Illustrating Tomato

• Software: Inkscape
• Level: Beginner to Intermediate
• Subject: Tomatoes

The other tutorial on painting a tomato has become quite popular and I have got quite a handful of request on how the approach would be for illustrating tomatoes. In this post, we will be looking at how to illustrate a tomatoes (or more than one) using a sketching program and Inkscape (or any other vector editors like Adobe Illustrator or Corel DRAW).

Sketch

Draw a sketch of the tomatoes and get it as a image file. You can either sketch it on paper and scan it in, or sketch it using a software. I used GIMP.

Basic Shape

Import the sketch into Inkscape.

Use the pen tool to mark out the rough shape of the different parts. Take care to correctly order the different shapes one above the other. This depends on how and from which angle have you sketched the different parts. Some of the parts may need to be split into more than one shapes when the interleave between other shapes.

After you have gotten them in proper order, you can then shape all the paths and then give them the basic flat color.

Details

You can then bring the sketch above all the shapes, reduce its opacity and then start using it to outline the different parts, taking care of the inner details of each part.

As you mark out the different areas using the pen tool, shaping them, add fill colors to them.

Start giving in more details. Some shadow area may need special attention and you can put in some faint gradients. Do not over do this, if you want that ‘vectorized’ style.

After working on one part of the illustration, move on to the next. Smaller parts do not need a lot of steps from dark to light.

Also, if you do not want to bring in too much focus on some part, just leave it at two or three color steps.

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Use the comment section below if you have any specific questions, or to post links to artworks you created using this tutorial.

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