The Polygon Tool is great for drawing basic shapes like squares, hexagons and even stars but did you know you can use it to make more complex shapes?

The key to this technique is to use star type polygons. They have an extra handle that you can use to distort the shape.
Try it by making a 4-sided star polygon.
It will look something like this:

And if you change the Rounded value to 0.5 you’ll see you get smoothed corners.

Now select the Node Editing Tool and move the inner handle inwards to create a thin “plus” shape.

Now move the other node around so that the shape rotates through itself to distort it into a fan shape.

If you select the Polygon Tool again (click on the shape) you can go back and play with how rounded the shape is, how many corners it has, the spoke ratio etc. which will vastly change the shape. Here’s what happens when you round the corners to 2.0.

Increasing the corners to 8 sides creates a completely new shape.

Now if you go back and edit the node positions again you’ll get something different.

As with any object you can resize and rotate in the normal way and edit colours and stroke styles. Here are a few more examples:

Left to right: Corners: 9, Spoke Ratio: 0.295, Rounded: 2 | Corners: 7, Spoke Ratio: 0.016, Rounded: 0.5 | Corners: 16, Spoke Ratio: 0.033, Rounded: 0.5 (with additional bucket fill on outer teardrops).

If you’d like to have a go with the shapes above or use them in your work, download the svg file here and don’t forget to view the license agreement

Ever wonder how some people go from idea to finished graphic? Me too. Usually I like to work to a design for a reason - maybe it’s a graphic for a new website, an icon or a new business card. It’s so much easier when you have a brief.
So what do you do when you haven’t got a brief but you’re in the mood to draw? Usually what I do is take a look around, go for a walk, see if anything inspires me.

For this piece I drew what was sitting right in front of me - a pot plant.

Here’s a picture of the orchid I worked from:

Orchid flowers are pretty complex so to make things easier I worked on small pieces. I found it much easier once the flower was broken down into petals.

Here’s an overview of the individual pieces that make up the orchid graphic:

The two scallop shaped petals started out as circles. They were converted to paths and after adding a few nodes I was able to create this shape. The picture on the left shows how the nodes are arranged. The right-most node is symmetrical to make an even curve. The two nodes either side are angled inwards to help pinch the shape into a point where the pink colour begins. You might need to do some tweaking to get the right shape but if you begin with a circle it shouldn’t be difficult.

The three oval-shaped petals were also created by starting with a circle and adding nodes. Some of the nodes were moved around and the curves edited to create a slightly irregular shape to make the flower look more natural. Copy and paste to create two more petals and edit them slightly to make each unique. Rotate each petal until you’re happy with the configuration.
You’ll notice the real petals have a vein down the middle of each. I used the Bezier tool to draw a curved line, set the stroke to be a semi-opaque grey and blurred the line slightly to soften it. Each petal needed its own line redrawn to maintain the organic look.

For the inner petals I copied the two scallop shapes and scaled them down. The tube (middle) part was the hardest part to do. It was difficult to get the perspective right so I just had to make roughly the same shape as the photo showed. That was made from a rounded rectangle shape with some nodes moved around and the path reshaped.

The last few shapes are made up of a flatted oval shape for the yellow part and an enlongated oval with a few additional corner nodes to make the points. It looks like a pretty complex shape until you see how simply the nodes are configured.

Most petals were coloured using a gradient of magenta→off white. It’s important to apply the gradient to each element individually since on the real orchid each petal has its own colouring.

As there’s so much white-on-white the upper shapes were given shadows.
To make a shadow:

• Select the shape to be given a shadow.
• Copy the shape and use Edit>Paste in Place to paste a copy on top of the original.
• Change the colour of the new shape to pale translucent grey and add a blur (less blur for harder shadows).
• Increase the size of the new shape slightly. Be sure to maintain the size ratio.
• Move the grey shape down and to one side by a few pixels in the opposite direction to where the light source would be.
• Ensuring the grey shape is selected use the Lower Selection button to put it behind your original image.

All that remains to be done is to put all the shapes together and the orchid is complete.

If you would like to use the SVG file you can download it here but read the license agreement first.

When I was making the title image for this site I started with the idea of a swish - those wave shapes above. Initially I tried drawing by hand with the pencil tool but even with a tablet my drawing was too shaky. It would have taken a lot of node editing to get that looking even slightly smooth. Next I tried using Bezier curves to construct the shape but after joining all the lines it just looked kind of of messy.

To get a smooth looking shape I needed a more simple approach. So here’s how I ended up with a smooth shape.

The shape is basically a triangle - thick at one side and tapering into a point. So start by drawing a triangle with the polygon tool.

Next you’ll need to edit the triangle’s path to create the curves, but before you can edit the path you’ll need to change it from an object to a path. Path>Object to Path will do this. Choose the Edit Paths by Nodes tool and select the image to see the nodes.
Stretch the triangle out so it forms the basic shape of the wave you’re making. It will probably look something like this now:

To create the curves start by working on the nodes that lie between the base and the tip of your triangle shape. You can tell by the sharp angles between the lines that these are corner nodes. To smoothen that, out make the node symmetric.

You can see the angle has been smoothed out into a curve. Repeat with the node below.
Now you can move your curved areas around to make the beginnings of a wave. In the picture below I’ve moved the top node up and left slightly and the lower node up and right. I’ve tilted the curve by moving the Bezier handles up and down until I’m happy with the shape. You’ll also notice the top right-most node has been moved down to make the base of the shape more narrow.

To add another curve I add two nodes (top and bottom) between the curve and the point and repeat the process to create the new curve. To add more nodes shift-click on the two nodes you wish to add a node between and click the Insert Node button.
In the same way as you did above, play around with positioning the nodes and moving the Bezier handles until you end up with a curve you like. Here’s a pic showing the position of each node’s handles.

And that’s it - a pretty easy way to get a smooth curved shape.

If you give this a try please comment below and let me know, or if you have an alternative method I’d love to know.