Example Flower Painting in Acrylics

I’m not usually up for painting flowers, but I took the photo I created this from, and I loved the colour clash between the yellow and red, on a grim, cold, blue day. The whole thing took around two hours to create - taking breaks every 15 minutes or so to re-evaluate it from a distance. I’ve outlined the steps I took below:

1.  I sketched the photo directly onto a wooden panel, freehand (top right). This took around 10-15 minutes. With organic things such as flowers and landscapes it’s difficult to get the proportions so wrong that it looks bad, so a freehand sketch works fine.

2. Next I used three main colours to block the canvas and fill in the darker shadows. I used ultramarine blue, sienna and crimson red (middle right). In previous examples I have shown you how to use raw umber to create the shadows first, but I was very concerned about losing the shape of the flower. Hence the blue that surrounds it.

3. This time around I used the raw umber over the three colours, adding shadows and creating very dark places around the daffodil.

4. Then additional colours and colour mixes were added, including grey, lemon yellow mixed with white, and a little orange (bottom right). That’s seven colours in total, which is all we need; and still no black.

5. I used a couple of glazes (very weak, watery paint) to create the muddy look, and in bright yellow over the flower to boost its colour.

6. As a lot of the photo was out of focus in the background I kept it quite loose. I wanted to keep a fairly ‘painterly’ look, with visible brush strokes etc. It’s important to strike a balance between realism and visual appeal, and I was happy that it ‘felt’ right.