today's tutorial is for those of you who are beginners and want to learn how to work with shapes to build other shapes and objects as you can see here I'm going to show you how to create these five different science themed icons using nothing but basic shapes and the pen tool in inkscape and to show you what these are I can just select them and change their colors and you can see these are all just plain vectors and if I grab the nodes tool you can see their individual nodes and there you go so I'll be showing you how to make each of these one by one you can look at the chapters down in the timeline below if you want to skip to a certain point in the lesson before we get started though if you want to learn more about how inkscape Works be sure to check out my inkscape master class it's a collection of over 80 videos where we go over all of the tools and features in inkscape and I explain what they are and demonstrate how they work kind of like how I will do in this video we even have a private Community where you can ask questions and get help from me anytime you need it I'll have some information about that down below if you want to check that out and now that that's out of the way let's get started so to get us started I will demonstrate how to create this double helix icon so let me move this out of the way and I'll press one on the keyboard to zoom out to 100% And the first step is I'm going to grab my circles and ellipses tool hold control and click and drag to draw a perfectly round circle and now we're going to remove the fill color by clicking this red X down here and we're going to apply a black Stroke by holding shift and clicking the black Swatch down there in the bottom left corner and then we will go to path and select object to path and then grab the nodes tool and I'm going to select these top three nodes right here and with those three nodes selected I'll come up here to the top left and click on this icon that says insert new nodes into selected segments and now I want to select just those two nodes that we just added and break the path at those two nodes so I'll come up here to this icon that says break path at selected nodes and click on that and now we can break the object apart by going to to path and selecting break apart and now let me grab my selection tool let me press the Escape key to deselect everything and I'll just take this part of the object and press delete on the keyboard to get rid of it now I'm going to select this object and I want to open up the fill and stroke menu so I'll come down here to this stroke stripe in the bottom left corner and double click that and it'll open up the fill and stroke menu and then we can come over here to the stroke style Tab and we can change the width of this I have mine set to 40 pixels you may have to use a different value based on your screen resolution and how large or small you created your circle I'm just going to eyeball it though we want something about that thick we don't want anything too thin like that that's not going to really work for what we're doing and likewise we don't want anything too large either so I found that 40 is a nice happy medium there I'm going to set the cap to rounded for now so that the ends are rounded and let me bring the opacity of this down in half and then I'm going to duplicate this by pressing control D on the keyboard and I'll move this over and flip this vertically clicking the object flip vertical button and let me turn on snapping by clicking this magnet icon in the top right corner and I'm going to snap these two ends together like that and now I'm going to duplicate that and repeat the process so I'll press control D that would be command D if you're on Mac and then snap this to this end right here as well now I'm going to select all three of these go back to the nodes tool and I'm going to select these two nodes right here and connect them together by clicking this button that says join selected nodes and we'll do the same thing over here select these two go to join selected nodes and now that is all one object and once it's all one object I'm going to take this node on the end right here and press delete on the keyboard to get rid of it and I'll do the same thing to this note over here press delete to get rid of it and now we want to make these caps squared again so I'll come back over here to the menu and I will choose the squared option and there we go so let me grab my selection tool now what I'm going to do next is I'm going to come up here and ensure that this option is not enabled where it says when scaling objects scale the stroke width by the same proportion make sure that's disabled if you have that enabled go ahead and disable that and then we will disable snapping as well I'm just going to hold my shift key and grab this top arrow and just scale this up to distort it a little bit and then I'm going to duplicate this by pressing command D and then I will flip it vertically and that right there is about what we're going for and at this point you can determine how how uh thick you want your Strokes to be so I I noticed with mine I made them a little too a little little too heavy so I'll select them both and I'll come back over here and bring them down a little bit that looks pretty good and once you're happy with how it looks you can go to path and select stroke to path and now that will be finalized so now I'm going to draw some rectangles going in the middle here so let me grab my rectangle tool I'll click and drag to draw rectangle and I'm going to fill this with black and I'm going to get rid of that black Stroke by holding shift and clicking the X down here and I'll place that let me grab my selection tool I'll place that right about there I'll adjust the width as