Inkscape is a free vector line drawing application that can be used to draw love hearts for Valentine's Day projects. There are several ways that you can draw a love heart in Inkscape and the results, though similar, do appear slightly different for each method.
If you take a look at all of these different techniques, however, you'll learn much more about Inkscape than just drawing heart shapes. These beginner tutorials will introduce you to drawing bezier line shapes, drawing smooth freehand shapes, and get you started working with nodes to edit paths.
Draw a Love Heart with the Bezier Tool
© Ian Pullen
This technique offers perhaps the most precise result ensuring a perfectly symmetrical love heart that will be perfect for a Valentine's Day project with a clean and precise feel.
Draw a Love Heart with the Pencil Tool
© Ian Pullen
This technique is the most random of the options looked at, using the Pencil tool to draw a freehand shape. While it sounds straightforward, there are some important steps to ensure that you get an attractive and smooth result. This will be great for loose and informal style Valentine's Day projects.
Draw a Love Heart by Editing a Circle
© Ian Pullen
This method offers a reasonably uniform love heart by working on the nodes of a circle to edit the shape. This is a nice and simple introduction to some of the ways to work with nodes in Inkscape and will apply to many other shapes that you may wish to draw.
Draw a Love Heart by Editing a Triangle
© Ian Pullen
The love heart that you produce form this technique is also quite uniform and this tutorial also introduces you to some techniques for working with nodes, including adding nodes.
Export Graphics from Inkscape to Use in an Image Editor
Inkscape is a fantastic application, but most home users prefer to use an image editor for their craft projects. This piece will show you how you can export an image, such as one of the love hearts from the tutorials here, so that you can open it in an image editor such as GIMP or Paint.NET. This gives you the flexibility to produce graphics with the convenience of Inkscape's drawing tools, but use them in a way that best suits you.