I can safely say that creating and releasing my first ever digital course, Painting Flowers in Acrylic, has been one of the proudest moments of my artistic career. If you're interested in checking out the course, you can use code BLOG30 and take $30 off at checkout (don't forget the code, I want you to save!)

There are hundreds of artists who have successfully completed the program, and I'd love to work with you. But even if you're just here for some free tips and advice for how to paint flowers with acrylic, I've got you covered! 

Painting a Flower with Acrylics

If you’re interested in learning to paint more realistic flowers in acrylic, but aren’t ready to dive into the full course yet, here are a few tips to help you get started while you’re practicing on your own:

1. Don’t expect the petal to look realistic on the first layer. Acrylics often dry transparently, and much darker than you initially intended. Prepare yourself mentally to build layers on each and every petal.

This is because of two reasons. The first is opacity levels. Many of the colors you'll be using, especially cooler reds or your blues, are inherently transparently. This isn't your fault, it's just how the paint is. When a color is transparent, it requires more layers to eliminate the streakiness.

The second is the acrylic binder. Acrylic paints are made up of three ingredients: the pigment (the color), the binder (what adheres it to the painting surface), and water. The acrylic binder is milky when wet, and clear when dry, leading you to believe that your paint color will be a lighter value than it actually is. 

Painting in layers alleviates this, and knowing this in advance can help you strategize accordingly. 

2. If your colours are too bright and saturated, tone them down using their complementary opposite instead of black. For example, if you want to paint a purple petal but your colour is too intense, try adding a bit of yellow. If your petal is way too orange, add a hint of blue. I often use reds in my greens to help them look much more realistic, since green can be a very tricky colour to work with.

Complementary opposites are a wonderful way of achieving soft depth through contrast as opposed to strictly using values. For example, you can add hints of red to green foliage to break up the greens and add visual interest. 

3. Use older brushes for better blending. I like old, scruffy brushes to get soft, feathered edges on my petals. If you are considering throwing out a brush because it’s completely lost its shape, consider keeping it in a jar especially for ancient brushes and put it to work on flower petals instead.

Another tip that I use for all paintings is to not think of your subject in terms of lights and darks, but instead try to only see colour. For example, if you had to isolate the one colour that you were looking at in the flower petal, what would it be? Forget how it looks in relation to the colours surrounding it…is it blue, purple, etc.? Even shadows and highlights have a colour undertone and are never black or white, they’re usually soft colours that our eyes perceive as being black or white. 

Seeing your flowers as only possessing colour and not darks and lights will soften your paintings and help your petals look much more realistic. Colours have inherent values (purples are darker than yellows) so the shadows, mids and highlights will emerge on their own.

I hope these tips help you in your painting practice, if you have any questions, feel free to leave them below! If you’d like to watch the full peony timelapse, you can watch the YouTube tutorial below. If you'd like to check out the peony painting course, you can visit Painting Flowers in Acrylic, and don't forget to use discount code BLOG30 to take $30 off.

Happy painting!

PS If you found this useful, you should definitely check out my brand new Color Mixing with Acrylic course. It's over 15 hours of instruction, with 70+ lessons and lifelong access to our online painting community. Check it out here.