needed and I'm going to duplicate this I'm going to press control D and then I'll hold control move this one over here press control D again hold control move this one over here and now we want to make sure that these are evenly spaced apart so let me select all three of these and I will open up the alignment menu by going to object and selecting a line to distribute and I'm going to choose last selected from the relative to drop down and then come down here to where it says distribute and choose this option that says distribute horizontally with even horizontal gaps and that'll ensure that there's equal spacing between them and then I will group them together by going to object group and then hold shift and click on one of those shapes right there and just make sure it's centered by clicking the center on vertical axis and now we can ungroup it by going to object and selecting ungroup so now we're going to click off of that to deselect it and we're going to take this make another copy hit contr D and then hold control and move this one over here and then do the same thing control D hold control move this one over here and then we're going to group The Two end rectangles together so I'll hold shift and select the other one make sure you have them both selected or you know what let me move this in a little closer so it looks a little more even to this open space over here and I'll do the same thing with this one I'll move that one a little closer and then I'll hold shift and click on the other rectangle and with them both selected go to object group and then hold shift and click on the larger shape out there and then Center it vertically just to ensure that everything's all centered up and lined up nicely and now we can go to object ungroup okay so what I'll do now is I'm going to select each of these rectangles I'm going to hold my shift key and select all of these we want to make sure we have them all selected and we'll unify them together by going to path and selecting Union and now I'm going to take this bottom shape down here I'll press command D to duplicate that and then I will press the I will click on the red Swatch to turn that red and I want to create an offset of this you can create an offset by going to path and selecting outset I'm just going to use the keyboard shortcut by by pressing control and the number zero so I'm going to press control Z or command zero if you're on Mac if you press it once it offsets it one step I'm going to press it again and then a third time and then a fourth time we want a nice sized offset there and then I'll grab my pen tool I'm going to choose this option over here in the settings the uh straight line segment and I'm going to come up here between these two rectangles on the right half of the design and I'll click to add a point hold control bring this down click again to add another point and then bring this shape going around the outside of the red shape and back to the starting point and I'll grab my selection tool hold shift click on the red shape and go to path intersection and now I will right click this and go to duplicate hold shift click on the larger outer shape up here and go to path difference and you can see what happened in there it created a negative space in there and now I'm going to select just this red shape right here hold shift click on the rectangles in the middle and go to path difference and you can see what we did there we created a little bit of empty space a little bit of a uh some padding between those shapes over here and now we're going to do the same thing over here with the top object on the right hand side so let me select the top object I'm going to press control D to duplicate that make this red and again we're going to apply that out that outset if you don't want to use the keyboard shortcut again just path and select outset I'm just going to use my keyboard shortcut control and the number zero one 2 three four the same number of steps that I used before and I'm going to grab uh the pen tool again and this time I'm going to grab instead of doing the right hand side I'm going to do the left hand side so I'm going to come over here click on that and then bring this around back to the starting point and select both of these path difference and then I will duplicate this by pressing control D hold shift click on the shape right there go to path difference and then take this red shape hold shift click on the rectangles and go to path difference and what you could do now is you can select all of these and unify them together by going to path Union and you can bring the opacity all the way up to 100 let me come back over here to my fill and stroke menu bring the opacity to 100 click on the object to get the rotation handles and then hold control and rotate it around like this a few steps so you end up with a a double helix like that and that's how you can go about creating a double helix using nothing but simple shapes now let's go over how to create this dropper icon so let me move this out of the way Zoom back out to 100% I'm going to grab my circles and ellipses tool and I'll click and drag to draw an ellipse like that I'll go to my selection tool let me make this black and I'll bring the opacity down to 50% using this uh input down here and then I'm going to right click this and go to duplicate and hold control and move this up about that far and then I will turn my snapping back on and grab the rectangle tool and I want to snap to this let me try that again I'm going to snap to this left edge of the top Circle click and drag and then snap to this right edge of the bottom Circle and now we can grab our selection tool select all of those and go to path Union and what I'm in here is the top part of the dropper so let