clip art” is a little misleading; we’re talking about high-quality designs and graphical elements, not icons. All of the content is free to use under public domain terms.

Likewise, the Open Font Library is a resource site for typography available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license; you can search for fonts to use in any of your projects without fear of running into licensing trouble.

But the “free culture” projects aren’t the only sites you’ll want to visit. Sites like Dezignus.com also focus on creating and sharing design elements like brushes, textures, backgrounds, and other vector artwork. Thanks to Inkscape’s ability to import almost any graphics format on the planet, you can be sure that these free resources are compatible.

The same goes for most of the rest of the free design resource sites on the Web today. Designer blogs and forums often post lists of new and popular art resources, like 14 Free vector art resource sites on TheGraphicMac — but guess what; none of them are Mac-specific. The same goes for most if not all of the sites in SpeckyBoy’s 49 Amazing Resources for Free Vector Graphics — you don’t just have to look at them for inspiration; you can download what you need.

SVG tutorials

Finally, Inkscape uses the W3C’s standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as its file format, so there are plenty of good SVG resources and tutorials. A good place to start is either W3School’s SVG Tutorial or SVGBasics.com. Both offer a good introduction to the format and what it can do.

You can also look for more specific tutorials, much like you would with Inkscape itself. LearnSVG.com has a broad selection, as do independent sites and bloggers. KenLinDev has an entire section, including working with SVG filters, and there are lots of good one-shot tutorials, such as Shelley Powers’ multi-part series on SVG in flexible design.

BY NATHAN WILLIS

The Open Clip Art Library has seen impressive growth in 2010. Month after month, artist registrations trend higher, rich new features make their way into the interface, and the Library’s collection adds a steady stream of new and remixed clip art (now at over 35,000 unique images). October’s release is as feature-packed and content-heavy as any that have come before it, and the Librarians are proudly presenting Open Clip Art Library 2.6, backing up a brand new version of it’s web platform, Aiki Framework 0.5.

Among the many enhancements Open Clip Art Library has received through this Release, cgbug’s enhancements to user profiles are instantly gratifying. Avatars make their triumphant return, as logged in users can now associate their Community alias with their most inspired creation that has been uploaded to OCAL! Along with avatars, the “Edit Profile” section (found within each logged in user’s “Profile” tab) allows artists to adjust personal information like: email, artist name, and homepage.

The User Profile Management is a great example of Community members beginning to take an active role in Open Clip Art Library’s development. Librarians continue to advocate Community involvement with a new Community Help section (appearing on the sidebar of many pages within the site) in which the 10 most requested features on OCAL’s Launchpad appear.

Alongside these excellent new elements, a brand new Halloween-themed Clip Art Package is out! This ghoul-tastic concoction celebrates the Holiday with 158 brand new themed creations from members of our Open Clip Art Library Community (including the graphic above, by netalloy). The images are available on a per-image basis, as well as in a single compressed file.

For more on OCAL’s latest as well as details about Aiki Framework, please visit the Official Release Announcement.

This Open Clip Art Library Release Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

It’s a new calendar month, and that means it’s once again time for The Open Clip Art Library to continue it’s mission of regular upgrades. September 2010 sees the Release of The Open Clip Art Library 2.5. This feature-rich upgrade continues along the path of it’s predecessors, but the latest key design implementations set this release apart.

The most up-front addition to the OCAL experience is also the most powerful of the 2.5 feature set. An Activities Box has been placed front-and-center for all site visitors to make use of. This new section is a key element to increased Community contributions, as users will find up-to-date links relating to the most recent goings on in The Open Clip Art Library domain. In this way, the Activities Section serves as a platform for Community projects and Contests to grow and prosper like never before!

In the weeks since it’s implementation, the statistics, alone, provide an exhibit A of sorts. Site registration is up 1,100 over the month prior, while last month also saw over 1,100 new image uploads (bringing the total to an unbelievable 34,160 – as of this writing).

One in every ten new clip art uploads went into this month’s coinciding clip art package, making this Fall 2010 Collection the most successful and content-heavy Package to date! All 120+ Community-created images can be downloaded in a single Zip. Users are also free to browse each themed collection, via their individual pages. Looking ahead, October will see the next Holiday Release, as Halloween 2010 takes over The Library. To be included in the package, artists will have until October 3 2010 to upload related work and tag it appropriately (using the key term halloween2010).

