How to Paint Lavender Flowers in Acrylics (Simple & Easy)

Learn how to paint lavender in acrylics using basic acrylic paints and cotton swabs!

Want to learn how to paint lavender in the easiest flower painting tutorial? Then this step by step tutorial (with YouTube video ) will be your pal!

Lavender is one of the easiest flowers to paint which makes it a perfect acrylic painting for beginners in painting.

In this step by step tutorial, you’ll learn how to paint lavender flowers with some simple tools like Q-tips. I’ll also go over some easy acrylic techniques to add some texture into your painting (using items you probably have in your kitchen!).

Oh, and if you’re just starting out with acrylics , you’ll definitely want to go through this Ultimate Beginners Guide: How to Paint with Acrylics. It goes through most things you’ll need to know when starting out.

More Easy Flower Painting Ideas

Looking for more [ beginner level ] easy flower painting ideas? Here are some fun flower paintings to try: daisies, roses, hydrangeas, sunflower, 6 easy flower painting techniques, and butterfly on a sunflower.

Now, let’s get started and learn how to paint some simple and gorgeous lavender flowers with Q-tips!

Lavender Flower Painting: Materials and Supplies

1. DecoArt Acrylic Paints in African Violet, Lavender, Leaf Green, White, and Black

2. Paint Brushes

3. Square Canvas

4. Wooden Skewer

5.Cup of Water

6. Paper towel and salt (for texture)

7. Qtips (cotton swabs)

8. Paper Plate or pallet to mix paint

9.Spray bottle filled with water

How to Paint Lavender Flowers – Step-by-Step Tutorial

Step 1

Follow along with the full-length YouTube tutorial here if you prefer video instruction (plus I’ll share a few extra tips along the way).

Step 2

Lightly spray your canvas with some water. Not too much water, you don’t want it to be pooling or rolling down your canvas. You just want to moisten the canvas so the paint glides across smoother in the next step. (Optional)

Step 3

Add a few drops of white acrylic paints straight onto your canvas, along with 3-4 drops of black paint (focusing on the outer edges). Black is a very strong pigment, so a tiny bit goes a long way.

Step 4

Using a medium size paintbrush, use long vertical strokes to blend your white and black paint.

Step 5

If your grey background is too light after this step you can add in more black and re-blend. Its easier to make make your background darker, but harder to lighten it up after its too dark. So its best to add a drop or 2 of black at a time and gauge your results.

Step 6

To add a bit of texture to the top portion of the painting (the bottom portion will be covered with flowers), sprinkle some salt (the chunkier the grains of salt the better) into the wet paint. Once the paint dries the salt will add a nifty “bumpy” texture look to it.

Step 7

(Optional) Taking a paper towel (preferably one with a pattern design on it), dab on a couple drops of white pain to create some extra texture in some areas. The background will look more interesting with a mixture of textures and paint strokes.

Step 8

Let the background dry completely (should only take a few minutes). To speed up drying, use a hair dryer on medium heat.

Once the background is dry its time for some flowers! First off we’ll do the stems. Add some green paint into your pallet or a paper plate.

Using a clean brush, paint some green onto your wooden skewers. (Alternatively you could use the handle of a long paintbrush, instead of the skewer). Press the skewer (paint side down) onto the canvas. Life up the skewer to see your green stem. Nifty!

Also don’t worry if the stems don’t look perfect, actually it’s better they don’t! The beauty with abstract paintings( like this one )is that we can leave the stress of perfection behind. Don’t worry if your stem are irregular or not perfectly straight, just go with it and focus on the enjoyment of making them!

Step 9

Repeat this step with different tints of green (mix in tiny bits of white into green to get different tints). Have different tints of green for your stems will give more dimension. Once your happy with the amount of stems, let the paint dry

Step 10

Now its time to make our lavender painting with cotton buds or cotton swabs (QTips)! Using your lighter color purple, dab your cotton swab in the paint and start dotting them around some stems to form the petals of the lavender flower.

Repeat this step to form all your lavender flowers, and let dry.

Step 11

Once dry, you are going to take your darker purple color and using a clean cotton swab create some dots over top the lighter petals on the lavender flowers. Let dry

Step 12

Now your going to create a lighter purple tint for your highlights as follows: Take some of the light purple paint and mix it in with equal amount of white paint. This will create a very light purple paint which will be great as a highlight on the petals. Using a clean cotton swab, dab this highlight color on the lavender flower petals.

Let your painting dry and your done!

And don’t forget…After all your hard work, sign your painting! And make sure you pat yourself on the back for a job well done! Your gorgeous, tranquil masterpiece is complete, and you have learned some acrylic techniques and color mixing tricks to boot! You’re rockin those acrylics- can’t wait to see what you create next!

The beauty with this lavender painting technique is you can use it on a variety of surfaces like on these glass mason jars or these Hydro Flask water bottles.

Here’s some extra pictures of the finished piece, hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

I would absolutely love to see your lavender painting, so if you’d like to share, pop on over to my Facebook group and post your art!

And, until next time, stay nifty & creative!

<3

Jasmine

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