How to Paint Flowers

Because of their delicate shapes, flowers offer details for beginning artists to draw and paint. Once you're comfortable with your paint and other materials, you can make realistic flowers just as easily as abstract ones. Follow these steps, and you can begin to paint and draw flowers.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Paper
• Paint brush
• Paint
• Paper or canvas
• Thinning medium
• Scalpel

Instructions

1. Draw a light outline of the flower on your painting surface. This will help you when you start to paint.

2. Choose a medium color for your base. For example, if your flowers are blue, choose a blue between a navy and sky blue. Any color that is neither too dark nor too light will work.

3. Apply a light wash to your painting surface. A wash simply means to apply color lightly and evenly. If you are working with watercolor or acrylic paint, add a little water to your paint before applying it. If you are using oil paints, add oil to thin the paint.

4. Take a darker color, usually in the same family as your base, and paint in the shadows on your flowers. The darkest shadows are usually between petals and, if you can see it, where your flowers meet their stems.

5. Paint in the highlights of your flower with a lighter color. For the highlights, you can use any bright color. If you're working with watercolors, you might want to try a white or yellow, as a lighter tone of your base color will not show up well.

Tips & Warnings

• Instead of using a lighter color to make the highlights try scratching away some of the paint with a scalpel. Remove enough paint to reveal the painting surface below. This will only work if you started with a paper that was lighter colored than your base tone.