Keeping pace with OCAL, Bassel Safadi’s Aiki Framework updates to Version 0.4! This latest release includes features-a-plenty and several key bug fixes involving the SQL in the admin panel. The latest stable build can be acquired via the project official press release.

This Open Clip Art Library Release Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

Efforts to ramp up Community Involvement have become a driving force in the development of The Open Clip Art Library. Recent updates to the platform have begun implementing key features to the already robust 2.0 environment.

Most recently, a themed clip art package has begun it’s release, alongside each monthly iteration of OCAL. Past collections have included Seasonally appropriate themes including Spring 2010, Summer 2010, and Sports 2010.

Work for next month’s Open Clip Art Library Release is already underway, and the Librarians are once again asking for new additions to an already massive collection (currently tipping the scales at over 33,600). This latest theme, Fall 2010, is building towards an upcoming Holiday Release. As such, the Community is asked to do double-duty and begin uploading their original and remixed clip arts that are related to the Fall Season, as well as the Halloween Holiday, tagging each with their appropriate key words (“fall2010″ or “halloween2010″ respectively).

Submissions for the Fall 2010 Clip Art Package will be accepted through the month of August, while Halloween themed work will continue building through September. Any contributing artists should take note of the new Activities section that displays, front and center, on Open Clip Art Library’s home page. The links contained here will display the most recent and active contests or events taking place within the Community.

The Librarians look forward to the upcoming Fall 2010 Package and would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all of the exciting new activity at The Open Clip Art Library!

This Open Clip Art Library Package Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

The Open Clip Art Library has spent much of 2010 actively pursuing higher ground and greater methods of user contribution, beginning with the March Release of Version 2.0. Since that landmark release, the OCAL team has been on a regular iteration schedule, geared toward simplifying the user experience and fixing bugs.

More recent openclipart.org releases have begun adding incentives for content creation, in the form of themed package releases. To date, said releases have resulted in a wide array of content that forms a spectrum of seasonal work.

For the next release, scheduled on August 2nd, the Librarians are changing things up a bit, by calling for Sports-themed content from the Community. These new works will be included in the coming release and featured, as the latest downloadable package. Artists wishing to step up to the plate and contribute their original works are encouraged to register (if not already a member) and upload the SVG(s), tagging them with the keyword “sports2010“. Deadline for user submissions is Sunday, August 1st.

This Open Clip Art Library Package Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

The Open Clip Art Library enjoys yet another of it’s scheduled monthly updates, with revision 2.3. With over 32,000 vector graphics currently calling it home, OCAL has grown into one of the largest and most prevalent sources for freely available graphics on the web. Version 2.3 aims to begin building on this solid foundation, by increasing user interaction and content submissions.

The Spring 2010 Clip Art Package brought together a diverse group of artists and pointed them in a similar thematic direction. Over 11,900 individual downloads have proven the themed package format an effective way of presenting similarly-grouped work to the Community. As in the June Release, Open Clip Art 2.3 brings along with it, a compact, user-generated, themed package of clipart.

Familiar ground is tread, in the latest Themed Package Release, as Community artists, like laobc, rg1024, and pianoBrad have focused their attentions on the Summer Season. Summer2010 is packed with useful scenery elements, like rg1024′s beach ball (below),

along with the abstract, seasonal imagery of laobc’s “Sunshine in the Country” (the header for this article).

Any wishing to utilize this smoldering collection can do so individually (by searching for the key term or tag “summer2010″) or by downloading the entire package.

Also continuing this month is a logo design contest, initiated by the organizers of the Free Culture Research Conference. Artists still planning on submitting an entry should mark this Friday (July 9th) as the deadline for that submission. Three more judges, Jonathan Zittrain, Leonhard Dobusch, and Michelle Thorne, have been added to the esteemed panel that will judge and announce the winner on July 11.

For more information on all things related to this Summer 2010 Release, have a look at the official press release.

This Open Clip Art Library Release Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

The “Free Culture” Movement, instantiated in a 2004 publication by Creative Commons founding member Lawrence Lessig, is a reaction to content ownership in a digital age. Because The Open Clip Art Library is, at it’s core, a platform to freely share and collaborate created content, it will be forever intertwined with the Movement.

