How to paint Sunflower

It’s hard not to love sunflowers. They’re so bright and cheery! I painted this one for my first paint pARTy.
But if you don’t live in the Sacramento area, you can paint it too! I’ll post the full tutorial later today with a link, but here are the steps, just so you can see how easy it is.

If you want to have the petals overlapping the center, pencil those in first. Then paint a dark brown circle – or part of one. It will probably take 2-3 coats.

Next, paint a background color. I used two shades of green, but you could use any color you like. Maybe blue? Or a rusty red? What would work in your interior?

Ok – bear with me on this one. I forgot to take a picture of the first coat of yellow. This pic is showing 2 steps. But, here’s what you do.

1. basecoat petals with Yellow.
2. apply Antique Gold on one side of each petal and the tips. Then make a curved line, or two, from the brown center.

At this point, your sunflower may not look too pretty. Don’t worry. It’ll all come together by the end.

Take your original Yellow paint and go back over each petal.

Now you’re going to add even more shading. The Antique Gold was the first layer of shading. So now take Raw Sienna and loosely outling each petal and the curved lines coming from the brown center.

You make like how it looks after this step. If you do, leave it alone. If the Raw Sienna looks to strong, add another coat of Yellow. You can do these steps over and over until you get the look you like. Adding more layers simply adds more dimension to the flower.

Now add another coat of dark brown. I used Burnt Umber. You just want a clean line between the petals and the center.

Take Raw Sienna and dab it in a semi-circle. Dab? Yep! Not a brushstroke, but a dab – lots of ‘em.

And finally, dab on some Antique Gold over the Raw Sienna.
That’s it! Pretty simple, huh? I hope you give it a try. I’ll put it into a tutorial for you, but I think you can get the idea from this.

Colleen