me turn off snapping for now and let me grab my rectangle tool I'm going to click and drag to draw a rectangle going up here and I'll take this handle and bring this down so that we have rounded Corners like that and I'll place this in here let me Center that up I'm going to select both of those go to the alignment menu and make sure they're centered and I'm just going to elongate this a little more I want this to be a little longer and after doing that I'll have to go back to my rectangle tool to adjust this to make sure it's not too distorted and now I can zoom out select both of those and go to path Union and now we have the top part of the dropper created so I'm going to hold control and shift and scale that down a little bit and now we're going to create the bottom part so let me grab the rectangle tool again I'm going to create I'm going to create a rectangle going down here like that let me move this up in there make sure I have both of those centered and then I'm going to select this object control D hold control move this one down here and then hold control and grab this bottom arrow and scale that down and bring this down about this far I'm going to keep scaling it down until we end up with something like that right there and now I'm going to hold shift and click on the other rectangle and go to path Union and then I'm going to zoom in on this I'm going to grab my nodes tool and I'm gonna click on this button up here in the toolbar that says add Corners LP and once you do that you can select these two corners right here and then take the handle and just round that off like that so we have a nice rounded corner so it looks kind of like a dropper or the end of a dropper anyway and we can finalize that by going to path and selecting object to path and now I'm going to create an outline going around this so what I will do is I'm going to right click this and go to duplicate and then I'm going to make this red and then I'll hold shift and click red so that we have a red stroke around it and I'm going to come over here to the fill and stroke menu I'll click on the stroke style Tab and I'll make that larger I'm going to hold up on this plus icon and make it about that much larger that looks pretty good and then we will go to path stroke to path object ungroup and then path Union and then we could send that to the Bottom by clicking this button lower selection to the bottom and I'm going to hold shift and click on the other rectangle and I'm going to scale these down to make sure that they're not wider than the top of the dropper up here if I bring this up you can see it's a lot wider we don't want that so I'm going to scale that down holding control the whole time so that we don't lose our position and that we scale everything proportionately and maybe I'll make it a little larger there we go and now I'm going to select both of these I mean or all three of these click on it to get the rotation handle and hold control and grab this corner handle and rotate it clockwise one two three three steps to the right and now I'm going to well let me take this object hold shift click on this object behind it and go to path and select difference and now I'm going to add some liquid in here at the bottom so let me grab my pen tool click on the inside of this red line right here hold control bring the line straight across click to add another point and then I will let go of control and just finish drawing this shape going around the inside of this red outline there we go let me grab my selection tool and now we can select everything all of those objects and go to path and select Union bring the opacity all the way up and make that black and if you notice I also added a little drop of uh liquid coming out of the bottom of it so if you want to do that I'll show you how to do that real quick let me scale this down a little bit to to create the water drop I'm going to grab the circle tool hold control click and drag to draw Circle I'm going to get rid of that Outline by holding shift and clicking the X down there and now I'll convert this to a path by going to path object to path and I'm going to take this node over here on the top and hold control and move this up and I'm going to take these nodes right here and I'm going to make them Auto Smooth by clicking this button that says make selected nodes Auto smooth and then I'll hold control and move them down about that far and now I can grab my selection tool and scale this down further and if you want you can grab the node tool and just pull this down a little more okay that looks good as it is and then you can adjust the size you can make it bigger or smaller according to the size of the dropper and then we can just group them together by going to object group and there we go that's how you can create that simple dropper icon now we will create this light bulb icon so let's get started on that I'm going to grab my circle tool hold control and click and drag to create a circle and then I'm going to grab my rectangle tool and click and drag to draw a rectangle about that size and I'm going to grab the uh I'm going to click this button up here that says make Corners sharp we want sharp Corners there and I'm going to place this in the center of the circle like this and I'm going to select both of these and make sure I have them centered using the aligned distribute menu and let me press escape to deselect them and I'm going to select just the rectangle right here and go to path and select object to path and now I will grab the nodes tool select these two nodes and I'm going to turn on this option up here that says show transformation handles for selected nodes and I'm going to hold control and shift and grab the scaling handles and just scale this in about that far and now we can turn that setting off and let me grab my selection tool again and I'm just going to adjust this you can adjust the size by holding control and clicking and dragging up and down like that try to Envision a light bulb so use that as like a guide for how large or small to make this rectangle I'm going to make it about that size and I'm going to select both of these objects and go to path Union and then I will go to my nodes tool let's enable the add Corners LP setting and select these two nodes right here and just round them off like that and then I'll select these two nodes down here and I'll round these Corners about that much and once you're finished with that you can convert it to a path by coming up here to this button that says object to path and there we go now we have that finalized all right so now that that's done let's create the filament going inside of the light bulb to do that I'm going to grab my squares and rectangles tool hold control click and drag to draw a square let me set the opacity of this down to 50 so that I can see what I'm doing better I'm going to set this to 50 and press enter and I'm going to create the reason I do that is because I'm going to create a circle on top of that so let me grab my select tool now let me give this a determined width and height first I'm going to come up here to the toolbar with the selection tool enabled I want to make sure I have this lock icon enabled that says when locked change width and hype by the same proportion and I'm just going to use a nice round number it's set to 260 and some decimal points after that I'm just going to set it to 250 and then I'll grab my circle tool I'll hold control and shift and draw a circle a nice round circle like that and I want to make this the same width so I'll set this to 260 as well and I'll select both of these objects and I'm going to Center them vertically and horizontally so that they're on top of each other well something went wrong there I made this 250 all right this one's supposed to be 250 okay okay I use the wrong value there let me Center them up and with them both selected it should look like this with them both the same size and I will go to my shape Builder tool and I'll just draw a line going through here like that we want a shape like that and there we go so I'm going to bring the opacity of this back up to 100 and I'm going to place this over the light bulb and I'm going to hold shift and press the white Swatch to apply a white stroke and then I will turn off the fill color by clicking the Red X over here and I'm going to make this a much smaller value so let me come back over here to my Fillin stroke menu I'm going to set this to something like eight and then I'll hold control and just scale this down and put this right about here and then I'll duplicate that by pressing control D I'll flip this vertically or horizontally and then hold control and move this one over here and let me select them both and just move them where they need to be okay and I'm going to select both of these I'm going to group them together by going to object group and then I'll Center it on top of the light bulb so let me come back over here to my aligned distribute menu and Center it like that okay and now let me scale it down a little more bring it down and now I'm going to create lines going in here so I'm going to create I'm going to grab the pen tool and let's turn on snapping I'm going to snap to this corner and click click and then snap to that corner and click and press enter and we now have a black line we want to make that white to match this these two shapes right here so I'm going to hold shift and click on the white Swatch and I want to make this the same size that I made these lines so let me select this now let me go to object on group and if I click on just one of them you can come over here and see I think I used eight okay so I want to make this the same size I'll make this eight pixels and then I'm going to click off of that go back to the pen tool and do the same thing snap to this corner but bring the line down here hold control bring the line straight down like that press enter hold shift click on the white Swatch and we'll make this eight pixels as well and now instead of drawing another line we can just press contrl D to duplicate that and then snap that over here like that and if you want you can select all of these now and you can increase or decrease the line size based on the rest of the image so that's a good weight right there I'm going to leave it as it is with all of those selected I will go to path stroke to path and then path Union and then I'll select everything here and go to path difference and now what I will do is if you notice these are hard Corners in here so I'm going to grab the nodes tool and I'm going to use the add Corners LP option again enable that and then I'll just select these three nodes right here and I'm just going to round these off so that they're not so they're not sharp Corners they're rounded instead and that just adds a nicer touch I think anyway and now we can go to path object path okay so we have the top part of the light bulb finished now I'm going to create these um these glowing lines going around it so to do that let me um let me turn off snapping first let me select this object and bring the opacity back down to 50% because I'm going to be drawing shapes on top of this and I'm going to grab the pen tool click to add a point hold control click to add another Point press enter and let me go to my selection tool and I'll make this I'll make that line larger and I'll just use a nice round number I'll use 20 something went wrong there okay I'll make that a rounded cap and let me grab my nodes tool and make that a little smaller actually I'm going to hold control and bring that down and now I will duplicate this by pressing control D and I'll hold control and bring this one down here and then I'll hold control or you know we don't want to bring it down that far we want to bring it down about here and then I'll hold shift and click on this object and I will go to object group and then I want to Center these two objects right here so let me grab the selection tool and Center them and now I want to take this shape or these this grouping of shapes click on it to get the rotation handles and then hold control and if you notice if you hold control you can move it around like that and while you're doing this you could press the space bar to make copies so I'll press the space bar to make a copy there and then I'll bring this one step over to the right make another copy and I'm just going to bring this around and keep making copies going around the object like that until we're back at the starting point and there we go and now we can adjust the position of the light bulb because if you notice if you're looking at the spacing between these lines and the light bulb we want it to be roughly equal going all the way around so you may have to reposition and maybe even resize it a little bit just make sure to hold control contr and shift while scaling so that it scales from the center otherwise you're going to get an offset scaling like that which you don't want and once once that's done let me let me actually take this and move it out of the way I'm going to select all of these and I'm going to go to object on group and then I will go to path and select combine and what I will do now is I want to make some of these lines shorter than the other so to do that I'm going to grab my nodes tool and I'm going to select the the top node of this line right here not the center line but the one to the left of it and then I'll hold shift and skipping every other line I'll just select the top node like that if you notice I'm skipping every other line and selecting the top node of the ones between them and with those nodes selected I will enable the transformation handles by clicking that icon up there and then I'll hold control and shift and grab one of these arrows and scale that in like that if you notice we can now scale that in or out or whatever you want to do I'm going to make it about that much shorter that looks pretty good let me disable that now and let me Zoom back out let me Center this back up now with those two objects and now I can delete these parts of the lines out of here so let me select this go to the nodes tool and I can just select all of these nodes right here or maybe I'll just select these ones down here and press delete and I'll do the same thing over here select those nodes press delete and if you want you could delete these nodes out of here as well I'm not sure if that's going too far I'm just going to press contrl Z to put them back in there I think it looks better with them there and now we can bring this back up to 100% And the last part now would to create is to create this bottom part of the um the light bulb right there so that should be pretty easy we're just going to use some rectangles you know what first let me select these strokes and convert them to pads so let me go to path and select stroke to path and now we can come down here and create those rectangles so let me grab my rectangle tool I'll click and drag I'm going to have to apply a black fill let me get rid of the white stroke by holding shift and clicking the the X down there and let me just adjust this grab the rectangle tool again and I'm just going to make this rounded let make that a little smaller and then I'm going to hold shift and click on the light bulb and make sure I have it centered and now I can just duplicate that by selecting it and pressing control D hold control and click and drag this down here and now we just got to create the bottom part which is this right here so to do that let me make a duplicate of that control D hold control bring this down here and this one I'm going to hold control and scale it down about that much or you know what I'm not going to scale it down let me press control Z to undo that I'm going to convert this to a path we'll go to path object to path let me grab my nodes tool and I'm going to select all of those nodes and I want to make them Corner nodes by clicking this button over here that says make selected nodes corner I'm going to click that once and now I can select just these two top nodes right here press delete to get rid of them and then hold control and click on each of these handles right here so that we have a half rectangle like that and now I could take these two nodes hold control bring them in and do the same thing over here bring them in like that and put this up here like this and we want to make sure there's an equal amount of spacing between all of these three objects right here so I'm going to hold shift and click on all of these objects to select them I'm going to make sure they're centered and then I will click this button down here that says distribute vertically with even vertical gaps and now I can just add another shape down here at the bottom so let me grab my rectangle tool click and drag to draw rectangle let me make that a sharp corner go to path object to path now I can grab the nodes tool take those two nodes enable the transformation handles and hold control and shift and scale that in like that disable the handle now and then add the corners LP and then we could take those two nodes and round them off like that and go to path object to path and then I'm just going to select both of those and make sure I have them centered and now we can select everything and