How To Draw A Tennis Ball In Inkscape

 Beginner Inkscape Tutorial

Here is a quick and easy beginner tutorial showing you how to make a simple tennis ball like the one pictured here.

No previous experience in Inkscape needed.




1. With the ellipse tool make a circle by dragging mouse while holding down Ctrl on your keyboard so that it will be a perfect circle:

  
2. Click a color on the color palette at the bottom of Inkscape to give the circle a "tennis ball" color:

  

3. Select the circle with the Selection tool and make a duplicate by pressing Ctrl+D on your keyboard.

  

4. The duplicate is now selected and sitting on top of the original circle. Add a border around the duplicate by holding down the Shift key while clicking on a gray color on the palette:

 5. Under the color palette on the bottom left corner of Inkscape you will see 2 color bars, the Fill bar showing the color of the circle, and the Stroke bar showing the color of the border:

 Beside the stroke bar there is a number that represents the border's width, right click on the number and choose 16 frrom the pop up menu to make the border wider:

 6. With your mouse drag the duplicate to the side so it overlaps the original circle as shown below while at the same time holding down Ctrl to keep it horizontally aligned with the original:

7. While the duplicate is still selected remove the fill color by right clicking on the Fill bar under the color palette and choose "Remove fill" from the pop up menu:

 8. With the duplicate still selected make a duplicate of it and drag it to the other side of the original circle while holding down the Ctrl key to keep it horizontally aligned:

9. Click anywhere outside on the white space to deselect. Now click on the green circle to select it and make a duplicate of it by pressing Ctrl+D This is what you should have:

10. With the green duplicate still selected give it a border by clicking any color on the color palette while holding down the Shift key:

11. Remove the green fill color from the duplicate by right clicking the Fill bar under the color palette and select Remove fill from the pop menu:

12. Deselect by clicking anywhere in the white space.

13.  Select both of the circles that were previously moved to the side by holding down Shift and click the gray border of each circle. Still holding down Shift select the bordered circle in the middle by clicking on it at the point where it's border intersects the other circle so that you DON'T accidently select the green circle on the bottom:

14. From the Object menu choose clip > Set as shown below:

And there you go, you have a tennis ball. I hope you found this tutorial helpful in learning inkscape.