How to Make a Composite Picture in Inkscape

Use Inkscape to Manipulate PD Images into Attractive Background

Our client recently wanted to add a calendar with an image of Mother Goose for their online page with Free Printable May Calendars (The first of May is National Mother Goose's Day in America). We found a Public Domain book about Mother Goose, illustrated by William Wallace Denslow, but we noticed there are also many other beautiful picture books and other works by Mr. Denslow. Then, we decided to set up a mini website dedicated to this talented and controversial illustrator.

We tried to make the home page of this mini-website as attractive as possible. Mr. Wenslow created tons of great illustrations, after all. He is best known as the 'original Wizzard of Oz illustrator', so the choice was obvious - we took an 'endpaper' from this book and combined it with one of the photographs portraying him.

The 'endpaper' in our case, consists of two parts:

and

We also have a photo:

The first step was to make a composite picture of both parts of the 'endpaper'. This can be simply done in Inkscape (insert each of the pictures by ctrl-I and move them so they stand one by one).

Here it is:

As you can see, there is a poster on the left side with Tin Man standing in front of it just perfect for inserting the photo of the illustrator. We inserted it and moved it to the desired place. Some additional tweaking with resizing led us to the desired result:

The mini-website is still a work in progress, but there are already a few picture books presented. The project will grow in the next months and hopefully present the best work by William Wallace Denslow in one place.

If you find this article useful, share it with your friends, followers, and everybody who might be interested. Of course, every promotion of William Wallace Denslow's mini-website is highly appreciated as well.

All thanks to a few artistically inspired enthusiasts and Inkscape with its community.