go to or you know what you may want to make this one I'm just going to make this is going to bother me if I leave it as it is I'm going to make this one a little wider so I'm going to select those nodes and bring them out like that okay that's a lot better me zoom out select all of it and go to path Union and just like that we have created our light bulb icon next we will go over how to make this protractor icon this is a lot simp simp than the other one we just created so let's get started on that I'm going to grab my rectangle tool and click and drag to draw a rectangle about that size and I will make this rounded and then I will go to path object to path go to the nodes tool select all of these nodes and make them Corner nodes and then I can take these two bottom nodes down here and press delete on the keyboard to get rid of them and then hold control and click on each these handles to flatten them and now we have a half rectangle like that and now I'm just going to grab the rectangle tool and I'll create another smaller rectangle about that size going in there and I will select both of those and make sure the bottom edges are aligned and then we can unify together by going to path and selecting Union and then we can click to get the rotation handles and I'm going to hold control and just rotate this around again holding control go clockwise one two three four five steps for now and then I will duplicate this by pressing control D and then I will flip this horizontally you can use the button up here to flip it I just like pressing h on the keyboard it's a lot quicker so I'll press h on the keyboard to flip that and I'll move this over here and I'm not paying attention to where these two meet up here I'm paying more attention to the spacing down here I want these spaced out a little more and I'm going to put a circle up here in the middle of these two so let me grab my circles and ellipses tool and I'll hold control and click and drag to draw a circle and I'll place this about in the middle right here and I'll right click that and go to duplicate and I'll make this one white and I'll hold control and scale that down control and shift and scale that down about that far and if you notice here I have another Circle in there as well so I'm going to create another Circle let me right click and go to duplicate make that one black and then hold control and shift and scale that down about that far now what I want to do is I want to get rid of the top parts of these rectangles over here I want to get rid of the the top part that protrudes beyond that Circle so let me grab the rectangle tool and I'll just click and drag to draw a rectangle going over those that space and go back to my selection tool I'll press control D to duplicate it hold shift click on this rectangle and go to path difference and then I'll repeat that process I'll click on this rectangle hold shift click on this rectangle and go to path difference and now that's out of the way and now I'm going to create the top part which is this little rectangle coming out of here so let me grab my rectangle tool again click and drag to draw rectangle and I'm just going to make sure I'm going to make sure I have this centered I'm going to hold shift and click on the circle and make sure it's centered vertically and then we can grab the let me grab the rectangle tool again and make this all the way rounded and now we can select everything here let me hold shift and click on this small black circle in the center to deselect that and then I'll hold shift and click on this white center this white circle in the center to deselect that and go to path Union so now this is all one shape in here and with that selected I can hold shift and click on the white circle and go to path difference and now we can select both of these and go to path Union and just like that that's done so now we just got to create this bottom part down here just a couple of rectangles and then we'll be done so let me grab my rectangle tool click and drag to draw a rectangle going through here I'm going to make this a little smaller make sure you have it centered and then I'll draw another rectangle going in the middle here and make sure you have these centered as well make sure they're centered on the horizontal axis and then you select all of this and make sure all of it is centered and now I'm going to take just this object the larger object I'll press control D to duplicate it I'll make this red and bring the opacity down 50% just so I can see it better and then I'm going to apply that that outset or that offset that I was using before where you can go to path and select outset but I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut which is control zero so I'm going to press that a few times five times is good hold shift click on that rectangle and go to path difference and then I'll zoom out and now I can select everything here and go to path Union and as you can see we have pretty quickly created that protractor icon and for the final part of this lesson I will demonstrate how to create this microscope icon so let's get started on that I'm going to grab my circle tool hold control and click and drag to draw a circle and I'm going to apply a black Stroke by holding shift and clicking the black Swatch and then I will remove the red fill by clicking the Red X down here and I'm going to make this a little larger let me come over here to my fill instru stroke menu and I'll make this let me make that let me try that again let me make that 30 instead of 20 maybe a little larger try 40 okay now I'll go to my nodes tool and I want to convert this to a path by going to path and selecting object to path and then I want to select these two nodes right here and add a new node between