Detail of painting by Claude Monet
Drawing and painting flowers can be done using live or artificial flowers. Creating art from a real subject produces more believable results than drawing or painting flowers from memory. With a real subject in front of you, you can explore the shades and hues of the flowers, and the way light and shadow play off the petals, stems and leaves. Painting from life also makes it easier to use negative space in the final piece of art. For artists who tend to work abstract, it's educational to first learn paint the object realistically, before deconstructing it.
Instructions
1. Visit a local arboretum or local greenhouse with a sketch pad and pencil. Bring along a digital camera as well. Sketch the shapes of different varieties of flowers. Use a travel watercolor case to make color notes in the sketch pad for later use. The paintings may be done on site, or later at home, using the sketches and color swatches as a guide.
2. Arrange flowers in a vase, milk jug or empty glass jar. Use any flowers you have in the house, or can pick from the yard. Purchase some exotic varieties when you want a change of pace.
3. Draw a quick outline of the flower and its stem using a pencil. Keep your eye on the flower or flowers, not on the paper. Try not to look down too often at the paper, unless you feel like you totally lost your place. One key to being able to accurately draw and paint is to learn see what is actually in front of you first.
4. Include the vase or container holding the flowers. Draw a horizontal or line to represent a table, if drawing a still life. The flowers need to be resting on something. Sketch in any background images or designs, from the room, or from your imagination.
5. Brush in the shadows of the flower petals in the complementary color of the petals. Let those shadows dry first. Move on to paint the stem, in one broad stroke, while the shadows dry.
6. Dab paint in the petal color and paint the petals with wide brush strokes. Overworked flower petals will look forced and unnatural. Add detail work using watered down Payne's gray, or a darker color of the petal color after the petals have dried.
7. Paint flowers in a field by
