Daisy Painting Tutorial

I could’ve sworn I’d already done a daisy painting tutorial before this. Daisies are one of my favorite flowers. They’re so bright and cheery. I mean, I love all flowers, but there’s something about daisies.

My main goal with writing a series about Painting Simple Flowers was to show easy ways to paint a type of flower and then take that method and paint similar types of flowers.

Take a look at daisies. There are lots of other flowers that are really similar to them. Black eyed susans, zinnias, dahlias, to name a few.

Do you see the similarities?

How about now? Is it easier to see the similarities with these patterns I drew? So, if you can paint a daisy, you could also paint these other flowers. And more.

Daisies look like sunflowers. Black eyed susans look like echinachia. You get the idea. Not to mention all the different varieties of daisies – shasta, marguerite, gerbers.

Cool, huh? So lemme show you how simple daisies are to paint.

---

How To Paint a Daisy

We’re going to start with a simple, fully open daisy. We’ll get to buds and different shapes later on.

Step 1 – paint a yellow circle.

This is mainly for visual reference, something for you to line up all of the petals around. Don’t try to make it perfectly round.

Step 2 – Underpaint petals around the center.

You can use a light tan or grey for underpainting. Either will work. I used Bamboo. Now, if you were painting on a darker background you could skip this step and use the background as your underpainting. The point is to have a darker color that will show under the white petals.

Notice how I took the Bamboo on to the yellow center. Don’t worry about keeping the circle nice and round. We’ll fix it later.

Step 3 – paint one coat of white over each petal.

Start with one petal and work your way all around the circle, slightly overlapping each consecutive petal. See how there are little lines or ridges on the petals? Keep those. Don’t smooth them out. They’ll give your daisy some texture.

Again, the white overlaps on to the yellow center too.

Step 4 – Apply a second coat of white.

Do you see how this second coat brightens the petals? You still can see the texture from the underpainting but this second coat makes the petals look whiter and brighter.

Step 5 – Repaint the yellow circle.

I used a lighter yellow for the this second coat. It just adds some extra texture, with the darker color painted first.

That’s it. Easy-peasy, right?

It doesn’t matter how many petals you have, or even their shapes. Daisies come in so many varieties that you can’t get this wrong. Just have fun!

Now, since I painted a white daisy on white watercolor paper, this looked a little washed out. I could’ve detailed it with some Bamboo paint or outlined it in a marker, but I grabbed a watercolor pencil this time.

I made some pencil marks on the petals and in between them, then took a damp paint brush and smoothed them out a bit.

There you go – a simple white daisy.

I’ll be painting some of the other flowers that are similar to daisies this week so I’ll share those as I get them done.

I’m also doing a hangout this Tuesday, May 14, to show this technique and a few other tips. If you want to see it live, check here at 4 pm PST. But it’ll record to YouTube so you can watch the video at any time.

Colleen

about Colleen

Subscribe to Mural Maker & More by Email