i'm rick johansen and this is the iron
echo design
channel today we're going to do an
inkscape tutorial specifically we're
going to make some
skyline watercolor wall art and this
idea actually came from a comment
on the world map black watercolor video
we did
and it's from stefania who says amazing
video is it possible to do a cityscape
wall art using the same method so thanks
and yes
that's what we'll do today here's some
examples i did earlier here's paris
and then i did london but it came out a
little too dark like haunted for this
tutorial so
today we're going to do dubai and i'm
going to show you how to actually
extract
the skyline from a source image and then
how to act how to put on the um the
watercolor effect
so to start you can choose any city you
want i'm going to do
dubai and the source image came from
pexels so it's pexels.com
i typed in skyline and you get all these
choices here this would be an easy one
but i'll show you how to actually
extract
any skyline you want and if you want
this exact file i'll put the
link will be in the description how to
get this this file and i also want to
give
credit to the photographer alexander
pasaric
appreciate it this is perfect for our
purposes it's
free to use without with the open source
license we'll do download it and then
i'll just drag it on to the desktop and
back in inkscape i can then drag it from
the desktop onto the workspace
from my import type embed and then dpi
from file then ok
and in this case it's under five
megabytes so i'll just bring it in as it
where is the other burj khalifa there it
is uh what i was saying is if you have a
large source file you might want to
resize it before you bring it into
inkscape
because when inkscape does pretty much
anything it sometimes crashes
so i'm going to manually resize it by
holding shift
and control inside of inkscape and just
bring it down
with the same proportions because the
next step i need to do
to make sure i can get a good silhouette
i have to change the lighting a little
bit
so in this case i have it selected i'll
go up into filters
color lighting and then here is some
sliders here now i have it preset for
this image
but when you push live preview it'll
probably
look like a mess and then just move
these sliders until it looks something
like this does not be perfect just so
you can actually get the dark
that we're going to extract push apply
and then close
now it's time to turn this image from a
jpeg into a vector so there's a tool to
do that
so as long as it's selected go up into
path
and then do trace bitmap and that'll
bring up this menu here
i have a tutorial on tracebitmap if you
want to go through that but in this case
just make sure on single scan choose
brightness cut off
and then the default if you push update
like that's not what we want we want it
to be just a silhouette so for
brightness threshold
point two zero update
and then this is just like a preview of
the render push okay
that's actually like the science part of
it so i can pull this vector out
and now it's time for the art so if i
zoom in
um it's okay over here we're just going
to use this portion here but for the art
part
i'm going to go with the gradient and
let me show you a basic gradient first
so choose this one here the square
create rectangles and squares and just
draw a rectangle if you have a stroke on
it let's say there was already a stroke
just
x out of the stroke make sure you're on
fill and then no matter what color you
start with this thing right here this is
the gradient linear gradient so click on
that
this lets you control this bar if you
don't see the bar push this little
pencil thing for the edit the gradient
if you click on the square you can
choose what color you want that side to
be so let's say you want to be purple or
blue
or something i want to be like like a
darker blue here so we'll try like that
but just for the example
right right there is good this is going
to over here this side if you click on
this
it's showing zero opacity so it's it's
fading out to nothing
but i don't want it to do that i wanted
to fade into a different color so i'll
click on the circle
i'll get the opacity up and then you can
choose a different color
so that's just a basic gradient i want
to show you that first
oh also you can also change the
direction so in our case we're going to
have it be dark on the bottom
then light on the top you can kind of
it's it's pretty cool that's the basic
gradient but now i need to draw one from
scratch
because what we're going to do is this
gradient is going to go here and then
it's going to stamp out the portion we
want
and become that color but i don't want
it to have a flat bottom
because of the watercolor effect i want
to look like flowing and natural so
let's use the same principles of making
a gradient but we'll draw
the shape ourselves so the bezier tool
here
i'm just going to draw pretty much a
rectangle with the jagged bottom hold
ctrl so i can draw straight lines
up over down i'm just making up the
jagged bottom
just so i can have some variation and it
turned green
that's okay so i'll take this i'm going
to lower it so the hierarchy is down to
the bottom
about where i want it actually let's
make it so i can see through it
and put it back on top so i know what
i'm going to take apart all right
so that's the shape so all i'm doing is
i'm creating what do i want
to take out of this silhouette here and
now i can make it the correct gradient
that i want to use so i'm going to go
with the blue
motif i'll take the opacity back to full
i go to linear gradient it's the wrong
direction wrong color so choose the
pencil this line lets you control it so
i'll put the bottom here
and i'll go to like a dark blue we were
hoping for somewhere right about there
and then i'll move my circle
see how that works you can really
manipulate it's pretty cool
i'll have it here in the middle
somewhere and i'll make that like a
light blue
or like a teal or something you know
pasty has to come up we can modify it
further later
click off of that to show you again
what's happening i'm going to now stamp
out the part of the silhouette with this
like gradient thing we made a little
more tweaking here
bring it up and right there let's go
with that okay so to actually stamp it
out
you need to have the silhouette on top
so click on the silhouette
and bring that to the top hierarchy and
then
select both of them so hold shift and
then click your gradient
and then go to object clip set
let's zoom in and see what we got all
right so you know the jagged bottom
looks bad now but don't worry it's part
part of the effect that's what we needed
look at this construction crane in there
if this was for a serious project i'd
probably
edit out some of these construction
cranes i wonder when this was taken here
all right remember i said we can further
modify the gradient let's do that here
so i'll go
it's selected already i'll go back to
this pencil thing
and here's my gradient again before i
drop look at that
before i drop the watercolor effect in i
want it to look like
some variation of color so that's kind
of nice right there
let's uh let's tr let's try that now
inkscape has some good filters on this
so
while it's all selected i'm going to go
up to filters and then i'll go to
texture and down here you can play with
these but the one for today
is watercolor now i have it preset so
let me let me do the effect and then
i'll show you the preset
so watercolor
[Laughter]
but it's not done that's just like to
get the actual the the request from the
comment how do we get the watercolor
effect on a silhouette
but let's just break this down so you
want to go back to filter
filter editor gaussian blur i have it
set to 15.
