You should always wet your brush the first time you use it, then blot the excess water on the paper towel, and then dip it in the paint. This just loosens the paint and brush up, so it flows better. You don’t want it dripping wet though, it will ruin the paint.
Paint a Butterfly
How to Paint a Butterfly
Learn how to paint a Butterfly in acrylics, a step by step painting tutorial for beginners.
Prep Time 10 minutes
Active Time 2 hours
Total Time 2 hours 10 minutes
Difficulty Easy
Materials
- Cotton Stretched Canvas
- Flat Brushes
- Acrylic Paints:
- Cerulean Blue
- Titanium White
- Cad Orange Hue
- Dalyride yellow
- Carbon Black
- Vermillion
- Flat Brush set
- Black Paint Pen or Liner Brush
How to Paint a Butterfly
What you will need:
- Plastic disposable tablecloth
- Easel if you like
- Paints in various colors, acrylic is best, and you can get the cheap store brand, which works just fine
- Pencil and eraser
- Transfer paper and tracing paper if you want to do duplicates
- Canvas in 16” x 20 for each person
- Paper towels
- Paint palette or paper plate and cup for water for each person
- Paintbrushes in various sizes from tiny to at least a 1”.
Step by Step Butterfly Painting Tutorial
Let’s learn how to paint a butterfly!
The first thing to do is to take one canvas and draw the outline of the butterfly.
Don’t let this overwhelm you, it doesn’t have to be detailed or perfect, you just need to make it fill about ¾ of the canvas and have the 4 wing sections, and body mainly. If you want to draw a more kid friendly butterfly with a smile on it’s face we also have a tutorial on how to draw a butterfly.
Draw it lightly and erase if you make a mistake.
If it makes you too nervous to do it right on the canvas, then tape together tracing paper to fit over top of the canvas to make the 16” x 20” size and draw it on that instead.
Any dots, designs on the wings or antenna will be added later in painting, and will be painted over, so don’t bother to add those. Just the main outline of the butterfly is enough.
Now if you are doing this just for you, you don’t need to worry with making copies unless you drew it on the tracing paper.
If you did, or if you are making duplicates for a get together, or a class, use the transfer paper to make copies on to the rest of the canvases. This eliminates drawing it again. You will need to trace the butterfly you drew on to tracing paper first, and then transfer it.
If you have never used transfer paper here’s how it works:
Find the side of the paper that has the ink on it and lay that facing down on the canvas.
Then, line up the tracing paper over the top of it, to match up with the canvas, so that the butterfly is where you want it to go on the canvas.
Take a dull pencil or tracing tool and trace over each line you want copied. When you think you got all the lines done, try lifting the paper up a bit and peeking to be sure you didn’t miss any, before you pull the paper off, so it doesn’t come out of alignment with the tracing you just did, and fill in any lines you missed. Then repeat on each canvas you need a copy on. Saves a huge headache of drawing the same thing over and over!
Paint the butterfly wings
For this next step I used a #12 flat and the colors titanium white, cadmium yellow deep, cadmium orange hue and cadmium red medium.
Load your #12 flat in both titanium white and cadmium yellow deep.
Start in the middle and paint outwards using the full width of the brush.
Basically, we are painting these wings so that the bright yellow is in the middle and it slowly transitions to the red on the tip of the wings.
Do the same on the other wing. Go out about half way with this yellow/white combo.
Next load your brush in cadmium orange medium. You will need to blend this carefully with the yellow because that orange is so strong.
It might help to load both the yellow and orange in the brush to get it to blend.
Basically continue to paint outwards towards the edges of the wings blending that orange with the yellow.
Tip: if you still have a lot of white on your brush, completely rinse it and then load again.
Do this on both the wings. I went almost all the way to the edges with this orange.
Next load your brush in cadmium red medium and carefully blend it with the orange by painting over it slightly and adding more orange to your brush to allow the two colors to mesh and blend on the canvas.
Use the side of the brush to kind of outline the wings so you can really define the butterfly at this point.
Paint the butterfly body and outline the wings
I used a #4 round brush and mars black to paint the body of the butterfly.
Tip: water down the black slightly by swirling your brush in the water and then on the palette. This helps the black paint to flow better.
Then with the same brush and the black, outline the far edges of the wings.
When you outline, allow your line to be very thick in some areas and not so thick in other areas.
To increase the thickness put more pressure on the brush and the decrease thickness, put less pressure on the brush.
For the butterfly antennae, I used a 10/0 liner because this is a much thinner line.
Paint the black line details on the wings
Next, you should still be able to see those lines that you traced in the beginning. Use a 10/0 liner to paint those lines.
Then paint some new lines extending from the “loop lines” to the edges of the wings. See pictures below:
Use the 10/0 liner and titanium white to paint one highlight line on the body and the head.
