Night falls, but that mystic glow of the orchids just keeps one awake!
And it is getting surreal... could those orchids even fly?

Sharing some memories of the moment the vintage drawing was created many years ago. This work became a combination of layers drawn with pencils and with pink and light purple colored pencils. The drawing was designed to have vintage style, resembling a bit of old recolored vintage photos. Since then some commissioned portraits have also followed this kind of style.

For this particular drawing the orchid theme was important, not only with the pink orchids in the foreground, but also with those light “flying" orchid flowers in the grey background.

In this vintage styled drawing I combined pencils with colored pencils and played with the limited colors. As a result this drawing is presenting grayscale facial features with light pink and purple orchids.

The comparison between the gray tones and subtle pink colors is making the pink orchids to pop out from the drawing even more. The orchid flowers of the finished drawing were completely hand draw. I have drawn the orchids as if they would have been placed topmost on to the paper.  This resembles almost like creating a 3D work like in some of my illustrations, but this time the flowers were completely hand drawn.

When choosing a realistic style for the drawing, it was important to capture also the orchid flowers by drawing them very precisely, but yet naturally. The aim was to make the flowers look like one could actually touch them…

For this drawing I used real orchids as a reference. I placed the real orchids on to the paper right next to the drawing. And when drawing I was then looking at the real orchid flowers as a reference, and that way the right proportions were easier to achieve.

On the other hand I wanted a bit more variation to the orchids of the drawing, so the drawn orchid flower in the middle was colored with warm pink colors, when instead the other two orchid flowers of the drawing were created with cooler and a bit more purple colors. In this case I also chose to leave the hand drawn orchids more lighter than the real ones, because I wanted the final drawing to have a balance between all the elements.

Keeping the real orchid flowers nearby gave also inspiration for this vintage drawing. And  when I was drawing that mystic glow of the orchid flowers was just captivating... and yes, kept me awake.

I wish inspiring moments to all blog readers!