Easy Flower Painting Hack: No Skills Required

It's a fun activity to do with the kids. I have made use of three straws and a toothbrush to paint this and it requires no skills or prior knowledge of painting/art. It's also very quick to get done since we wouldn't be painting it one stroke at a time, but instead, we will be making multiple strokes at a time. The finished product has a texture to it, so it may also qualify as textured art, which perhaps is an additional bonus.

Acrylic paint

Three straws

A toothbrush (that's no longer in use)

Scissors

Canvas/Sketchbook/cardstock

Green colour pen

A small container or lid to pour paint

Tissue paper

Here I made the straw into the shape needed for the painting. Take a drinking straw and from one end of it, cut a length of 1 cm into it. The cut will give two halves, cut each half again to give four quarters and then cut each quarter to give eight vanes of the straw.

Take the straw and push your thumb through the centre of the cut end so that the vanes spread out (like the petals of a sunflower).

Get a small container where you want to pour your paint. Make sure it's smooth so you can easily clean it and pour another paint in.

Get your painting surface ready, either a canvas or heavyweight paper sketchbook or just a cardstock like I've used.

In this step, I painted the petals of the flower using the earlier-made straw.

Pour a reasonable amount of red paint into the container, making sure you spread it around so the vanes of the straw can all get in it. Take the straw, dip the vaned end into the paint, and gently move it back and forth in the paint to ensure the vane surfaces are evenly coated. Now remove the straw and press it on any point (close to or within the top half) on your painting surface. Press it more than once on a point, slightly turning the vanes with each press.

Make three other impressions on the painting surface with the straw ensuring they get spaced apart.

Clean what's left of the red paint in the container with tissue paper and pour in the yellow paint. Using another vaned straw, make five yellow impressions around the red petals.

Clean the container again and pour a blue paint. Use another vaned straw to make impressions around and in the spaces between the red and yellow petals.

At this point, I drew the stalk of each petal with a green colour pen.

Drawing the stalks with the colour pen is easy; all you have to do is begin drawing a line from the middle of the base of each petal and gently draw the line downwards and towards the midline of the painting surface.

Make sure the lines do not cross another petal in their way though. Stop once a petal is in the way and continue on the opposite side of the petal, this will give an impression that the stalk passes behind the obstructing petal.

Now draw tiny leaves around the stalks.

Now we're going to paint the grasses at the base.

Clean the container again and pour some amount of green paint in it; take a toothbrush dip it into the paint, and move it around in the paint to ensure all the bristles get smeared with the paint.

If your painting surface is lying on the table, you might want to put scrap paper under it so you don't mess your table with paint.

Take the paint-coated brush and pass it vertically from the base of the painting surface to a few centimetres up. Repeatedly, dip the brush in paint and brush it on the base along the entire width of the painting surface. This will create numerous strokes of alternating light (thin paint layer) and dark (thick paint stripes) stripes resembling a weedy grass.

The final piece is now to add the disc florets to the middle of each of the petals. To do that, take the paint tube and gently press a small ball of paint in the middle of each petal; use tissue paper to gently remove the conical tip left by the tube. I used a green colour for the red petals, a red colour for the yellow petals and a yellow colour for the blue petals.

We're done with the process! I do think it makes for an interesting painting as long as we intend it as a fun activity with the kids or just a lazy quick way of doing it.