turbulence .025 type is fractal noise
octaves 5 and then seed 27
the c just changes like the variables so
you can play
you can play with all these but if you
want to look like this then
i'm just going to complete the um the
setting so composite make sure it's on
over and color matrix don't touch any of
that
and then displacement map is 45 but
watch what happens if you move it around
it's like literally changing your
watercolor so
i might go a little darker there i think
it looks good like that now there's even
more settings you can go through but
those are the basics if you want to get
this type of effect
and just to show you that it you can
change it as whatever you please if i go
back to the very first one the top
gaussian blur for standard deviation i
thought 15 looks good
but if you go back to lower the
deviation you can see the cutouts being
made
but in the end i think i'll just keep it
actually that looks kind of cool like
that let's just go forward with this
right there i just noticed we had lost
the top of the spire so off camera i
just drew it in i literally did bezier
pen
just drew one line up and then a little
tiny line at the top so just little
details
all right so now that we have our
watercolor i want to add kind of like
the
the bleeding out waters at the bottom so
there's a lot of different ways you
could do it the an easy way just to show
you the concept is i'm just going to
grab a shape so it's on pentagon just
randomly
and then just draw out a pentagon if
you're on fill and stroke
make sure you have the stroke off and
then fill i'm going to make it the color
that it's closest to
so it blends in so i'll do eyedropper
and i'll choose this blue right there
opacity is not full i want full opacity
it's right there
and then the same thing so it's selected
you go to filter
textures watercolor and this is where
you might want to play with them more so
on this one
on blur see how it's like there's my
pentagon i'm just dragging the slider on
the blur
and then when i feel like it looks good
i'll stop so
i think that looks good right there and
you can kind of move it where you need
to go
maybe make that smaller interestingly
enough watch this if you go
to back to the shape these now i can
manipulate
the actual way the watercolor looks it
lets me
i can just say oh i spilt it everywhere
or you can keep it under control
that's actually way too big so let's
just minimize that a small amount and
i'll show you you can do different ways
too you can take your bezier pen and
then draw like on this side maybe i want
to be
more faded just randomly draw something
like that
i'll change the color opacity is full to
this
lighter color opacity went away because
it adopted that so i'll go back to full
opacity and then just do the same thing
so go to filter texture
watercolor that's i like that a lot
maybe we can double up that so
since that looks so good i don't want to
mess with it because when you move it it
changes the look of the watercolor
i'm going to duplicate it ctrl d and
make it darker that way
so we'll change the blur to darker
like that i'm gonna i'm gonna do the
magic editing i'm gonna finish up the
bottom and then come back and then just
add a little bit of a sky there
okay and we're back so all i did is i
just added some more i changed the color
here i tried to make it
match the area it was next to to add a
very subtle sky i'm gonna grab the
circle
and then i'll just make a circle let's
change the color to
like some type of orange yellow let's do
it over here so we can see what's
happening
i'll go to filter textures and then
watercolor again
let's go even lighter real light like
almost like it's um
it's a hint of the sun itself i want it
to look like the tower
so tall like it's above like the cloud
or the sun just like
reaching up there okay so if you like
this horizontal way then you're good to
go but i'm going to finish it with the
vertical that we had in the example
and to do that we first have to select
all the different elements here so i'm
going to zoom out
and then the watercolor effect kind of
reaches further than you think
so hold shift way out no man's land and
try to grab
everything like that and then i can tell
i've got my clipping box too so to un
click that do shift and then click on
that all these different elements are
together control
g will group them now i can bring the
clipping box in
and then we'll do we'll change the
opacity so we can see where we're going
and we'll put it right about there looks
good opacity goes back up
then this is selected hit shift select
your watercolor
and then to make it stamp out go to
object
clip set and there you go so there's the
vertical version
and then let's just slap a virtual frame
on it
and we are good to go so there is dubai
inkscape takes us around the world and
uh thanks a lot for your comments if
there's anything you want to try or if
you have questions just let me know
and uh yeah have fun with it and see ya