Once you go through a few simple steps and tips on painting watercolor flowers and leaves, you will be able to improvise on your own, and paint all kinds of loose watercolor floral in no time!
How to Paint a Flower with Acrylics Step by Step
This is an acrylic painting demonstration of a Zowie Zinnia I created from a photograph I captured at the Colorado State University Floral Testing Site in 2008. The purpose of this demo is to show how Acylics, with good pigment content, can create lovely washes for the artist, almost similar to those achieved with watercolors. This demo uses an Ampersand Aquaboard, and Stephen Quiller Acrylics.
Step 1: The Initial Washes
I applied my first two coats of Stephen Quiller Acrylics…using Cad Yellow. Did a very light wash of Cad Orange for shading, and created a light neutral gray with the yellow and Stephen’s own Quiller Violet to overlay the vibrant white of the board’s background. I took the same color darker for the flower center and stem. This entire step is more to give me a blueprint as it were, of where I want to be going, and a guidance of color with an underlayment of hues.
Step 2: The Intermediary Washes
This second round of washes used the same colors on the flowers as before, but I upped the heat a little with Quin Red. That and the mixes I created from the group were then used to begin creating petal definition.
Materials and tools to paint watercolor flowers
*Some resources in article are affiliate links. Full disclosure here.
( Some of the helpful resources are affiliate links. Full disclosure here. )
- paper : (UPDATE- I now only use better quality watercolor paper that doesn’t buckle!) I really like this Strathmoreand this Canson watercolor paper.
- brushes: I like using soft watercolor brushes with a nice pointed tip like these , and this set. They are great for watercolor washes, and for finer details.
- watercolor paints: this is a good basic set, and this is a fabulous artist grade set which I LOVE, and a palette that can be used to mix colors. This palette with lid is a great choice too.
- a jar of water for wetting and rinsing brushes
If you need to learn a few essential beginners watercolor techniques including wet on wet, and wet on dry, check out this tutorial first: Paint a watercolor rose in 3 ways!
Step 1: Start with flowers in the bouquet.
When I paint watercolor flowers in a bouquet, I like to start with flowers, and paint the watercolor leaves later.
Start with a lighter wash, because it’s easier to go deeper in color later. In watercolor there isn’t really a pink color, it’s basically red diluted with lots of water.
Next we will add the flower center. Dip one of the clean brushes in water, and moisten the paper a bit, then dip another brush in yellow to paint the center. This way the center has a softer edge.
Keep adding more watercolor flowers with different shapes. Oranges and yellows look nice with pinks and reds, and a blue flower for some contrast!
Step 2: add details & accents to the watercolor flowers
As you can see the deeper red tips of the petals, the deeper orange at the base of another flower, some color dots, all these add depth and richer details to the flowers.
We can always come back and add more details later. Next we paint the stems of these flowers with a pale green, as well as a couple of leaves. I like making the leaves different sizes here.
