There’s something timeless and calming about the gentle bloom of a hydrangea — delicate petals clustered like clouds, shifting shades of violet and lavender catching the light. In this step-by-step Procreate tutorial, we’ll capture that quiet beauty with soft, flowing watercolour techniques tailored for digital art. Using Procreate and my Realistic Watercolour Minimalist Brush Set, you’ll learn how to illustrate this flower on your screen.
This digital illustration of a purple hydrangea captures the flower’s gentle complexity through richly layered watercolour textures and earthy tones. Painted in Procreate using my Realistic Watercolour Brush Set, the piece blends delicate violet and mauve petals with deep green leaves. Soft granulation, intentional bleeding edges, and subtle paper texture enhance the traditional watercolour effect, making the illustration feel as though it was painted by hand.
Timelapse Video
What You’ll Need:
- iPad with Procreate installed
- Apple Pencil
- Realistic Watercolour Minimalist Brush Set
Buy Now – Realistic Watercolour Brushes Minimalist Brush Set for Procreate
Click below to view pricing and option to purchase. File will be available to download instantly once payment has been made.
Purchase includes:
- x4 Brushes (Outline, Main, Blend/Wash & Subtle Bleed)
- x1 Large Canvas (5000x4000px)
- x1 Small Canvas (3500x2535px)
- x1 Guide Booklet
Or for more details, click HERE.
Step 1: Set Up Your Canvas
- Start a new canvas using your included Canvas file.
- This canvas mimics the look of real watercolour paper — softly textured and slightly worn — perfect for building an organic and vintage look.
- Ensure you are on the “Draw / Paint” Here Layer
Step 2: Sketch Your Hydrangea
- Select the Outline Brush from your set.
- In a new layer, begin sketching the basic shape of your hydrangea — think of it as a softly rounded dome made up of overlapping four-petal blossoms.
- Don’t aim for perfection. Let the lines be organic and loose. Include 2–3 large leaves to anchor the composition.
✏️ Keep your sketch lines light, as they’ll only serve as a guide for your painting.
Something to keep in mind when making the sketch is that, in hydrangea flowers, each flowerhead is made up of many smaller flowers, and are made up of two distinct types: showy, and non-showy. The non-showy flowers are set at the interior of the plant, without any petals, and the more colourful, leaf-bearing flowers surrounding the smaller flowers in a decorative ring, are set all the way to the outset of the flower. Since this structure is so unique to the hydrangea, it is important to retain it to the best of your ability when sketching the outline, before putting down any colour.
In hydrangeas, each individual showy flower contains four overlapping petals, which are shaped like spades, with a rounded triangular body pointed outwards. The smaller flowers, at the inner layer, are hardly visible, but are shaped like small pearls, and greatly resemble the same pearl-like interior of the larger flowers.
As for the leaves, they are located at the base of the petals as well as further down, with pointed ends like miniature teeth, and a symmetrical vein running down the middle.
Once you have a loose and workable design at hand, you can create a new layer and add deeper lines around the outline of the petals and the stem, with thinner pencil lines at the veins of the petals, running down the centre, and the branching structure in the body of the leaves. Once you have a clean outline, you can de-select the first rough sketch layer as I have done below.
Once you are satisfied with the outline layer, you can begin carefully adding colour.
Quick Summary of Actions…
Step 3: Lay Down the Base Colour
- Create a new layer beneath your sketch.
- Using the Main Brush, begin painting each petal in light washes of muted purples and lavenders.
- Vary the tones slightly from petal to petal — some leaning cooler (bluish), some warmer (pinky mauve).
…Work petal by petal to maintain definition, letting slight overlaps create natural bleeding and transparency.
Step 4: Add Soft Blends and Depth
- With the Wash/Blend Brush, gently blend areas where petals meet to soften transitions.
- This creates a natural, watery flow that mimics traditional watercolour.
…Don’t overblend — a bit of edge and texture adds to the character.
