The great thing about our Folk Art Painting Masterclass is that it teaches you the foundations of painting and helps you paint a variety of designs. Once you have learnt to paint the designs in the masterclasses, you can take those skills in many different directions... From playing with different styles and experimenting with colour, to creating brand new designs of your own.
One of the things we love to do with all of the flowers in our masterclasses is paint wreaths. While these might sound daunting (especially to a beginner), there are a few tips and tricks that can help you along the way.
A few things you will need to plan your wreath:
Circle templates or a compass
Tracing paper*
Transfer paper*
Pencil
(*available in our Beginner’s Masterclass and Online Store)
Step 1: Create a guide for yourself. To start off we would recommend using A5 paper. To create this guide use a compass to create 2 circles (or use two different sized circles).
Step 2: When creating your wreath, it helps to balance out some of the larger elements (e.g. vintage roses or daisies) with smaller elements (dotty flowers and leaves). The great thing here is that there are no limits - you can include what you want and leave out the flowers or brushstrokes that you feel less confident with. A good tip to remember is to stick with odd numbers, we call this the rule of three. Remembering this rule will make your final wreath more aesthetically pleasing.
First, mark out where your largest flowers will be. Here we began with the roses, arranging them evenly around the circle.
Step 3: Next, because we had enough space, we rotated our design and added three daisies before adding leaves with our round brush (again, adopting the rule of 3 to add leaves to each side of the roses). Remember: You can work slightly inside and outside of your guide (as we have in the placement of the leaves), but always try to stay close to your original guide to prevent a wonky or uneven wreath!
When creating a wreath, you may be the type of person who likes to plan where you will add each element. To do this, you can draw out a pattern in a sketch book to trace and transfer it to your painting journal. The important thing is that you find a process that suits you.
Step 4: Once you have added the larger flowers and details, take a look at your wreath to see where there are gaps and fill with smaller details like dot flowers, rosebuds, comma strokes or berries.... anything that takes your fancy.
Step 5: Once your wreath is complete, sit back and admire!
Here are a couple of others wreaths that we have created to inspire you…
Pivot Stroke Wreath
Here, we used the power of an odd number to create a pivot flower wreath. Marking out five flowers evenly around the circle, we painted them before adding leaves and filling spaces with comma strokes.
Daisy Wreath
This wreath uses the rule of three. Three daisies each with three leaves to the left and right of the flower. Spaces were filled with comma strokes and dots.
If you paint any wreaths that you are proud of, please share them with us as we would love to see them.
Until next time x