Watercolors for beginners: Lupine Flowers

I’ve been meaning to try watercolors lately since the last time I recall using the medium was when I was a small child in art class. For my first watercolor post I wanted to share a very basic, safe for beginners, watercolor painting of Lupine flowers – a beautiful wildflower.

What you’ll need:

• Water color paints (easily found at Amazon.com)

• Watercolor paper (easily found at Amazon.com)

• A paper towel – great for wiping up extra paint/water
• Cup of water

Lupine flowers are kind of coned shaped with a bigger base of buds at the bottom with progressively smaller buds as you move up the flower, forming a point at the top.

To get started we’ll pick a color and make imperfect tear dropped or oval shapes.

Continue making ovals and teardrops, moving up the paper creating a cone shape. Consider adding a second color to your buds to add a little depth or movement. The color will disperse throughout the bud since the blue paint is still wet. Let the paint do it’s thing! Perfection is not needed with watercolors.

Once you’ve created a cone shape, create a light colored stem to bring your Lupine together.

If you’re like me you still have some gaps to fill in around the stem. Simply add more buds.

Once you have one Lupine flower, add additional ones to fill your paper and create a nice landscape. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but adding different colored Lupines is recommended.

Once you have 3-4 Lupines, add some grass at the bottom of your painting. Optional, add a blue background/sky by wetting the paper extensively and smoothing a blue paint across the paper, watering down the color so it’s pale and almost translucent.

And voila! Before you know it you’ve got a simple watercolor painting completed!