7 Steps to Create a Cherry Blossom Painting

I was recently inspired by a Style at Home magazine.  One of the articles featured had a mural on a baby’s room wall of cherry blossoms.  I decided that cherry blossoms should be relatively easy to paint so I searched the net for different pictures of cherry blossoms to make sure I knew what they looked like.  Here are the steps I took to create the painting:

1. I mixed White Gesso with a tiny bit of Acrylic heavy bodied paint in Windsor Blue to create a baby blue color.
2. I painted a thick layer of the baby blue on a canvas and let it dry.
3. Then I used a pencil to draw a rough outline of the branches.  I didn’t outline the actual cherry blossoms with pencil because I knew they would be pretty easy to free hand paint.
4. I painting the branches with black acrylic crafters paint and let it dry.
5. I mixed together Magenta and Cardinal Red crafters paint to get the pinky red tone that I wanted.
6. Using a fine tipped paint brush I painted the cherry blossoms and cherry blossom buds throughout the branches until I was happy with the look.
7. Once those had dried I used a tiny paint brush and black crafters paint to add the black thingies in the middle of the cherry blossom (I don’t know what they are called).  Voila!  It is finished!

All in all (minus the drying time) this only took me about an hour to paint and the supplies cost about $10 or $15.  I’m planning on doing another cherry blossom painting with a crazy pink, purple and blue background.  So fun!