Paint Hydrangea – Three Ways!

I don’t like painting the same thing over and over again. Which may explain why I’ve never done a craft fair before and probably never will.

I get bored doing the same thing over and over again. Even if it’s painting.

But when I looked at this hydrangea painting again, I knew I couldn’t display it as a sample for the upcoming class in June. Which meant I had to paint it again. Which meant I was bored.

Which meant I thought I’d play around with some different ‘styles’ of painting hydrangea.

For this first one, you only need one paint color and a black Sharpie.

Like the hydrangea tutorial above, you start by making a blue ‘cloud’. Or pink, lavender, white or whatever color you want to make your flower.

Paint the outer edges first, trying not to make them symmetrical and ‘perfect’ looking.

Then fill it in. This should take you . . . oh, about 5 minutes. If that.

But now you gotta let this guy dry. Completely. I’d suggest trying the hydrangea tutorial I posted below while this one dries.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Once dry, grab your Sharpie and make some ‘W’s. Or ‘M’s. Or ‘C’s.

Ta-Da! A hydrangea!

If you wanna get a little fancier, add some more petals . . .

Super easy, super fun.

Quick ‘n dirty. I like this kind of project.

But I had to try something a little different. So with the same colors I used on the first hydrangea tutorial – hydrangea blue, violet, white and medium green – and a black Sharpie, I attempted a watercolor-like style.

Same colors, same pattern – completely different look. Wanna know how to do it?

Sure you do!

First draw the outline of the hydrangea head, the stem and the leaf veins with a Sharpie.

Add some more veins to the leaves and a few pointy edges.

I drew one full blossom on the ‘top’ of the hydrangea. . .

. . . then I filled in a few more petals.

So I wound up with this sketch -

Now, since I have acrylic and not watercolor paint, and since this was on watercolor paper, I needed to really thin down the paint. I could’ve used water, but the paper absorbs watered-down paint really fast.

Instead, I used Folk Art Floating Medium. Big surprise, huh? Especially since I use that stuff nearly every day.

I loaded my brush fully with floating medium then picked up a tiny bit of paint. Then I stroked the brush back and forth on my palette (foam plate) until it was thoroughly mixed.

Here’s the first layer of medium green. It’s the same paint as these leaves -

So you get the idea how thinned down the paint was, right?

I thinned down the hydrangea blue the same way.

Then a little violet.

A little more blue and a bit more green and that did it.

What do you think? Little different, especially for me, but I like it. I need to practice a lot more, but it was a nice break from my regular layering technique.

So, now you have 3 different ways to paint a hydrangea – super easy, easy, and layering (and that just happens to be easy too !)