This week, and probably part of next, I’m focusing on Mother’s Day projects. The fact that I’m also in the midst of the series, How To Paint Simple Spring Flowers, and flowers go so nicely with Mother’s Day is just a happy little coincidence. Hey, I’ll take any reason for a happy coincidence. Last week we started with basic five petal flowers. We’ll revisit them. This week I want to show you some easy tips, and tricks, with four petal flowers. Starting with hydrangea. I’ve already shown a few ways how to paint hydrangea. Today I’m going to show you how to sketch a hydrangea blossom. Sketching always comes in handy when you’re painting. Some things are easier than others to sketch, particularly flowers.
How To Sketch Hydrangea
Step 1 – Make two petals, opposite one another.
Step 2 – Draw two more petals as shown and then add a dot in the center.
That’s it.
Okay, wait. You can play around with the shape of the petals a bit if you want.
And add a little point to each petal.
Or not. This is my first draft for this post and these petals are more triangular. It’s totally up to you how to shape your petals. But this sketch shows you more than another option – it shows you how to ‘layer’ petals into a cluster. You don’t want to sketch a bunch of four petaled clusters simply because when you look at a hydrangea blossom, you don’t see each and every cluster like that. You only see a few distinct four petal clusters. Don’t worry about all of that today. I’ll show you how that works in the next post. Let’s just paint! 
I wanted a very soft look for these hydrangea, almost watercolor-like. So I diluted some green – Fresh Foliage by FolkArt – and lightly painted the leaves.
I did the same thing with the petals using . . . wait for it . . . “Hydrangea” by FolkArt. (Another happy coincidence?) With the end of my paintbrush I added some dipdots of Fresh Foliage into the center.
And also dotted the centers of some four petal clusters. Just here and there. Then dip-dotted Hydrangea blue into the center part. I painted the pink one in the same exact way using a light pink paint. A light lavender would be pretty too. Or a combination? Oh, we have lots to cover this week!
Wouldn’t these be great for Mother’s Day? You could make your own greeting cards, or maybe paint a gift bag, or even dress up a plain tee shirt. They’re easy, fun and FAST!
Free Hydrangea Printables
Here are the hydrangea printables for you use as transfers. Just click on the photo, it’ll take you to Google docs, and print it from there. You could also just print them off onto watercolor paper and paint them for super quick projects. 
I made a 3rd printable, a hydrangea in a teacup. We’ll get to the teacups later this week too but I thought as long as you had the printer fired up, you might as well snag this guy too.
Now you’ve got three different Mother’s Day printables to paint, even if they’re gifts to yourself. You deserve it!
Colleen
Oh Thank you, Colleen. I’m just getting ready to move and have decided to “re-purpose” (ah-humm) an antique post office cupboard by paining it white then tole painting some hydrangeas on the doors!! – instead of throwing in in the trash. SO kind and thoughtful of you to share your lovely gifts!!
Hi Alexis, ugh – moving. My worst. But I’d love to see your hydrangeas when you’ve finished!
Colleen
I did great on this! This is amazing!
Yay Azelle! I’m glad it turned out for you!