Day 21: How to Paint Cattails

Happy Friday! It’s Day 21 of my 31 Days of Easy Holiday Paint Projects. Phew! If I ever say I’m gonna do 31 days of blogging – with paint projects – again, somebody stop me! {name that movie}

To be honest, I never dreamed (dreamt?) I’d still be working on Fall stuff on Day 21. But here I am – with cattails.

Simple. Really, really simple. But I love ‘em.

I love their color, and shape, and their height. Even when I was a floral designer, I loved using cattails because they add height to an arrangement without a lot of bulk.

I’m adding them to the cornucopia painting. Pay no attention to the blobs below them. We’ll get to those little lovelies in a couple of days.

Now, I gotta fess up and tell ya I don’t have any tan/wheat paint color. And since the whole cornucopia, fruit, fall leaf thing is a tutorial, I didn’t want to have you mixing 4 & 5 colors together.

You might wind up crawling thru your computer screen and to get me!

I did, however, mix a couple of colors – Lemonade + White – for the stems.

But they looked a little too pastie, which could’ve been due to the white background – I’m not sure. So I mixed a little Burnt Umber + White and painted just a bit on each stem.

For the ‘tails’ I just painted a rectangle of Raw Sienna – the same color I used on the cornucopia.

They kinda look like little hot dogs, don’t they?

Little hot dogs I wouldn’t want to eat, but still . . .

Then with the same Lemonade + White + Burnt Umber (hey, that’s only 3 colors, ok?), I added the little tips.

I wanted a little more dimension on the ‘tails’ so I painted some Burnt Umber on the sides and a little on the top and bottom.

But they still looked a little . . . flat.

So I took the teensiest amount of Burnt Umber and painted it along just one side of the stems. That’ll work for now, I guess.

Now, if when you try these, you might not want to use a liner brush for the Burnt Umber. I know, I just said yesterday that it doesn’t matter what brush you use.

I should’ve said it usually doesn’t matter.

To get this teensie-weensie line I actually used the chisel edge of a flat brush and lightly – very, very lightly – stroked the paint on.

If you can’t get your line fine enough, just reapply the Lemonade mixture right next to it and that’ll work fine too.

Alrighty then! Tomorrow – wheat stalks. Then we’re filling up this baby with a pumpkin, fall leaves and yummy fruit!