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.