The Book of Inkscape, 2nd Edition

25Tutorial: The Rose

The complex image of a rose (see Figure 17 in the color insert) was created to showcase Inkscape's versatility. A single drawing of a rose—traced from a photo—is rendered in a different way in each of the six square windows as well as in the background. A single tutorial showing the stages of creating this image is like seven different tutorials on ways to draw a rose—or anything else, for that matter.

I started with a photo, but if you can draw well, you don’t need to do that. Just draw whatever you like on an empty canvas. Tracing a photo, however, is a useful technique by itself.

Go to File ▶ Import (or press Ctrl-I) to import the photo, and scale and position it as convenient. Rename the layer with the image to background ...