The Camera - Drawing and Coloring Shapes

Let’s start off with one of the most influential inventions of the 19th century — a camera. Cameras come in all shapes and sizes, and nowadays are included in most cellphones as a medium to capture specific moments. What we’ll be recreating is an impression of a point-and-click camera commonly used in the 2000s.

The steps we’ll take are:

  • Launch Inkscape.

  • Set up the interface.

  • Set up a grid to guide drawing objects.

  • Draw the camera body.

  • Draw the camera lens.

  • Set the colors of the shapes.

  • Save and export the drawing.

It is assumed that you already know how to launch Inkscape and use a pointing device such as a mouse or trackpad to select items and move scroll bars.

Set up the Canvas

First we’ll set up the canvas to minimize the obstacles we’ll face later when drawing.

Set up the Document

  1. Open the Document Properties dialog by doing one of the following:

    • Go to File ‣ Document Properties….

    • Press the shortcut CtrlCmdShiftD.

  2. Change the Format unit dropdown to px. (#1)

  3. Change the Width to 720 and Height to 460. (#2)

  4. Change the Display units to px. (#3)

  5. Change the Scale to 1. (#4)

After doing all the changes, your Document Properties dialog should look like the following screenshot.

Enable the Grid

Enable the default grid by pressing the shortcut Shift3 (or #). Your canvas should now show a blue grid.

The default grid is a 1px by 1px rectangular grid that has major grid lines every 5 lines. As you zoom in and out of the canvas by CtrlCmdScroll-ing or two-finger pinching on a trackpad, you will find out that grid lines appear and disappear according to the zoom level, to not overwhelm the canvas with grid lines.

You can toggle the grid by pressing Shift3, or adjust the grid by going to the Grid tab in the Document Properties.

Note

If you have downloaded and opened the example file, the steps above has been done for you; however we encourage you to try it on a newly-created file to get acquainted with the process.

Reset the Zoom Level

There are two ways to reset the zoom level:

  • Select the Z number field at the bottom right of the window, enter 100 and press EnterReturn.

  • Press the shortcut key 1.

The canvas setup is now done; let’s start drawing some shapes!

Draw Initial Shapes

In order to faithfully recreate the camera, we are going to enable snapping to help create the shapes aligned on the grid.

To enable snapping, do one of the following:

  • Click on the snap toggle at the top right of the window.

  • Press the shortcut Shift5.

Draw the First Rectangle

  1. Switch to the Rectangle tool by either:

    • Selecting the Rectangle tool in the Toolbox (the set of buttons that run along the left side of the window).

    • Pressing the shortcut R.

  2. Start from the top left of the page, and count 4 grid lines to the right, 5 grid lines down. This would be the start point.

  3. From the bottom right of the page, count 4 grid lines up and 4 left. This would be the end point.

  4. Hold down the left mouse button and Drag from the start point to the end point.

  5. Release the mouse button.

If everything went well, you will now see a rectangle on the page. If this is a new install, the rectangle willl be black.

Style the Rectangle

Before drawing more rectangles, let’s first style the rectangle. We are going to color the rectangle with colors from the palette. The palette is the strip of rectangular color swatches near the bottom of the window.

  1. Select the rectangle by clicking on it.

  2. Click on the white swatch in the palette. The rectangle will become white.

  3. ShiftClick (hold Shift and click) on the black swatch. The rectangle now has a black stroke surrounding it.

  4. Right-click on the number beside the Stroke: indicator at the bottom left of the screen.

  5. Select the px unit.

  6. Right-click again, and select 1 as the stroke width.

Now you have a white rectangle with a black stroke. We will use this color combination for drawing, then apply colors afterwards.

Draw More Rectangles

Starting from this point you can decide where to draw the rectangles to match your imagination of a camera. Your result should be similar to the following image. If you want to continue without drawing the rectangles, you can continue with the Step 2 page in the example file.

Draw Ellipses

Now that you’ve laid down the base of your artwork, let’s move on to the lens.

Draw the First Ellipse

  1. Switch to the Ellipse tool by either:

    • Selecting the Ellipse/Arc tool in the Toolbox.

    • Pressing the shortcut E.

  2. Pick a spot along the bottom of the inner rectangle, preferably slightly to the left of the middle-point of the camera.

  3. CtrlCmdDrag (hold CtrlCmd, hold down the left mouse button and drag) diagonally to the top right. Stop one grid line below the outer rectangle

  4. Release the mouse button.

Now a perfect circle should show up on the page.

Draw Concentric Circles

To properly emulate a lens, you need to draw more concentric circles relative to the first circle. You may find it hard to achieve with the Ellipse tool; you need to count how many grid lines to offset, then end at the same amount of offset grid lines. Fortunately, there is an easy way to produce them:

  1. Select the first circle you have drawn.

  2. Select Edit ‣ Duplicate or press the shortcut CtrlCmdD.

  3. CtrlCmdDrag (hold CtrlCmd, hold the left mouse button and drag) the white square handle at the top of the circle.

You will find out that a new circle was created, and you can resize it while maintaining the proportions. Neat, isn’t it?

Next you can create as many circles as you’d like to emulate a lens. If you want to skip the creation, jump to the page Step 3 in the example file.

Create Other Details

As seen in the example artwork, there are some parts added to the camera to make it look more complete, like the mode dial, the shutter/zoom dial combination, the flash and the handles on the sides. Let’s go through some of them.

The Mode Dial

The mode dial consists of multiple rectangles stacked on each other. There are multiple ways to achieve this, but the easiest way is:

  1. Draw the outermost rectangle. The bottom should collide with the top of the large rectangle (camera body).

  2. Switch to the Selector tool by either clicking on the icon in the Toolbox or pressing the shortcut S.

  3. Zoom to 400% to reveal more grid lines:

    • Select the Z number field at the bottom right of the window.

    • Enter 400.

    • Press EnterReturn.

  4. Duplicate the rectangle by selecting Edit ‣ Duplicate or pressing the shortcut CtrlCmdD.

  5. ShiftDrag the arrow-shaped handle on the right-hand side of the rectangle towards the center, until it snaps to a grid line.

  6. Release the mouse button.

You can repeat this several times to imitate the cogs on the dial.