How To Paint Simple Flowers With Acrylic Paint

Painting simple flowers needn’t be tricky. If you want to learn a quick and easy technique to paint simple flowers with acrylic paint, read on!

I don’t know what the weather is like with you, but here where I live in south Wales, the sun is beginning to warm up and the daffodils are flowering.

I love spring so much and it’s one of my favourite seasons along with autumn.

With that in mind, today I’m going over a quick and easy way to paint simple flowers with acrylic paint.

This technique can be adapted to create lots of different flowers. The colour of the petals and the centre of the flower will really make the difference here.

If you painted the petals white with just the tiniest hint of purple, the flowers become daisies like the kind that grow in the lawn. (At least they do in our lawn…!)

You could also paint gerbera daisies in a multitude of colours. To do this, give the flower lots and lots of petals and make the centre a slightly darker shade of the colour used for the petals.

And if you wanted to do something different again, you could paint the flower face on. Give it a large, dark brown centre and bright, sunshine yellow petals and you have a sunflower! A straight stem finishes it off nicely.

A note on brushstrokes

The process I’m going to show you is pretty straightforward. It’s basically a quick, flicky stroke of the brush for each petal. Then we go back and layer up the colours using the same brush stroke.

You can be quite free with your strokes when you’re painting flowers with acrylics. I like to make sure my brush isn’t too wet, just damp.

Since I’m not concerned with making my paintings super realistic, I like the almost ragged effect a fairly dry brush gives when you flick outwards.

If you want to make the petals look more lifelike, you might want to place them more carefully.

Practice and experimentation will help you figure out the exact technique that suits you and what you want to create.

How To Paint Simple Flowers With Acrylic Paint

Supplies needed

• Acrylic paper (I used my Fabriano Venezio sketchbook in the video above)
• Acrylic paint (I used heavy body acrylics, but you can use whatever you happen to have. The colours you’ll need are red, yellow, green, white, and whatever colour you want the petals to be. I used purple.)
• A medium flat brush suitable for acrylics
• A jar of water

Step one

Start by painting a yellow-orange semi circle for the centre of the flower. Use a little red and some yellow. (Cadmium red and cadmium yellow are good for this.)

Step two

Paint a green stem down from the flower’s centre. (For reference, in the video above I used Amsterdam Standard Series Acrylic Paint in Permanent Green Deep.)

Step three

Load up your brush with purple paint (or whatever colour you want the petals to be). I used dioxazine purple mixed with a little cadmium red.

Start near the flower’s centre, push down with the brush and then flick downwards. Each stroke should curve down from the centre. Repeat this around the bottom of the yellow-orange part.

Step four

While the petals dry, add some darker orange to the centre of the flower. To do this, add a little more red to the original colour you used for the flower’s centre.

Step five

We’re now going back to the petals to add another layer of paint.

Add a little white paint to the first colour you used and use the same technique as above to add a second layer to the petals. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get the layers exactly one on top of the other.

Step six

Add a little white to the left side of the centre of the flower as a highlight.

Step seven

Mix some yellow into the green you used for the flower stem, and add a little to the left side of the flower’s stem.

Now you can paint simple flowers for use in all kinds of creative projects such as your art journal, handmade cards, or just because you want to!Save

Ready to learn more about acrylic painting? Check out this article: Acrylic Painting Terms: A Glossary For Beginners!

About Stacey

I’m Stacey and I’m a blogger, abstract artist and freelance writer. My aim is to help busy people feel inspired and get more creative with tutorials, hints and tips.

I live in Cardiff with my partner and dog, and in my free time you’ll find me hiking, reading, painting or sampling a craft beer or two.

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