How to Paint a Butterfly on a Purple Flower (an analogous painting)

Stephanie Weaver

In this fun little oil painting, we are painting a beautifully detailed purple butterfly that gently landed on a delicate purple flower!

What was challenging in this oil painting project?

Every oil painting has a challenge, whether it is the composition, technique, or color. In this week's oil painting class, the challenge is getting the right shade of purple.

Back in grade school, we learned that red + blue = purple. It is not simple folks with oil paints :) when we move into mixing colors, we now take into account the following additional factors:

brand of oil paint (there is a difference in the quality of materials used, like the minerals and oils used)
warm color vs. cool color

Getting that right shade of purple, well, that is an art! And the color is especially important in an ANALOGOUS PAINTING!

What is Analogous Painting?

Analogous painting is painting from one side of the color wheel. Check out this short snippet from the oil painting project "How to paint a purple butterfly on a Purple Flower"

There are two must-have colors to get a lovely purple that are not part of my standard palette. To create the lovely lavender colors and rich purple hues in this painting, I used:

When you mix the following mixtures, you can create a lovely array of lavenders that your brush can dance between when it is painting 🥰🎨