Interior fill not working on manually traced image in Inkscape

Question

I'm working on making a few different vector drawings by manually tracing over bitmap files. I had hoped that I would be lucky to have them fill as I had hoped, but it looks like the fill is behaving differently than expected.

When I initially traced this image I used many open paths, and then combined them, and I suspect that is my main problem. Now I'm not quite sure how to rectify this issue other than starting over from scratch.

Are they any quick methods that I can apply to close the paths and have the interior space of the paths filled?

Answer 1

Yes, your problem is caused by having open paths.

To avoid this in future when you draw your shapes, make sure you always close them if they are going to be filled. Trying to fix this afterwards can be problematic, and will depend on how you constructed it. To be honest, it may be quicker to redraw it again - or at least redraw the main outline again as one path. Sorry if this is probably not what you want to hear.

A possible quick fix (which is less than ideal really), might be to use the Fill Bounded Areas tool (aka Bucket tool) U, this will create filled shapes inside the black lines, but it can be tricky to use and get a good result.

If you want try joining them, use the Edit Paths by Nodes tool N to select all the unjoined paths - holding down Shift will allow you to make a multiple selection. Then press CTRL+Ato select all the nodes, then hit the Join Nodes button in the tool controls along the top.

Example

Example