How to Paint a Loose Peony
In this watercolor painting tutorial, you’ll learn how to paint loose, gorgeous peonies. You’ll learn how to add contrast to your paintings, incorporate wet-into-wet painting techniques, and create beautiful, effortless watercolor florals and leaves. This is great for beginners as well as experienced artists who want to loosen up and become more expressionist with their watercolor painting style.
Before you jump in, I’d recommend checking out my Free Ultimate Watercolor Guide! If you’ve ever thought, “I can’t even draw a stick figure!” or if you have felt overwhelmed with art supply options and techniques, this guide will help you start with ease. Discover an in-depth look at the supplies I recommend, tips on choosing paints, and where to buy the best materials. You’ll learn practical ways to improve your skills, plus tips to make painting more relaxing and fun.
Watercolor florals are my specialty and I believe that making beautiful art should be accessible to everyone. So, let’s get to it!
Supplies
For this watercolor tutorial, you will need:
Round Watercolor Brush - My all-time favorite Round Brush is a Princeton Heritage. A size 6 or 8 would be great for this project. This set has a few different pointed rounds available.
I'm using quinacridone magenta for its really bright, vivid properties
In my opinion, Arches 140 lb cold pressed paper is the best quality watercolor paper you can get. When you’re using a wet-into-wet technique, using high-quality paper is absolutely critical. Student paper simply does not handle lots of water well and it dries too quickly, so you will struggle to get beautiful flowing watercolor effects.
These are all suggestions, so feel free to use any supplies you have readily available. The most important thing is to begin creating and enjoying the process.
Please note, if you purchase anything using these links, I will receive a small percentage at no extra charge to you, which helps me publish free tutorials like this one!
Practicing Brush Strokes
There are multiple ways of creating brush strokes for floral art. In this tutorial, we will focus on two: mustache strokes and C-strokes. There is usefulness in practicing both of these, since we will be building our peony from these foundational strokes.
The “mustache stroke” is basically two sideways C shapes that connect in the center making it look like a little mustache! This will be the base of the flower, so get comfortable by practicing this stroke a few times.
Larger C-strokes will make up the petals of the peony. Play with making large, sweeping strokes, and don’t be afraid to load up the brush with a good bit of paint and water to help get everything flowing just right!
Painting the Flower
Begin with a mustache stroke as the base, then build on it with fluid, C-shaped brush strokes that gather towards the center.
Then, add more water to the brush and continue painting petals toward the outside, making sure to pull the petals toward the central stem.
Depth and Contrast
Next, you can add depth and perspective by painting thin C-stroke petals along the top of the flower to give the impression that the peony is tilting away from the viewer. Wiggling the brush will add this detail too, so mix and match the strokes to your liking!
Contrast makes paintings pop. Since flowers are typically a bit darker at their center, I recommend adding a darker, more saturated pink to the bottom center of your flower. Since we’re painting wet-into-wet, the pigment that you drop in at the center will bleed and blend with the rest of the petals. I love this part of watercolor - when the colors bleed into each other perfectly and beautifully - it’s when the magic of watercolor is most evident!
Light Direction
Understanding where the light is coming from and how it interacts with the subject of your painting is going to help you to add depth and dimension to your paintings.
One of the main things I like to show students is how to break things down into simple shapes. Everything - even flowers - can be broken into simple shapes. For example, think of the peony as a sphere. If the light hits it on the top right, you would have highlights on the right and shadows on the left, like in the photo below.
Even as the peony opens from a bud to a full blossom, you can still hold that general principle of shading a sphere in your mind. Use what you know about the light direction and the shape to add contrast, depth, and visual interest to your artwork.
Drop in more saturated color in the area where you want to create shadows. To create highlights, use a clean, damp brush to pull up some of the paint. It’s important to do this while the paint is still wet. If your painting has started to dry, it won’t be as easy to create highlights.
If any of these concepts are new to you, check out my Foundations of Watercolor Course. In this course, I teach ALL the basics of watercolor painting, providing you with the building blocks you need to paint anything.
Painting the Stem and Leaves
Time to mix up some green! I used a Sap Green along with a green I custom-mixed for this painting. You can choose any green you like or mix your own by mixing blue and yellow paint.
I enjoy using the wet-into-wet technique for the stem, since I like how the colors blend together. To me, it gives the artwork a loose, flowy feel, but if you’d prefer to keep your lines crisper, just wait for the peony to dry before adding in the stem.
Now, onto the leaves! Using the same brush, you will create leaves with tapered edges. In one fluid motion, press the tip of the brush on the paper with light pressure, then push it down to the belly of the brush, then pull it back up with lighter pressure again.
This technique is harder than it looks, so think progress, not perfection. Keep practicing and have fun with learning and experimenting.
Explore painting small and large leaves depending on how they complement the size of the flower. Wet-into-wet painting allows you to experiment with using various greens to see how they blend and interact!
BONUS: Adding Details
This tutorial was all about how to paint a fast and pretty peony. If you want to add more detail to your piece, you can add in some contour lines and petal details to make it more interesting after the flowers dry.
I hope you enjoyed learning how to make beautiful, loose peonies! Remember, there is beauty to be found in just about every painting. This process looks a bit simpler than it is in practice, but the best advice I can give you is to keep working and to take note of what you like and what you want to practice more often. Observe your experiments and remember that no painting is a failure so long as you learn something to take to your next painting.
Share your paintings with a vibrant community of watercolor artists in my free Floral Watercolor Facebook Group so I can see your beautiful botanicals!
Happy painting,
Alex
If you are interested in receiving more guidance on painting, make sure you check out The Garden Studio Membership, where I host a private community of watercolor artists and encourage growth through tutorials, live lessons, and a library of resources.