This tutorial is all about drawing and painting mayflowers. The cool thing about this flower is that the bud is relatively simple and straightforward, but the flower itself contains multiple buds. It’s a lot like a hydrangea! Once you learn how to paint the one simple bud in different perspectives, you can build them together to create the final piece. Today, we will look at the shape of a mayflower, learn how to draw them, and cover different watercolor painting techniques.

Note: This tutorial includes some concepts that may be easier to grasp in video format. Here’s the YouTube video where I walk through the process step-by-step!

Supplies

• Palette

• Clean Water

• Paper Towels

• Pencil

• Watercolor Paper

• Watercolor Paintbrush

• Watercolor Paint 

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Mayflower Structure & Drawing Techniques

Mayflowers have clusters of small buds, each with four heart-shaped petals, similar to the structure of hydrangeas and lilacs. They are elliptical shaped flowers and from the side, they resemble a cup or bowl shape.

We’ll start by learning how to draw mayflower buds in different perspectives. This will make painting them that much easier!

If you’d like to skip ahead to the painting portion click here!

When drawing a forward facing mayflower, start with a circle, and draw a cross through the center of it. These “rays” will act as guidelines for where the petals will go.

Next, draw the heart-shaped petals using the rays as your guidelines. Each ray indicates where the center of the flower should be placed. You can aim for the divot of the heart to hit right on the guideline.

Now, I’ll walk you through how to draw mayflower buds when they’re facing different directions. This is called drawing in perspective and it is a key skill to learn as a botanical watercolor artist. 

That said, it can be a little tricky to grasp at first. Give yourself grace as you’re learning this new skill, and remember that practice is key! 

To draw a mayflower facing sideways, start by drawing an oval.

Next, draw a bowl shaped curved line underneath to represent the bottom of the flower (shown here in red). 

Then, draw a ray through the center of the flower to use as a guideline for where to draw your petals.

Now fill it in with heart shaped petals. 

A note on perspective: the petal closest to the viewer will be shorter and wider, whereas the ones farthest away will be long and slender. In this case, the front petal is squashed to fit within the guidelines we drew. The side petals also morph to fit the guidelines. This is what tricks our eye into believing that the 2D lines we’re looking at are actually a 3-dimensional object.

Make sure to practice drawing the Mayflower at different angles. You will notice that one angle may be easier than others, but this is totally normal. Drawing the flowers at different angles will become more natural in time. 

If you want a more in-depth look at how to draw these flowers in perspective, check out my full YouTube tutorial where I go through different perspectives step by step.

Drawing the Full Mayflower

Now that you have a good grasp on how to draw a mayflower bud in different perspectives, it’s time to draw the full flower complete with multiple buds! Mayflowers are similar to hydrangeas where they are made up of multiple small flowers. 

Start with drawing the overall shape of the plant, which resembles a lollipop.

Then, fill in the  lollipop with floral guidelines in different perspectives. 

Next, add the heart shaped petals to complete the drawing

Now you may be thinking, “Wooooahhhh, Alex!” This is way too complicated!” Well, my friend, I have a couple options for you. You can follow along with the YouTube tutorial which goes more in depth into these techniques. OR you can move forward to the painting portion. The reason that I show these drawing tutorials is so that you have a deeper understanding of how to draw different flowers which will inevitably improve your watercolor painting. 

I would never want this to hinder you or stop you from painting altogether. Remember, as always, to be gentle with yourself as you’re learning new skills.

Painting a Loose Mayflower

First, we’ll focus on one mayflower bud to understand how to paint each individual flower. I’ll be using the drawing on the left as a reference and painting the flower without guidelines, but you can paint on top of your sketch if you’d like. Start by grabbing some blue paint for these loose florals. Any blue will work as you start to paint these, but I’d recommend Ultramarine Blue as a great place to start!

Wet-on-dry technique

We’ll be painting this flower using the wet-on-dry technique. This simply means that you’ll be painting with wet paint onto dry paper. 

Start by painting a loose heart-shape for the front middle petal.

Next, paint the back petal behind it, but leave white space between the two petals to give the flower some structure. 

Now it is time to paint in the side petals! Do this by creating loose C-shaped petals that hug the flower. 

After the first layer is dry, grab a more concentrated mix of blue paint and add an outline around the front petal. 

Then, soften the outline by going in with a clean, damp brush and blending it out to the other petals.

The side and back petals will now naturally be darker than the front one. You can add more depth by dropping some blue paint into the water on the side petals. 

Finally, add some contour lines and veins in the petals to bring the flower to life! These don’t need to be intricate or fancy, just adding a few small lines will add some dimension to your painting.

Painting the Full Flower

Now, instead of focusing on just one flower bud, we will paint the full mayflower. That way, I can show you how to paint multiple flowers from different perspectives.

For the first flower, let’s paint one that is forward facing! Paint the heart shaped petals by painting an outline of the petal and filling it in.

For the second flower, start by painting with just water (it’s ok if there’s a little blue pigment). Paint the petal shapes like we did in the previous step to create a flower in perspective. Then, grab some blue paint, and drop it into the still-wet petals. It’s so fun to watch the pigment bloom and blend on the petals!

For the third flower, paint a forward facing flower with water and drop some blue paint in the center. Follow that up by adding a loose outline to give it some shape. Look at how different this flower looks from the first forward-facing petal! There are lots of different ways you can use watercolor paints to create beautiful flowers, and I want to give you options so you can find what works best for you!

Once you’ve learned how to paint this simple flower in different perspectives and techniques it will unlock so many options for watercolor exploration! 

If you want to take the next step on your watercolor journey, join my Free Watercolor Facebook Group that is filled with inspirational and supportive watercolor artists!

Happy painting,

Alex