Draw a Coffee Mug, Part 3 — Introduction to Gradients and Filters, continued

Continuing from the end of Part 2, here is a video which demonstrates how much adjustment is needed to get gradients just right. (Click either the Picture in Picture mode button, or full screen button, to see small details better. Note that there are no captions in this video.) Below-right is how the main cup of our mug is looking at the end of the video.

You’re probably wondering why the black stroke has not been removed. We are going to use that to make the mug a little more dimensional — make it look more like a heavy mug, than a paper-thin mug.

Duplicate that final version, and set it aside for “just in case”.
Select that elliptical object (the back part of the mug) and duplicate. Remove the stroke, and move it to the bottom in z-order.
Select the one that’s on top, and remove the fill, so all that’s left is the black stroked path. Remember to pay attention to the status bar, to make sure you have selected the right object, since their paths are identical at this moment (and they will be quite similar later on, too).
Using whatever technique you prefer, make that stroke much wider, like below-left. This width will make the mug seem heavier, eventually.
Path menu > Stroke to path. Then add a 1 px stroke. (If you have an older version of Inkscape, Stroke to Path might be problematic. If you have trouble, visit us in the forum for help.)
Notice in the red circles, second image from left below, how this object overhangs the outer surface of the mug. To fix this, just scale the black elliptical object a little smaller, so that the outer edge of the ellipse is aligned with the outer edge of the mug. See the third image from the left. (If you are already familiar with snapping, it might come in handy here.)
Change the fill from black to the color of your mug. Remove the black strokes.
Duplicate it, then add the 1 px wide black strokes back, and remove the fill. (So you end up with one copy that is only the fill, and another copy that is only the stroked path. Again, remember to use the status bar while selecting, to help prevent mistakes, since you have these 2 identical paths.)

Filters

For a simple and easy introduction to filters, let’s go back to the cast shadow that we created in Part 2 (below, left). To make it even easier, we are only going to use one filter in this tutorial — Blur.

Because Blur is such a commonly used filter, Inkscape developers created convenient access to it, in the Fill and Stroke dialog. You can see the Blur slider at the bottom of the Fill and Stroke dialog, highlighted below with a red rectangle. To access all other filters, you need to use the Filters menu and/or Filters Editor.

You can see below that the blur is set at 15%, and on the right, below, you can see the result.

Now let’s go back and finish the top of the main cup. Zoomed in for better clarity, the paths we ended up with previously, are shown on the left below.

Select the left-most and right-most nodes for both the inner and outer sub-paths, as seen in the middle image, below. If you did not play around too much with the ellipse paths, there probably is already a node in the right places. But if not, add new nodes as needed.
Click the “Break path at selected nodes” button on the Node tool control bar. Then Path menu > Break Apart.
Delete the upper half of the outer sub-path. And delete the lower half of the inner sub-path. When you finish, it should look like the image on the right, below.

Make sure that Edit menu > Preferences > Tools > Gradient tool > Prevent sharing of gradient definitions is unchecked.
Select the gradient on the front of the cup, using the Selection tool. (Not the gradient that shades the bottom of the cup, but the main color gradient.) Switch to the Gradient tool.
Look at either the area on the Gradient tool control bar highlighted with a red rectangle, shown below, or click the button in the Fill and Stroke dialog highlighted with a red rectangle in the screenshot below. Either one of these places will identify the gradient you created, so you can use it again. In these examples, the gradient is named “158”, but your gradient on your canvas will have a different name/number. (This button in the Fill and Stroke dialog is relatively new, so older versions will not have it. But the gradient name will still be available in the Fill and Stroke dialog, somewhere.)

Select the remaining half of the outer sub-path. Set the stroke to some contrasting color, like red or black. Change the width from 1 px to something between 3 to 5 px (depending on the size of your drawing, it might need to be much wider). Experiment with the stroke width and Blur settings to find the best values. Then set them back to zero.
On the Fill and Stroke dialog > Stroke Paint tab, choose the gradient from the front of the cup, that you identified earlier, to apply it to the stroke.
Using the Gradient tool, adjust the gradient on the canvas so it’s aligned with the gradient on the front of the cup. (It’s easier to align it without any blur.)
Once the gradient is aligned, it will start to disappear against the background. That’s why we used a contrasting color to figure out what the best values would be. Now set the width and Blur to the values you identified earlier. If everything has gone well, the top of the cup should appear smooth and rounded, and you won’t really be able to recognize the path anymore.
Repeat steps 6 through 10 for the remaining half of the inner sub-path, using the gradient on the back/inside of the cup.

And here is our final result, although still without the handle. Remember at the end of Part 1, when we promised you would not see any lines?

Finally in Part 4, we will add the handle, and have a finished coffee mug.

If you want to learn even more about gradients, check out Lesson 4.6 in Inkscape for Artists – Step by Step. And try Lesson 17 to learn more about filters.

If you get stuck on this tutorial, or have questions or comments, please feel free to visit our forum where you can ask for help. Or share your Inkscape artwork, or visit and just say Hello ! If you enjoyed this tutorial, you can find more in the menu at the top of this page.

Back to Part 2

Go to Part 4