In this tutorial you’ll gain some tips to draw realistic hyacinth or any of a lot of complicated flowers with a lot of florets together.
What is an inflorescence?
If you’re someone who’s wanted to learn how to draw a cluster-type of flower, then you’ve wanted to draw something much fancier than a cluster: it’s called an inflorescence! What kinds of flowers have an inflorescence in addition to hyacinth? Just a few:
- lily of the valley
- astilbe
- yarrow
- milkweed
And many more. The tips in today’s hyacinth video might help you in drawing these others, too!
Tutorial: How to draw realistic hyacinth inflorescence in alcohol markers
Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!
Study a flower from real life
As you draw one floret at a time, you’ll want to look more carefully than you can in a photo; a 2d picture can flatten shapes so you can’t see where one flower starts and another ends. With a real flower you can pay attention to negative spaces, which is what will create that dimension!
Color shifts
Begin with small color variances – shift hues little by little and see how that goes. You may stumble on just the right combo and if so – write it down! I knew I had good blue violets but needed to push them more red; the pinks weren’t cutting it. Rather than having THAT many colors to carry out throughout the picture, I proceeded on the whole flower til I was ready to make a big shift in hue and value all at once.
Harmonizing color
Carrying the same/similar colors throughout a drawing helps it all to come together; on something like a flower with distinct colors for a blossom and its greens, we can be tempted to keep them apart. But see if you can incorporate a floral color into a shadow on the stem, and maybe some of your dark green into flower shadows. Value can sometimes be a challenge – run a few tests on scrap to see how dark or light to go with those colors.
Here are the ones used for this drawing:
Hyacinth Printable
If you’d like to try this flower, I created a drawing in pen and ink for ya! You’ll get two versions: one that’s a regular black and white image, another that’s in grey tone in case your printer doesn’t know how to lighten it. That way your marker or pencil coloring will cover the lines and you’ll look like an utter genius!
What’s your favorite flower?
I might make more flower videos and printables in the next month, let me know if you have ideas about which kind? (Note that I have a whole bunch of them on the Printables page already!)
Supplies
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
- Hyacinth printable
- Copic Markers
- Copic Hex Chart
- Neenah Cardstock, Solar White 250pk (Note I was working on Neenah but 11×17 that I bought at a local paper store. Very $$$)
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Amazing … and just wondering how I can fit inflorescence into conversation!
Suggestions for Flower Printables? Hydrangea has always been a fav of mine and definitely fits your definition of inflorescence. I’ve done them in colored pencil (actually sold that one!) and am definitely going to try markers. Thank you for your lessons.
Stunning!!!!!! TFS Sandy!
Jan