Pink Hollyhocks

I took a bit of artistic license with this image. It originally had three different flowers but I didn’t like the color and shape combinations of the original. I think by isolating the lovely hollyhock blooms that this image is much improved.

I hope you’ll like it too.

We don’t generally have hollyhocks in our garden. They grow so very tall that they need a protected place from the wind that we just don’t have. They are also bee magnets and shouldn’t really be planted anywhere that people frequent – anywhere we might be able to protect and support them is simply too heavily trafficked for them to be safely planted. Too bad for us and the bees in our yard.

The pink hollyhocks in this image look as if they could have been drawn today but they were included in a book that was published over 150 years ago. They were hand-painted with watercolors – this must have been a more expensive book as the color was added with great care. Some of these old book plates look as if a child colored them in rather than a professional artist. The leaves are so well done in this drawing that some of them look like they could be a photograph.

I’ve put it on a white background so that you should be able to more readily use it with your own work.