them by clicking the add new node button over here and then I'll do the same same thing down here with these two bottom two pads select those two and go to uh click on this button that says insert a new node and then I want to select just this node right here this newer node on the top right and then hold shift and select this node right here on the left and go to we're going to click on this button up here that says break path that selected nodes and then go to path and select break apart and let me go to my selection tool press escape to deselect and then just take that piece and get rid of it and now we're going to take this object let's click on it again to get the rotation handles and hold control and take this arrow and move it counterclockwise one step like that and now we're going to create a base down here for the rectangle for the T microscope so let me grab my rectangle tool and I'll click and drag to draw a rectangle let me fill this with black let me hold shift click the X to get rid of that outline and I want to make this sharp corners and let me just size this up and position it where it needs to be you can select both of these and Center them vertically now I'm going to select this rectangle and go to path object to path and I'll grab my nodes tool select these two nodes and grab the transformation handle turn that on and then hold control and shift and scale these two handles or these two nodes out like that then we can turn off the transformation handles we can add the add Corners LP option and then take those two nodes and let's round them like that and now we can convert that to a path by clicking this button over here that says object to path and there we go so let me zoom out now I'm going to create uh let me create the base for the microscope over here so I'm going to grab my rectangle tool again and click and drag to draw a rectangle right there just a really simple shape let me make that rounded and go to my selection tool and adjust that as needed okay so that part's out of the way now we're going to create the top part over here so let me um let me grab let me first turn on snapping and then I'll grab the circles and ellipses tool and I'm going to snap to the end of this path right here and then click and drag and then hold control and shift to scale it out from the center so that we have a center coming from the center of that end node like that let me scale that out about that far let me turn off snapping now let me right click that and go to duplicate and I'll make this white I'll hold control and shift and scale that down about that far and now let's select everything here and bring the opacity up to 100 so I'm going to come down here and press 100 and now we get a better view of everything so let me take this scale that down a little more and let me take this line right here and convert that to a stroke so we'll go to path or convert it to a path so we'll go to stroke to path and now we just got to create this top part of the microscope right here so to do that just a couple of simple rectangles let me grab my rectangle tool draw a rectangle let me make that black so I can see it and let me just adjust that a little bit and I'm going to duplicate this by pressing command D and then I'll hold shift and take this top arrow and scale that out and then holding shift again scale this in and then I will continue to adjust this as needed making sure you hold shift and I will make this less rounded let me grab gra my rectangle tool I just want it slightly rounded that looks a lot better it maybe the same over here a little less rounded okay now we can select both of these and go to path Union and I can click on it to get the rotation handles hold control and rotate this clockwise one two three three steps clockwise and move this over here and now you can scale it up and down as needed I'm going to scale mine up about that much and I want to position it so that it's kind of looking at the base there you may even have to rotate it a little bit doesn't have to be exactly uh in 15 degree increments okay that's good let me send that to the bottom and now I'm going to take this larger black circle I'll press control D to duplicate it make it white hold control and shift and scale it up a little bit and now I want to lower this beneath the other Circle so I'm going to press the page down key a few times until goes beneath like that and let me take this let me lower it down a little more there we go and now I'm just going to move this over a little bit just make some minor adjustments here and now I can have this selected with this selected hold shift click on the white circle and go to path difference and now we can select everything here and move that away from the other objects and with all of this selected hold shift and click on the white circle to deselect that and unify that all together by going to path Union and now you can hold shift and click on the white circle and then go to path difference and then we're finished and that is how you can create that microscope icon and that should do it for today's tutorial hopefully you found some of that helpful and as always thanks for watching if you found this lesson useful then consider checking out my inkscape master class it's a collection of over 60 videos where I go over all of the tools and features in inkscape and I explain what they are and demonstrate how they work kind of like how I did in this video we even have a private Community where you can ask questions and get help from me anytime you want and best of all there's no monthly membership fees you just pay $17 one time and you're in for Life I'll have some information about that down below if you want to check that out as always thanks for watching h [Music]