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Paint a Daffodil! Master this, and your rewards will be very nice.

How to paint a daffodil? Besides the rose, this is one of the most complicated flower blossoms you can attempt. Because it has so many different aspects to the blossom, lets start off where we left on our flower painting page.

With the Daffodil (common name), Narcissus, and yes, sometimes wrongly called the Buttercup, there is a combination shape (combination of most flower shapes in one single flower).

Lets take a real close look at the Daffodil below:

How to Paint Flowers - Table of Contents

daffodil painting

The daffodil has elements of the disk shape at its base, and the inverted cone shape protruding out of the base like a trumpet. All in one bloom!

Lets put it in simpler form. Check out the drawing below:

painting daffodils

Some common things to remember (refer to drawing and number segments):

1. Start with a circle, and draw 3 lines through it's center. These will represent your petals. 6 of them.
2. I've now drawn 2 additional circles to represent the trumpet center. I've connected these two circles with 2 lines.
3. Finally, I've added a little bit of shading to help you visualize the final blossom.

how to paint daffodils

Some of the things I will point out should be on most every daffodil that you paint. Of coarse, close observation will always guide you. The purpose here is to simply remind you what you may "forget" to see!

Lets look at the reflected orange/yellow that some how ends up on those back petals:

oil painting techniques for daffodils

Another feature is the ridged white back petals. These ridges are present within the petal, but not on their outside edge.

oil painting flowers

Lets take another example to see if these features can also be found on another blossom!

how to oil paint

Yep! There's the delicate color reflected on the back petals.

oil painting techniques

And again on another example. Don't forget too, these back petals tell their own story. Some flip and curl forward, sometimes, they flip backwards. Capture that feature and you add incredible interest in the blossom.

basic oil painting techniques

basic oil painting

Having a strong angle of light will also help to produce cast shadows within the back petals to add more interest within your painting.

painting techniques

A few closing comments,

The daffodil foliage is a blue green. It makes for a nice contrast if you can get it into the painting.

The trumpet can be a pale yellow to a deep orange. Having different varieties within your painting will capture someones heart for sure!

Here's an idea, why not try to paint a daffodil yourself, just one blossom, and then post it here at your oil paintings.

I've also got a demo of a very early painting that shows some of the process. Just click here to see how the white daffodil painting demonstration gets done. Being white, it doesn't have a yellow reflection, but you can see a bit up close of the process.

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