The Book of Inkscape

22.1 The First Sketch

Let’s start by switching to the Calligraphic pen tool and setting a Width of 0.05 and a Thinning of 0.2 in the tool’s controls bar (14.3 The Calligraphic Pen Tool). If you have a graphics tablet, enable the pen pressure for varying the stroke width (14.3.1.1 Pressure Sensitivity). The Angle and Fixation parameters only make sense for calligraphy, not freehand drawing, so we’ll set the Fixation to 0, which effectively turns a fixed-angle pen into a round brush that has no orientation (14.3.2 Angle).

I’ve never drawn a horse before, and my first several strokes make this brutally obvious. With a beginning like this, I think many would be tempted, as I was, to give up right then and there. But patience and hard work pay off, ...