The Free Culture Research Conference was born of a need from academics, in various disciplines, to analyze and discuss the implications of the Free Culture Movement.

The FCRC Organizers are seeking to establish an identity for these annual Conferences, and they are asking for the help of the Open Clip Art Community!

From now, until the submission deadline of 11:59p on July 9th, The Open Clip Art Library will be accepting user-created and remixed entries, as a part of the Free Culture Research Conference Logo Design Contest.

Robert Martinez, the designer of The Open Clip Art Library’s awesome 2.0 logo, has generously offered up a unique design of his own (pictured above), that can serve as a starting point or a remix for any looking for inspiration, while designing for this contest!

The winning design will be announced on July 11th (Sunday). For additional details and more-specific examples, please have a look at the Open Clip Art Announcement Page, as well as the press release.

This release is unique to previous iterations, as members of the OCAL Community have begun contributing to a new Themed Clip Art Package. Each subsequent Open Clip Art Library Release will now include a batch of unique work, created by some of the Community’s amazing graphic artists!

This month’s package called for Spring flavored clip art, and our Community answered with some dynamic and elegant work that can be downloaded in it’s entirety or individually, using the key term spring2010.

As always, The Open Clip Art Library is reaching for higher ground with a new release targeted in one month. Any artists interested in contributing to a summer package release should register and upload their work tagged with “summer2010.” The Librarians send out a special thanks to all involved in this incredible Spring 2010 Release and look forward to the fun and creative new work underway for the next one!

For more information, please have a look at the official press release.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

Developers at The Open Clip Art Library have been diligently implementing updates to the latest 2.1 Release of the site. Contributions and discussion about OCAL’s next steps have been progressing rapidly through platforms like bug reporting and the official mailing list. As preparations for the next iteration begin, the Librarians would like to announce the addition of a new element to upcoming and future releases, in the form of a coinciding themed package release!

The package will consist of images created by artists and developers of The Open Clip Art Library. Each collection of work will be centered around aspects of life relating to the current month or season of the year.

For this initial release, new submissions relating to the Spring Season will be included. In order to produce a stunning collection of vector images, users are encouraged to upload appropriately themed work to the site in the coming weeks.

Librarians at the Open Clip Art Library have set a goal of May 27th for the release of the Spring-themed clip art package, in honor of the 2010 Libre Graphics Meeting, in Brussels.

The Librarians hope to further encourage user contributions and collaborations with this exciting new aspect to The Open Clip Art Rlease Schedule. Everyone wishing to contribute can do so by registering, joining the mailing list, and uploading artwork!

March 2010 saw the beginning of a new era in the history of The Open Clip Art Library, with the release of version 2.0. With key revisions to the way people use and interact with the art on the site, user registration and site contributions have grown exponentially!

The continued success of this project is vitally important to the open source community, so the Librarians are pleased to announce the release of Version 2.1 of The Open Clip Art Library! The press release notes some of the improvements included in this new iteration:

As of this 2.1 release, great new features are now a part of OCAL, including the ability to delete user-uploaded images (allowing for updates to existing work without duplicates), recovery options for lost or forgotten passwords, the ability to upload multiple files simultaneously, and support for additional archival formats!

The sudden surge in new visitors and registered users has ignited a flood of new content for The Open Clip Art library. April, alone, has seen the addition of over 3,000 images to the already robust collection of clip art graphics!

Of this new content, gradients continue their design dominance in vector imagery with rg1024′s inspired Red Barn Landscape (pictured above). Since it’s mid-March upload, the scene has garnered a stellar 180+ downloads!

A new OCAL member, Antoine, has pulled through with 33 initial uploads! Many involved series of clip arts that shared visual relationships, revealing a common practice as individual user contributions begin to increase by volumes.

Realistic clip art remains ever popular, as remi_inconnu demonstrates in this spectacular rendering of a wood-grained hourglass. Over 50 downloads last month can’t be wrong!

The librarians at The Open Clip Art Library would like to extend their gratitude to all of the artists and users of OCAL. If you would like to take version 2.1 for a test drive, please do so by registering a new user account and uploading content of your own!