Producing a Free and Easy Inkscape Glass Ball

A Simple Graphic Design School Type Vector Image Tutorial

Aug 5, 2009

Inkscape is a powerful free and open source vector line graphics application that can produce sophisticated results such as this glass ball type image.

Many Graphic Designers seem to default to their favorite image editing software when producing glossy, glass like effects, but these can be produced easily using vector line graphics applications such as Inkscape.

The great advantage of producing these types of images as vector graphics is that they can be infinitely resized and so can be easily recolored if necessary and reused in many different contexts. Raster versions of these images will quickly deteriorate in quality if resized to any great extent.

This Graphic Design School type tutorial will demonstrate how easy it is to produce a glass ball style graphic using just two different objects. This tutorial is pretty straightforward and will explain most steps, but a basic familiarity with Inkscape maybe necessary.

Make the Base Ball

The first step is to use the Circle tool from the Toolbox and draw a circle in the centre of the page. Holding the Ctrl button while drawing helps to draw a perfect circle. The circle can now be filled with a solid blue from the color swatch below the page.

Next the Gradient tool is selected (second from bottom in the toolbox) and a gradient is drawn on the circle from top to bottom. The blue color should be selected by default for both color stops, the second being fully transparent.

In the Tool Controls Bar above the page, the Designer clicks on Edit to open the Gradient editor and clicks on the first drop down menu, selecting the second option. Now the Designer moves the A slider fully to the right (the ball is now one solid color again) and moves the L slider a little way to the right, to make the bottom of the ball a lighter blue.

Add the Highlight

The Designer next draws a squashed ellipse that is a little narrower than the background ball and fills it with white from the color swatch below the page. Now the Designer selects the Gradient tool again and draws a gradient from top to bottom on the new ellipse. This fills the ellipse with a gradient blending from solid white to fully transparent.

The effect is improved by the Designer opening the Gradient editor and selecting the first stop from the drop down menu and moving the A slider a little way to the left. This adds a little transparency to the top of the highlight and makes it appear a little more natural. The Designer's last step is to move the Blur slider at the bottom of the Fill and Stroke palette slightly to the right, to about one, to give the highlight slightly softened edges.

That is a very quick and easy Graphic Design School type tutorial demonstrating how to produce a glass ball type graphic using Inkscape. This technique can be further finessed and there are some supplementary steps described in this Suite101 follow up article.

The copyright of the article Producing a Free and Easy Inkscape Glass Ball in Graphic Design Tutorials is owned by Ian Pullen. Permission to republish Producing a Free and Easy Inkscape Glass Ball in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.