DIY Flower Painting

Hi friends! I'm working on adding some wall art in our basement living room/playroom/office. This room has a lot of roles, so I wanted something neutral. I love having a cut flower garden, so I immediately thought of having flower paintings. Flower paintings are not only hard to find in the color scheme that fits our room, but they are often pricey!

Here is a bouquet I made from flowers I grew over the summer and what I used as my inspiration for my flower painting. I am not an artist, so it was helpful for me to have a picture for inspiration to kind of copy.

I didn't want paper for my specific painting, because I didn't want to spend the money on a large frame to put it in, so I decided to use a piece of scrap plywood I found in my wood shop.

I painted it Benjamin Moore light pewter from an old sample can we had.

I used a pencil and started sketching things out until it looked decent. I find it's easiest to use super small pencil strokes until you get close to what you are wanting and then erase and continue on. I also had to keep reminding myself this doesn't need to be perfect to look pretty.

Once I was happy with my sketch, I started painting the center of the flowers with yellow paint. I just used cheap little paint brushes and acrylic paints I picked up at Walmart in the craft paint isle.

Then I layered in some black and orange spots to make the center of the flowers look a little more realistic. To layer in other colors, I found it easiest to dip the tip of the paint brush in paint and then dab it off on a piece of cardboard, so that my paint brush only had the tiniest bit of paint on it.

I filled in the rest of my flowers with complementing colors to my rug and added all the green stems and leaves and then just kept layering different creams and tans in the flower petals with a tiny amount of paint on my brush like before.

I also found that the flowers looked more realistic with a little outline of a lighter color around each petal, so I started adding that and then dabbed the tan colors back over top of the outline color to blend them together.

I decided to be done painting at this point, but was a little bothered by its imperfectness, so I had the idea to go over the whole thing with a sanding sponge and make it look lightly distressed.

I'm not sure if I made the right decision with the sanding sponge or if I ruined it, but I do think it turned out cute! I plan to add a frame of some sort to make it look more finished before I hang it up, so be sure to check back for that process!