Step 5: Define Petals & Shadows
- Add another layer above your base paint and set it to “Multiply.”
- Use the Main Brush again with slightly darker shades of purple to define inner petals, soft folds, and areas where shadows naturally occur.
- With the Subtle Bleed Brush, tap around shadow edges to give a feathered, soaked-in look.
Step 6: Paint the Leaves
Blend selected areas with the Wash/Blend Brush, then add small textures or stains with the Subtle Bleed Brush.
Using the Main Brush, block in the leaves with deep, earthy greens — add a touch of brown or ochre to age them.
Layer in veins and details with a darker tone on a Multiply layer above.
Colour Palette
How to Paint the Petals & Leaves (Using the Main Brush)
To paint the leaves, I started out at the darker, inner portions of the vein outline by laying down coats of dark, forestry green, with the inner leaf, where it attaches to the stem, being more brown and of a deeper green colour than the outer leaf, where it is a fainter green.
With that being done, move upwards to the crown of the flowerhead, beginning at the top of the illustration by painting in small, careful brushstrokes. Much like painting the branching structures of the leaves, paint each petal of the flower separately to create distinct properties in the illustration, even when viewed from afar, to maintain the recognisable structure of a hydrangea.
I continued layering in petals with purple and light brown brushstrokes, near dark brown at the tips of the petals and light purple at the centre, and carefully blending as the two connect.
The outer petals of each flower in the flowerhead can be a light, purplish grey, especially as you paint the outset of the flower, as you are now, outlining the structure.
For the time being, you can leave the pearl at the centre of each flower unpainted.
Moving along the top outer flowerhead, I continued alternating and blending coats of brown, light brown, and purple, creating an outline of the top of the hydrangea flowerhead before continuing along the sides and further into the centre of the sketch.
As you continue to paint, you may alternate in the colour balance of each individual flower, especially those that face the viewer more directly. Some flowers – the aforementioned facing flowers in particular, should have fewer grey and brown, and more shades of deep purple and violet, some of them with inner layers of blue and light red to accentuate the brighter colours of the flowerhead.
While the hydrangea, viewed as a whole, looks like one distinct colour, each small flower in the flowerhead has its own balance of shades, which come together to create a complete whole. At this point, with the top of the flowerhead painted and the sides and bottom still only outlined, you can begin painting the inner flowers, moving adjacently so that you paint flowers that are connected to each other or overlapping. The larger flowers largely cover the smaller, circular bud flowers at the centre, so do not worry about painting them until you begin painting the centre peal at the middle of each flower.
As you paint, remember that, even as spaces become more filled, each petal should be painted individually, as to retain the fidelity of the sketch as it becomes covered in pigment.
Filling out the sketch one by one, start adding whiter purples at the centre of the flowers that are fully turned to the viewer, in preparation for the bud at the centre of each individual flower of the flowerhead. This bud will be painted in tones of silver and light purple, striking a balance with the darker brown shades of each flower in the structure and coming across as small points of light in the painting.
You may paint the smaller, interior flowers a similar colour if they are shown, but it is possible that they will be very fine details in the final painting.
Moving down to the lower parts of the flowerhead, these flowers are less brown and more pink, with the darker purple acting as the inner veins of each petal, and the petals themselves going from a deep, natural pink, to a delicate violet at the centre, still retaining that silvery pearl.
Once you have painted each individual flower, you can then add the pearl at the centre, shading to accentuate the fact that it is a miniscule sphere, rather than a flat circle.
Then, moving even further down, outline the veins of the leaves of the stem, and continue painting the stem a deep green with brown undertones. The base of the leaves should be a similar dark green, with the inner veins that you so carefully outlined left mostly at the colour of the paper, with some light greens and beige brushstrokes, moving very carefully to not smear the delicate brushwork you spent so much time on.
Finally, with the entire flower painted, add fine details by reducing the brush size, and blend the harsher areas of colour contrast, and you should be left with a blooming, beautiful hydrangea.
