The Letter A

To create the letter A, we start by drawing an ellipse. Select Ellipse from the Preset Shapes tool and draw a large oval in center of canvas.

Colors: Black outline, fill color of your choice. I will use red for this first letter.

Tool options: Ellipse, Show Nodes, Create on Vector, Line Style Solid, Width 3, Anti-Alias checked.

Letter size is optional. I am making a shape that fills less than half the canvas area...this will leave plenty of 'elbow room'.

Select ellipse, right click, select 'convert to path'.

Select center bottom node and move it UP to create sort of a boomerang shape.

Select node on left side and rotate the control arm (node handle) until it is horizontal. Drag this node down and to the right a little until it creates the left leg of the letter A (refer to node locations in above image). Select node on right side of ellipse, rotate control arm until it is horizontal and drag it to bottom to create the right leg of the A. Fine tune placement of nodes until you have a nice, fat A shape.

For nice smooth curves, keep all node handles perfectly horizontal and centered on it's part of the letter. We'll put the 'hole' in it next.