Hi, I'm Star and Moon and I'm new on this forum, but I have been using Inkscape for a while now, and one of the first tools I figured out how to use was the . And instead of using the other tools for drawing, I used the calligraphy tool, and I still use it to draw, because I hate the mouse, and the pen mass makes drawing with the mouse possible.

For the best results, turn the fixation down to zero, and the caps to 1 (but it looks fine without the caps), so it will look like a normal drawing tool. Use this to draw the outline of your drawing, for example, a shape similar to Sonic the Hedgehog's head. Fill it in with any choice color using the (don't forget to set the Grow/Shrink up to 0.50):
http://i.imgur.com/AZK5Q.png
For cartoon style shading, select several colors lighter and darker than the base color you already used, then turn the pen mass down to one and the mass up (if you haven't already) and draw guide lines for the shading, it doesn't matter if they go off the drawing, we'll be erasing them anyway:
http://i.imgur.com/SL7zD.png
Now fill them in with the (it also helps a lot if you turn the threshold down to zero) and erase the guide lines, it should end up looking something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/3gX5E.png
Now do any last tweaks you might need to do, and your done! (To erase things going over the border that shouldn't be, just copy the border, erase it then paste another one in the same place as the original.)
http://i.imgur.com/ZPqkL.png

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I like how you've simply drawn an open path, to define areas destined to contain different colors, and then used the Paint Bucket tool to create the closed path. However, using GIMP to fill in the gaps might not be necessary. The Paint Bucket control bar has a Grow/Shrink setting which you can use, depending on the size of the gaps. I find that 0.5 works pretty well, to fill most gaps, yet not go beyond the border. You still might need to tweak some nodes though, especially in very accute corners.

Also, I don't think this technique would work very well for screen printing. I mean the part where you suggested using the Calligraphy tool to fill in the gaps. Although you could select all the resulting paths (from Paint Bucket and Callig tool) and then do Path Union. That would work very well!

Nice technique

brynn wrote:
Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I like how you've simply drawn an open path, to define areas destined to contain different colors, and then used the Paint Bucket tool to create the closed path. However, using GIMP to fill in the gaps might not be necessary. The Paint Bucket control bar has a Grow/Shrink setting which you can use, depending on the size of the gaps. I find that 0.5 works pretty well, to fill most gaps, yet not go beyond the border. You still might need to tweak some nodes though, especially in very accute corners.

Also, I don't think this technique would work very well for screen printing. I mean the part where you suggested using the Calligraphy tool to fill in the gaps. Although you could select all the resulting paths (from Paint Bucket and Callig tool) and then do Path Union. That would work very well!

Nice technique

Ah good idea, I'm still pretty new to inkscape, and once I try out your easy technique: I'll update the post