How to paint a Sunflower with Acrylic Paint Lesson 1, step by step

Hi guys this is Alison Pryor. I am gonna request to do a sunflower as you can see here. So we'll try to do one something like that and what you will need for this painting is well I got 11 by 14 canvas and I have I'm just using the bottle paints because it's easier for me to do it on video. I just have red yellow white black and brown and you can use if you're using the tube paints you can use cad yellow and you can use burnt umber or burnt sienna and uh tantalum white crimson red and I'm just using some brushes. I'm going to use this chisel uh not chiseled um this is a chisel edge brush and this is a filbert brush so you may use those and a bristle brush that's only about a half an inch it's not very big because if your canvas is small then you don't need a big brush if your canvas is 16 by 20 then you'd want to probably a two inch brush and I'm just going to use a little liner brush here and so we'll get started so it's hopefully we'll get it to look something like that. So what I did was I um I just made a background I didn't want to spend a half an hour showing you how to do the background so all I did with that was I mixed some green with a bit of black or blue you know you just get a dark green if you want to use a dark green just get a sap green and put it on for a nice dark background just put it right on your canvas and let it dry when it dries get a piece of chalk and I would suggest probably yellow so you can see it now we're going to make the center piece of the sunflower and that's round so you can either use some kind of a top of a butter dish or butter carton or something you know that's round if you want to I'm just going to draw the circle for now you probably do a freehand you don't need to do that but just put a circle in there and that's all you have to do so we want to draw some leaves I should say petals and so this is the beginning of your sunflower so it'd easier for us to draw it out first some people who are well experienced can probably just put it on there really quick so let's just take some lines out and we'll take a line out here and we'll take another line out here and join it up with that one like little bunny rabbit's ears and then take another line out from the bottom of that one and out and bring your line over and join it up and then bring another line out down here and join it up with that one so you get all these bunny rabbit ears how's that and then you bring another line out and on the and join it up bring another line out and join it up now that one's a little fat but that's okay and then we'll bring another line out and another one out so don't have to be perfectly just do it the way you feel comfortable and also look up some video now some other videos so you can see how other people paint um sunflowers and look up some pictures of sunflowers so you can see what the petals look like and then you'll have some reference photos right now you're just going by what I'm doing so it'd be nice to have some reference photos so we might put some in between those just to make it more full so I'm just going to take a line off this petal here and come out and another line off this one and then make some in between now it's not going to be exactly like the one I did before so just take a line off the petal line off of this petal and join it up line off this petal line off this petal join it up line off of this petal this petal this petal this petal this petal this petal line off of this petal now you can have as many as you want you can have them all over the place so that's just the beginning for you so the next step that I'm going to show you is we are going to get the basic colors on now and then I'll probably will come back in another I'll probably do this in two or three steps because I don't want to rush you so and when I take a break then you can work on it so I'm just going to take my bristle brush and I'm going to dip it in some brown a bit of brown and I'm going to dip it into a little bit of black okay so we need really dark so just going to tap that on there tap tap tap tap tap there we go so when you get the center almost finished add more black because we want the ends of it to be black and dark now if you're using the tube paints the expensive tube paints really nice ones you can get a really nice dark color almost black by using burnt umber and ultramarine blue you add two of those colors together you get almost black but with these two bottle paints I find I can't get a nice black with them so that's why I'm using black a lot of artists don't want to use black and I guess the reason is because it makes it too flat looking but if you add other colors to black it won't be too bad at all so I'm just coming outside that line it doesn't have to be perfectly there we go so it doesn't have to be perfectly round it's going to sort of go into the flowers so now I'm going to put that brush back in water always put your brush back in your water when you're done painting with it because it can dry up on your acrylic so it can be pretty cruel it'll dry up and you'll ruin your and it'll ruin your brushes so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take some yellow and I'm going to take a little bit of red and I'm going to put a little bit of brown in there or burnt umber whatever you're using we'll get an underpainting for our flowers first okay so just fill that in there we may need a couple of coats that's okay so fill that in there we go that's all you have to do so use your chalk lines to guide you and you might need a second coat like I said because it's pretty transparent okay so just keep adding those colors to your petals good if you want them a little darker just add a little bit more of the burnt umber and just keep filling those in fill them in and we'll worry about the tops later we'll probably put a little top on those after so we'll just get these basic colors in first the underpainting as I call them the underpainting now those chalk lines they will be they'll come off so don't worry about those that's why I use chalk because you can get rid of them and so we'll just keep mixing up our brown burnt umber and our yellow and our red and you can have deeper colors than that if you want to so you don't worry about it being exactly like mine I keep saying whenever you're doing videos with me or anybody else don't you worry about getting exactly like that person's I know you look at a painting you say I love to be able to do it that way and you try to get it exactly the same and then you get disappointed so you have to add your own touches just learn the techniques and then do your own thing that's what I've learned over the years because I used to start out first and I was trying to get exactly what I've seen and then I get disappointed because it didn't look exactly the same okay so let's keep putting this paint on good so keep putting the paint on a bit of yellow a bit red a bit of brown maybe a little bit of white if you want just fill that in this way we can get the shapes and we can get the underpainting you can get some dark shadows there we go that's all you have to worry about now is getting this underpainting done doesn't matter you know if you can see through it or not because we'll be going over more layers so brown and red and yellow two red add more yellow there we go good now when I get this done I'm going to let you guys work on that and then we'll come back and we'll put then the next layer paint on the petals so this is the easy part it's all pretty easy it's just a matter of having patience and enjoying what you're doing good okay so we're getting close it's okay to outside the lines you know you can shape it up if you want to make it a little bigger just come right out you know you can shape it up now whatever way you want okay so because you got the the basic drawing there so now you can take it and shape it up whatever way you want if you want it fatter or taller skinnier or longer you want to take that petal and pull it up a bit higher you can okay so do whatever you want good so let's keep going next petal keep it going make the shape that you want while you got it all drawn in there some more try and get some brown in the background in the dark ones back here that will make it nice and shadowy for you okay and let's get some on here there we go shape it up there we go and that might look a little funny now but don't worry so you want to put the yellow on it's gonna look so nice when we get the second coat on there see we'll get some nice colors going on there just get your basic coat on now that's all so you can shape them up the way you want them i'm using the filbert brush for this because the filbert brush it's got a nice round tap on it so it gives me a nice round edge see it goes right around the edge and it gives me a nice shape to my flower filbert brushes are nice nice for flowers okay we're almost done there we go see how nice and bright that yellow is that's what we're going to be putting on there when i come back so you guys don't forget to put your dark green or whatever dark color you want in the background first let that dry or dry and then get some chalk and draw out your flower use a reference photo if you want or take a picture of what i just showed you of what i have done and then draw it out and put your brown in the center brown with a bit of black and then start painting your petals and under painting okay just different colors good so i'm gonna leave that with you to get that much done and i know it looks funny now but we will get that beautiful so you guys go ahead and practice and i'll see you in lesson two of a sunflower