I curved each of those segments to form the outline of Dilbert’s hair. This broke up the top segment into several smaller segments. I then selected the top line segment and clicked the ‘+’ toolbar icon several times to add several new nodes to the segment. The bottom line segment was moved at the centre to make it curved. This enabled me to tweak the four line segments of the quadrilateral. Then, I selected the created shape (the quadrilateral) and chose the Nodes tool from the toolbar (Figure 4). Do not drag your mouse on the page, as it will create a curved line. To draw straight lines, use click-move-click sequences. First, I drew a quadrilateral shape, roughly resembling Dilbert’s head with the Pencil tool. Figure 3: Dilbert caricatures are a combination of simple lines Figure 4: The Nodes tool lets you tweak shapesįigure 3 shows the various stages of my rendering of Dilbert. What this means is that you can start drawing cartoons and caricatures with just your mouse! Yes, Inkscape lets you do that.

If you were to follow Scott Adam’s (Dilbert’s creator) production technique, then your Inkscape work would be much easier. The caricatures are a combination of simple lines twisted here and there, minimal shading and that is about it. If you observe carefully, Dilbert cartoons are extremely simple. Later, when reading a book on Dilbert cartoons, I realised that it need not be so difficult. (I believe this image depicts a more anatomically accurate shark than Sharko!)īut the task was still pretty laborious. I now have a small ‘clip art’ library with images like what’s shown in Figure 2. Lately, I have been watching some cartoons and this made me get back to working on Inkscape. Figure 1: A custom desktop icon created using Inkscape Figure 2: An anatomically accurate shark caricature created using Inkscape I created some custom desktop icons like the one shown in Figure 1 and forgot about it.

I had tried Inkscape in the past and concluded that it was powerful but difficult. Many open source artists work only with GIMP, being unaware of Inkscape.

Mirror drawing inkscape