We’re going for a spring theme today. What represents spring more than a daffodil? Grab your pencil and paper, and let’s draw and paint a daffodil together. See the video at the bottom of this blog post for more help.
Drawing the Daffodil
Today, we have daffodils—I think this is my favourite flower. I absolutely love daffodils. It just really says spring, doesn’t it?
First, we will start with some simple shapes. We’ll build it up by adding some petals and finish it like that. I’m doing mine on watercolour paper because I want to use watercolour pencils. But if you don’t have watercolour pencils or watercolour paints, you can try it with whatever you have available.
Let’s start with these very simple shapes. I always try to find the middle of the page, which helps me position them correctly. There’s nothing more annoying than running out of space, right?
I’ll start by positioning myself in the middle, then move upward. After that, I’ll add the necessary shape and adjust the positioning. Finally, I’ll move a line up and another one down.
There we go.
I’m holding my pencil loosely. Can you see that? I’ve found that drawing while gripping the pencil tightly leads to hard marks, and I don’t achieve the looseness I want. Just loosen your grip on the pencil about halfway down, and it will totally change the way you draw.
Now, if I put in that little curve there, I’m going to take it up, I’m going to take it across, and I’m going to go down. The joy with flowers is that if you don’t get it exactly right, it’s absolutely fine because this will just be a petal.
When drawing faces, you have to work quite hard to make sure you’ve got everything exactly right. But we don’t have to do that here. It’s quite nice and chilled out to draw a daffodil.
I hold my pencil loosely. Nice and smooth down, nice and smooth down. There, right, that’s it. The first one is done.
Adding More Petals to the Daffodil
Alright, let’s add some more petals. I will come slightly inside here, leave a small gap, and take this up here. This will become the wonderful trumpet shape that you see on a daffodil. I’ll bring my paper in slightly so you can see it better, and then I’ll take this petal out.
So if I relax my pencil grip and bring it down to about here, then let’s add a little petal in there. If I start it off like this… This is such a nice way to start the week, isn’t it? It’s such a lovely drawing.
This is a good opportunity to reach out to our relatives. We usually have our drawing session with the grandparents on Thursdays, and Elizabeth has a special one planned for this week. It would be nice to call Granny and ask if she would like to draw a daffodil with you or encourage her to give it a try.
There we go. That’s it all done. We’ll pause there, and you catch up with me.
Adding Leaves to the Daffodil
OK, let’s finish this off now. I’m going to start with this trumpet and then give it a lovely, three-dimensional look by loosening my pencil grip all the way down to about there. Then, we want to add another bit here to make it look three-dimensional.
We already have all the petals in place for the daffodils. This little part is almost like a collar, which must have a proper name that I don’t know. I’ll adjust that slightly, and then we’ll leave it. After that, let’s add some leaves.
I’m going to say, really loosen that grip. Here, we’ll go for one big one that might be too wide, and then I’m going to put two here, one going. You don’t want them in straight lines at all. This is no place for a ruler, definitely not.
We want them to be nice and relaxed. I may have made that one a bit too tall, so I’ll just adjust it a little.
Now, that completes our drawing. I believe this could be one of the easiest ones yet. It’s a truly lovely and relaxing drawing that’s easy to create.
Painting the Daffodil
I will get my watercolour pencils now, but if you don’t have watercolour pencils, you can grab crayons, felt tips, or whatever you have. Stay with me, and we’ll draw this together.
I’m going to use just four colours here: yellow, orange, light green, and brown.
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There are two shades of green; the one we want is the lighter green. However, we’ll start with the yellow. You will be amazed if you haven’t seen how this works before.
It may look like I’m just colouring with an ordinary pencil, but that’s not true. It appears a bit messy because what I’m using isn’t a pencil—it’s paint pigment that I’m applying. I really don’t have to be that neat with it because as soon as my brush touches it, it’s going to turn to paint.
I won’t use just yellow; I also want to incorporate some orange. The amount of orange you add depends on personal taste.
What I’m going to do is apply quite a bit of pressure as I paint, which will help lay down more colour. I’m going to start with some orange, moving upward with my brush. I’ll also blend a little bit of orange into each petal to give them a touch of that colour.
Here’s the magic!
I have a small pot of water, and these are the world’s most mess-free paints, I swear. I’m going to dip my brush into the water—just a little bit—and then into the orange paint. As I mix, I can create a vibrant shade of orange that resembles the golden colour of a daffodil. Do each petal like this.
I’m going with yellow first because if I start with the darker orange, the whole thing will just go orange. So I start with the yellow, go down and turn the orange, and then I can lead back up, but I feel like I’m more in control of it then. Whereas if I started with the orange, the whole thing would just end up being orange, and I really want to have that tip bit yellow.
I’m using a minimal amount of water here, and I plan to turn the orange frequently. If I want to exercise more control, I’ll squeeze my brush to manage the water better. It’s really a balancing act. The more you work with the pencils, the more you’ll understand how much water is needed. As you can see, I’ve successfully released a hint of orange.
Right, the next bit I’m going to go into is the leaves. I’m going to press quite hard to apply the paint pigment around each leaf. In the centre, I’ll go around the edge, and you can either create a single line or a couple of lines down the middle.
We’re essentially putting the paint pigment on the paper, which we’ll use with a nice, clean brush. We’ll now turn to paint, so watch this as I pull the paint in from the edges.
You don’t need to fill in every area completely from the centre. This approach maintains a nice outline, especially in certain spots. Now, I’m going to finish it off with a little bit of brown colour.
I’m going to do a little more work on this side to make it look slightly darker. There we go. You have to be careful here because I don’t want the brown to mix with the yellow.
To finish this off, I’m going to add some orange here and blend it into the paint. If you’d like, you can add a few touches around each of the petals. However, it’s better to wait until it’s completely dry. Since mine isn’t fully dry yet, it won’t work quite as well on wet paint. Nevertheless, I’m going to go around the edges of each petal and add a little in the centre as well. There we go! That’s my finished piece.
I hope you enjoyed that and that it makes you feel spring-like. I love daffodils so much, so I’ve really enjoyed doing this one with you.
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We hope you enjoyed our video on how to draw and paint a daffodil.
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