POINTS OF DISCUSSION

1. Create your own colour palette

• Establish the mood of your flower wreath painting
• Include your very own personal message

2. Decide on the elements of your flower wreath

• Create a rough sketch of the elements you want to include in your flower wreath
• Plan out the individual elements by creating mini illustrations and sketches of your favorites
• Create uncomplicated studies on your bullet journal

3. Paint your own flower wreath

• Identify each point of the painting process
• Finally the step-by-step flower wreath painting tutorial

Flower wreath paintings are adored by many artists, and with good reason. They are beautiful, timeless, meaningful, and really fun to create! However, this includes many details for consideration such as shape, elements, and colour combinations. With this, flower wreath paintings can be pretty challenging to accomplish...

In this article, I would like to share with you a step-by-step tutorial on how to create your own autumn version of a flower wreath painting. We will follow a design that I have created especially for this guide!

Ok, so where do we begin?

Let's think - what's so special about autumn? Apart from being the coziest time in the year, autumn is also a time when most people introspect and attend to their personal interests. This is your chance to slow down, relax, and take the world in...

Your art must reflect who you are, so first, visualise how you want your finished artwork to look and feel like. This will help you organise your ideas much better! From the colour palette, to the elements, to the whole structure of the work... Let me lay down the steps to ensure a smooth painting process for you.

1. Create your flower wreath colour palette

To start off with your flower wreath painting, ask yourself: Do you want your viewers to feel happy, inspired, and excited? Or do you want them to be reflective and imaginative? 

Once you have decided on a goal, begin the work by planning out your colours in a sketchbook! You will constantly open this to check for reference, so make sure it is a handy one. 

How do you plan the colors you'll be using?

Establish the mood of your work

First, gather your preferred art medium (I used watercolours for mine) and your trusty sketchbook of choice. With a watercolour pencil, create distinct shapes, then fill them in with your chosen colors.   

As artists, colour combinations play a big part in your work, and paying careful attention to this is a good way to communicate your message to your audience. For example?

There is a huge difference between warm reds and crimson reds, while yellow, blue, and green tones have their own connotations. You should consider color harmony and symbolism based on the message that you want to get across for your artwork! Read more about color harmony and oil painting mixing colors in depth article.

In this work by Rachel Christopoulos, you can see how the artist created her own Essential Fall Palette composed of nine beautiful colours that are typically seen in nature during this season. Her choice of colour names is very interesting, too!

Sunbeam for the quaint daylight yellow, cocoa for a red-brown hue, reminiscent of chocolate drinks during windy afternoons; rosy cheeks for a warm pink tone, and sweater weather for a pastel lavender colour. For her, it's very important to establish a colour palette before beginning work because harmony happens best when your main colours blend well and work together.

Without paying attention to them, it's easy to get lost and create confusion instead of cohesion in your artwork.

How about you? Which colours remind you of autumn? Don't forget that you can create your own colour names to make your palette more personal and unique. :)

Include your personal message 

Second, tell a story with your colour palette. In Rachel's case, Wisconsin's scenery (her hometown) played a big part, so nostalgia is definitely a part of her work. Inspired by the change of seasons, she takes a more relaxed approach to everything during autumn and reflects on her growth and progress of the year that was.

For her paper ground, she uses ZenART sketchbooks that have the right size, and can definitely withstand some (slightly) wet medium, so she can keep her color palette handy wherever she goes.

Keep in mind that incorporating your own personal message into your artwork is a key to creating a good one! Go back to the emotions that you want to convey to your audience... What do you want to say with your use of colors? Find out how colors and emotions are closely linked in our Colors and Emotions in Art article.

For my flower wreath tutorial below, I created my own autumn colour palette, too. I will show you the process of how I chose my colours in that section, but for now... Let us proceed to the next important step. 

2. Decide on the elements of your composition

Now that you have a colour palette, it's time to plan which elements you want to include in your flower wreath. This can take a lot of turns, as wreaths are not composed of very strict elements. What's great about this is that you are free to choose according to what you want, and personalise it according to your own taste. There are elements that are typically used during fall for their symbolism and imagery like leaves, flowers, berries and pinecones. 

Create a rough sketch of the elements you want to include in your flower wreath

In another page of your sketchbook, create a rough sketch of the elements you want to include in your flower wreath.

Draw different shapes of leaves, twigs, and some berries if you wish. Flowers are very dainty to look at, so make sure you include different types of it! Hydrangeas, peonies, and roses are often used with foliage.

As an example - Let's take this illustration by Cris Rogerson of @sweetseasonsart. With her choice of autumn leaves and floral elements, this illustration instantly reminds you of a long walk in the park... Cool breeze, warm coat, and the crisp smell of autumn air! The sun can be showing itself a little bit too.

