How To Color Mandalas In Inkscape | Easier Than You Think!

[@InkscapeArtWithTom]

How do you like using the Paint Bucket Tool? Enjoy!

[@VivianBeck67]

I’m so glad I found your channel! Your videos do an amazing job walking through all the steps and how to use Inkscape. I can’t wait to create my first mandala using this program. Thanks for your amazing tutorials. Can’t wait to see what I learn from your up one videos!!!!

[@InkscapeArtWithTom]

Hi Vivian, thanks for your wonderful comment! Inkscape certainly is a lot of fun to use with all it fantastic features, enjoy!

[@bigtslotguy]

Love your videos

[@InkscapeArtWithTom]

Thanks @bigtslotguy - your channel rocks!

[@CelticOneDesign]

Bucket fill makes life so much easier. I enter a negative number for "Grow/shrink by" with no fill to create contour lines. Faster and easier than using offset.

[@InkscapeArtWithTom]

Agreed! Thanks for the counter line tip, sound good!

[@greasyfingergarage]

The way I go about it is take the mandala shape and duplicate it. Move the copy out of the way. Take the original and turn the stroke down to something small like 1 px if you have a 2 px stroke for the other one. Turn all those strokes to a path and union them all. Then draw a shape larger than the mandala and send it behind it. Difference the two so now the stroke is removed from the same. Then split that apart. All the individual pieces are now their own object that you can select and change the colors, add individual gradients, etc. Once you are done, group them all together and move the other thick stroke outline over it.

[@InkscapeArtWithTom]

Thanks for sharing another useful technique! When I applied this I found that many of the broken apart pieces overlapped the others, so I had some work to move pieces up and down levels to arrange them properly. Maybe there's a way to avoid that... Also as I reviewed this video, another time saving idea I have is to just color a single piece of repeated pieces with the Paint Bucket and then use the Rotate Copies Path Effect to repeat the new colored shape around for the others.