Customize Your Inkscape Tools' Styles

This tutorial is for Inkscape beginners.  If you're in a hurry, you can just skip down to the numbered steps.  If you have time and want to learn a few basics, maybe you want to read through the whole thing.  It may well solve a few problems you have already encountered.

Background

For reasons which may not be entirely obvious, the default behavior for all Inkscape tools is to give whatever object you're drawing, the same style as the last object you drew with that tool.  In Inkscape, "style" includes things like fill and stroke color, opacity, stroke width, and several others.
 
Many first time users of Inkscape are thrilled with how easy it is to select objects, move them around, and change color and other style attributes.  There are so many options which are so easy to use, that within just a few minutes, you might have a canvas full of doodles and trials and experiments, and maybe even a finished drawing!  The problem comes the next time you open Inkscape, and realize the tools aren't working the same way they were the first time you opened Inkscape.

This may well be the most common problem for new Inkscape users.  And the reason almost always, is related to how you styled the last object you drew with that tool.  Maybe you removed a stroke, or made it transparent, or made its width zero.  Now you need a stroke, but it's just not there.  Or maybe you rounded the corners of a rectangle, but now you need a traditional rectangle.  Or maybe you played with the Ellipse tool, and now it only will draw an arc, while you desperately need a circle.   Or maybe the tool seems like it's not drawing anything.  Even though you may not have saved the doodles on your first canvas, Inkscape still remembers, and draws the next object to look just like the last one you drew with that tool.

Solutions

Now that you know this is how Inkscape works, you'll be able to solve most of these problems on your own.  It's just a matter of learning to remember what you drew, and recognize when this has happened, and where all the buttons and controls are, and what they do.  So maybe you will prefer to continue using Inkscape with its default behavior.  But others may realize that they never need the next thing they draw to be identical to the last thing they drew.  And fortunately, there's a way to have each tool keep the same style, every time you use it.
 
Here's how to set up a custom style for your tools.  Reference the screenshots below with the step numbers. 

Let's use the Star tool as an example, and it's the same process for every tool.  Note that for the tools which draw paths (Pencil, Pen, Connector, and maybe Calligraphy) (and possibly Spiral shape tool) you may want to set the style for stroke only.  Although it truly is entirely up to you!

1. Draw an object on the canvas, using the Star tool.
2. Give it whatever style you want it to draw, every time.
3. Leave it selected.
4. Double click on the Star tool icon/button, to open up Inkscape Preferences to the controls for that tool.
5. For "Create new objects with:" select "This tool's own style:".
6. Click the horizontal bar that says "Take from selection". 

At the moment you click "Take from Selection" bar, you'll see the Style Indicator change to reflect the style you just applied.  (You can see that the style in the screenshot is a black stroke and no fill.  But perhaps you want your stars to always be opaque yellow with a fat red stroke?  It can be however you want it.

Bonus Info

And for a couple more quick lessons, fyi. 

You can see that same style indicator near the top, right corner of the Inkscape window, which shows the style for most tools (when the tool is enabled).
 
There's a similar style indicator in the bottom left corner, which is a vital feature for experienced and beginning Inkscape users alike.  It reflects the style of the currently selected object, and also includes opacity info, i.e. "O: spinbox" (A spinbox is a number in a box with tiny arrows to dial up the value you need, or you can highlight and type or paste.)  What makes this style indicator so helpful, is that it not only reflects the style of the selected object, it also can be used to change the style. Right-click on the Fill or Stroke color bar, and you'll find many quick options.  If the object has a stroke, you'll see a tiny number on the right end of the color bar, which is the stroke width.  Right-click to find options for changing it, as well.  Of course, the Fill and Stroke dialog is the comprehensive feature for creating styles, but the Style Indicator provides some nice shortcuts, at certain times.

If you should have any questions or need help, please feel free to post a message in our forum.  You can share your SVG file there, and we can pinpoint the problem.