Drawing a tree with cloned leaves using the Spray tool
The Spay tool provides another way of rapidly creating clones and placing them in a pseudo-random fashion, with several options that adjust the clones position, size, and rotation. In this recipe we will "spray" leaf clones on a tree as an example of its usefulness.
How to do it...
The following steps will show how to use the Spray tool to clone leaves:
1. Create a tree trunk and branches using Spiro spline mode in Pencil (F6 or P) or the Pen (Shift + F6 or B) tool. I used the Pencil tool with Smoothing: set to 34 and Shape: to Triangle in. Change the fill color to #552200.
2. Convert the main trunk to a path and use the Node tool to modify its thickness.
3. Create a green leaf that will be used as an original to create all the other leaves as clones. I created an ellipse, converted it to a path (Shift + Ctrl + C). Then converted the top node to a cusp (Shift + C), filled it with a radial gradient, and added some lines as veins on top...