Ask yourself: What are the elements that remind you of autumn? Are these falling maple leaves in your backyard, or blooming flowers in mid-November?

Plan out the individual elements by creating mini illustrations of your favourites

Another thing you can do is to plan out the individual elements by creating mini illustrations of your favourites. In her work, artist Susana Triana of Susana Chichi Art created her own design by focusing on smaller illustrations. 

Elements such as leaves, mushrooms, and blackberries are present in her work. She also incorporated her own autumn art colour palette (see point number 1), composed of mostly deep greens, light greens, and crimson hues. The artist rendered these elements carefully using ZenART's mini brushes that were made especially to hone the finest details - perfect for autumn flower wreath details. 

Lastly?

Create uncomplicated studies on your bullet journal

Autumn is a season of slowing down and reflecting, so let's not forget the beauty of bullet journaling during this season. How do you incorporate journaling with planning your flower wreath artwork?

First, you can reflect on this season by checking your daily entries. How are you feeling inside? Are there issues that you need to address within yourself, and with your relationships? Bullet journals are one of the most personal things you can have, so feel free to design the layout of this month with elements of autumn flower wreath. This is also a way of exploring the elements you will use in your painting. Alongside your entries, create random sketches and studies that are related to this season. 

An additional tip: You can also use elements of fall such as dried leaves, berries, pumpkins, etc. as legends for your mood tracker, or as cute designs around the border! 

No-fuss, no complicated pre-planning... Just the beautiful feeling of autumn conveyed through art. In the next section, I will show you an actual step-by-step on how to paint your own autumn flower wreath.

3. Paint your own autumn flower wreath

You have defined your desired mood, chosen your colour palette, and have carefully selected the elements of your composition... Now, how do you paint your flower wreath?

Let's get started!

The first step is going back to point one, which is establishing your colour palette of choice. Since autumn is filled with browns, I used mostly earth colours like greens, browns, deep reds, and purples in my colour palette. I also included some bright tones such as cadmium red and orange for that vibrant and cheerful effect in my work; and to create an unexpected contrast, I fancied adding an extra cool blue tone. In the video tutorial I prepared for you, I will be mentioning the specific colours I used and also teach you some practical techniques you can use on how to blend your colours properly. 

You now have a basic wreath! Easy enough? Let's go to the next part.

Using your warm red colour, add details such as berries and flowers all around the gaps. After most of the pigment from my brush has been laid on paper, I used the 'dry brush technique' to add more texture and value to my work (I will explain this technique further in the guide).

To add more details, paint another batch of leaves, berries and flowers -- this time using a muted orange tone, which will completely harmonise with the green leaves. Lovely! The floral wreath is now getting together.

One of the last steps towards completing the work is 'freshening' up your painting to balance out all the colours and elements. How did I do this? Since we've included a lot of warm tones as details, let's add a pop of cool blue - a complementary colour - to finish it off. This certain tone of blue reminds me of air and the sky, so I used that to add touches of swirls around. 

Pro Tip: Remedy any mistakes like an extra paint stroke in a place where you did not intend it to be. Yes, it's possible to do it! I will teach you this in the full video of our Autumn Wreath Painting Tutorial.

I hope that you enjoyed following along with this simple autumn flower wreath painting! I would love to know if you've given these a try. If you are looking for a more detailed guide, I have prepared this especially for you: A complete Autumn Flower Wreath Painting Tutorial with me. I will be going through all the mini details and will teach you about technique, brush strokes, colour combinations, among a lot of other things.

Sounds exciting?

Hold on, we're not done yet... There's one last thing!

For those of you who are wondering where else you can use this floral wreath painting aside from an autumn exercise, I have listed down tried and tested practical things you can do with it. I talk about this in detail in the complete guide that you can download below, so again, make sure you don't miss out on that. ;) 

Did you like this article? Which one of these ideas are you excited to do? Let me know your thoughts and comments below. I would love to hear from you, and as always - let's discuss!

MEET THE AUTHOR

Ardak Kassenova is mother, artist and ZenART Supplies co-founder. "My heart and soul were always with Art, and since my childhood as long as I remember myself, I was dreaming to be an artist. I was painting after work, when I had time, and teaching myself through the books, videos, visiting art galleries and museums. I've been very curious about different techniques and styles, and therefore accumulated knowledge and experience on a variety of mediums". 

After 20 years of a successful corporate career and with becoming a mother to two wonderful girls, she decided that it's time to make drastic changes and link her life with Art. She started to paint again and decided to create her own art supplies brand that would help artists to fulfil their creative dreams and achieve their best results since the beginning using high-quality art materials without wasting their precious time and money. Say hello to @ardak_zenart on Instagram!