Blue Hydrangeas

My hydrangeas barely bloomed at all this year. The winter of 2014 was so harsh that every one of my hydrangea bushes died back, and it took all summer for them to recover and reach any size at all. Two of them began to blossom around the end of August and are now covered with blooms and buds...just in time for winter Sheesh!

8" x 10", ink & watercolor on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico paper.

The other fifteen or so hydrangeas that I have planted around the house are still sporting nothing but leaves. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that next year will be better. I missed those beautiful blue blooms this summer.

In this painting, I combined two different varieties of hydrangea. The one in the foreground is Nikko Blue...

and the other is a variety that has pretty pale yellow centers.

If you visit this earlier post, you'll find a step-by-step tutorial showing the process I use in painting hydrangeas.

The flowers in the background were painted with less detail...

Leaf veins were painted in various ways:

negative painting...

The leaf was first painted a golden color, then darker areas were painted with green, avoiding the vein areas

scratching lines into wet paint...

Vein lines scratched in with a wooden skewer

lifting dried paint with a damp brush, and drawing lines with a pen...

This leaf shows veins detailed with negative painting, lifting, and ink lines

The pen I used was a Noodler's Nib Creaper Flex pen filled with Noodler's Lexington Gray ink, available from Goulet Pens.

(This matted & framed original watercolor painting is available for $300.00. Please contact me by email if you're interested.)