Blue Morning Glories Flowers - oil painting

Here is one of my very favorite flowers - heavenly blue morning glories. I love to grow them and I love to paint them. There is something about their twining vines, heart-shaped leaves and heavenly blue trumpet flowers that is captivating!

Heavenly Blue Morning Glories - watercolor painting

I'm so happy to see the morning glories blooming! Especially these Heavenly Blue variety, although I love all the colors of this pretty trumpet-shaped flower.

Blue Morning Glory Acrylic Painting

As December days grow darker, we miss the sunshine up here in the north. It's almost dark by 4:30 PM! I cheered myself up by painting this morning glory flower, a reminder of warm summer days. There's something about morning glory vines, the way the tendrils twist and wind, the delicate bright blue trumpet blooms, that makes them lovely to paint.
Just the other day I cleared a different perennial vine away from my front porch. It wasn't working there. But now there's a space to plant morning glories next spring. I can't wait!

• This painting has been sold.

Heavenly Blue Morning Glories

Whenever I show my work at an outdoor festival these days, people tell me about their morning glories. That's because I always have a painting or two of these extremely popular flowers. Theirs are either doing spectacularly this year or not blooming at all. I keep hearing the same extremes and am not sure what the reason is for the difference. Everyone is getting the same amount of rain (lots), and sun. It's kind of funny.

At any rate, mine are not growing at all. Not sure what's wrong, but I'll have to find a new location for them. Last year I had one which bloomed with one flower and the entire plant was only one inch tall! Considering they usually grow up to cover 7 ft. trellises, that plant was not an Olympic champion.

For this painting, I did not need to have any morning glories for reference. I've painted this favorite flower of mine so many times that I could paint them with my eyes closed. Almost. I hope you don't mind that I put a bumble bee in the scene. Morning glories always seem to have at least one buzzing among them. I've never sat outdoors painting them for more than a few minutes before one will come humming along to bury its head in one of the trumpet-shaped flowers. I like the addition of the bee. It helps make the painting come alive with activity!

Kiskadee Watercolor Painting

The large, yellow-breasted flycatcher, the Great Kiskadee is seen on tree limbs, electric wires and flying overhead throughout Bermuda. You hear its call, 'KISS-ka-DEE" from morning until night. In the very early morning I heard other birds - mourning doves, sparrows, cardinals, a parrot. But when the sun was high, the Kiskadees started. They drowned out the sound of the other birds. They drowned out the traffic. They drowned out the neighbors. I did not see them at the beach, so at least they did not drown out the ocean!
The flamboyant Kiskadees are native to southern Texas and Louisiana and further south to Argentina. Introduced from Trinidad in 1957 to control the Anolis lizard, they feel exceptionally at home in Bermuda. They did not control the lizard, although they do eat lizards along with seeds, fruit, small fish and mainly insects. Both males and females aggressively defend their nests from predators and competing birds.
The morning glories in this painting are the deeper blue flowers that I saw in Bermuda vining and twining along the roadsides on walls, fences, shrubs and trees. They make a nice contrast with the bright orange nasturtiums. I saw this Kiskadee in my Bermuda sister's garden where the morning glories and nasturtium were blooming so prettily.

This painting is #19 of a series of original Zeh paintings called the BERMUDA COLLECTION. 

Morning Glories

Today I did a very lively painting of Heavenly Blue Morning Glories. There is movement in the flowers, leaves and vines as if you can see the plant actively growing toward the sun. I took a brush loaded with paint and splattered color on the bottom leaves as well to enhance the feeling of movement.

Heavenly Blues

Well, here they are again. I told you that I can't stop painting morning glories.

It's amazing that they are still blooming here in New England in mid-October. They are totally susceptible to the slightest frost and usually they are gone by now.

But though it did get cold the other night, it wasn't cold enough to harm these beauties. It's lucky, too, because they take so long to finally bloom. This year we will have had almost two months of blooms by the time they are frostbit. Who knows, if it stays warm enough, even more.

So, to celebrate October Heavenly Blues, I've painted them with a bit of autumn color in the background.

• This painting has been sold.