How to Paint a Wheat Sheaf

A sheaf of wheat can be painted with a tricolor shading technique.

The sheaf of wheat has been a symbol of both plenty and agriculture for centuries. It even appears in Biblical imagery. A wheat sheaf is a bundle of wheat straw, with the grain heads still attached at the top, typically bound up with a piece of cord, or ribbon. Actual wheat sheaves are not a very common sight in much of the developed world these days, since they are created in the process of hand-harvesting grain. Start by finding an image of wheat sheaves online or in a book to use as inspiration.

Things You'll Need

• Inspiration image
• Paint
• Art brushes

Instructions

1. Draw your wheat sheaf, either standing upright, which is traditional, or on its side. The straws of wheat typically taper into the tie in the center and are fuller at top and bottom. Use curved lines running from top to bottom and draw the individual wheat grain heads on as many stems as you want. These look like double rows of tiny seeds, angling up toward the outside, with straw tufts at their outside ends, study your inspiration image for more detail.

2. Paint your sheaf with a base color closest to the main color of the wheat in your inspiration image. Use curved brush strokes to paint the straw and a fine point brush to paint the individual seeds. Paint the tie with the appropriate colors.

3. Mix a small amount of your base color with an equal amount of white to create a highlight color. Determine which direction the light is hitting your sheaf from.

4. Paint individual lines starting with the outside of the sheaf on that side to represent highlighted stalks using the fine tip brush. Use the same curved line you used for the base color. Stay on the same side of the straws, as the curve changes from one side of the sheaf to the other, so that lines on one side have ends curved out to the left and vice versa for the other side.

5. Mix a shadow color with your base color and brown in the same way. Add one thin curve of shadow on the side of each highlight away from the light source, using the same brush and stroke. Add highlights and shadows to a few of your wheat head seeds as well.

References

• Painting Landscapes; Gabriel Martin i Roig; 2006

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish