Wednesday was the first day of the course focusing on graphics. For the first two weeks,
we'd focused on creating HTML pages. Students were beginning to see the need for knowing how
to create original images: they wanted to create original backgrounds, button bars, logos,
and they wanted to scale and crop photos that they were including on their pages.
We introduced the graphics program Inkscape, an open source vector graphics editor. We
showed students how to draw basic shapes and how to apply different styles, including
gradients, to the "fill" and "stroke" (inside and border) of objects. Finally, we downloaded
a picture of the Sydney Opera House and tried to trace an outline of the building using the
Pen Tool. This allowed students to experiment with making both curves and straight lines,
and with manually converting a bitmap image to a set of vector lines.