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<aside> 📢 Plasma membrane are bilayers of lipids that are key components of our cells. They are also can be difficult to draw by hand. But with some tools, we can create a lipid bilayer in 4 steps.

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1 | Creating a Circle

One as part of creating the phospholipid head, we first need to draw a circle. Inkscape has many pre-made shapes such as circles, squares, and stars. There are three components in Inkscape to focus on: shapes/objects, paths and strokes.

• First Select the circle tool
• Once it is selected, use your mouse to click and drag until a circular shape appears.
• At the top menu, change the height and width to the same size and select the lock button. This will lock in the aspect ratio regardless how small or big the circle is.

2 | Creating (Lipid) Tails

Now that we have our circular tails, we need to some swirly tails. We can use the freehand draw tool (✏️). But in order to make the line smoother, we are going to make a few modifications.

• Select the Create Spiro Path and change the smoothing to 10.

This will apply a smoothing algorithm to the line we create with this tool such that the squiggly lines we create do not look jagged.

3 | Turning Shapes/Objects into Paths

Now that we have our circle and squiggly lines, we need to turn these into paths. T

• Select the circle. Click Path and then select Object to Path.
• Now select both the squiggle lines. Click Path and select Stroke to Path.