Easy sunflower painting elevates our spirits and confidence in creating a pretty piece of art. I'm sure many of us are familiar with those paint-and-sip places where you show up and are taught how to paint something to hang in your home. Even people who say they can't paint well end up with something that looks pretty good of which they are proud! I hope you enjoy this step-by-step sunflower painting tutorial that's a great craft to do at home whenever you're stuck inside and miss the outdoors.

Materials: Paint, pencil, eraser, paint brushes (small, medium, and large), sponge, surface for mixing paint (paper plate, pallet) old washcloth, and water.

Your canvas can be a piece of wood, an old painting, a pallet put together in slats, a piece of plexiglass, or whatever works for you. It doesn't matter if it's square, rectangular, or circular! This design works great with just about any shape.

Paint colors I recommend: Teal or blue, green, white, black, yellow, brown, and red. If you have colors that match those in the photo, by all means, use those!

Hello readers - both Kansan and not! My name is Clarisa, and as I am sure most of you may not know, I love to paint!

I do a lot of art in my spare time when I'm not writing about Kansas, and I thought this was the perfect time to share a tutorial with everyone to make sunflower painting easy.

As we know, sometimes it rains and sometimes it really pours. It might even snow!

When you're stuck inside for whatever reason, come back and think about this painting tutorial of sunflowers in Kansas! Think of it as your plan for the next rainy day.

First, get everything ready: All your supplies need to be within easy reach, and ready to go so you don't have to leave them unattended.

Take the pencil and sketch out a faint circle for the leaves, center, and center rings. It will make things easier down the road. If you have cats or other pets make a plan. You know how they (and their hair) often find ways into everything you want to keep them out of.

Next, take one of your larger brushes and start the background. We don't need to cover the whole thing, just the area around the largest circle.

Blend in the blues to the aqua shades, and out to the green. We like the patchy look, but if you want it smooth, take as much time as you need. After this, let it dry.

Once it dries, we will go in with a black and brown mixture around the outside of the flower's center.

Next, add your brown to the thickest stripe, using as much paint as feels right. We're going to add texture after the next couple of steps, so don't worry about how it looks right now.

Finishing the outside ring, next move to the inside. You will want a dark ring on the next line as well, so use your black-brown mix for that instead.

We're using a brown shade with a bit of yellow to brighten it up here. Then, we'll add a dark brown-black center.

Texture time! What I am doing here is dabbing my brush all over the edge ring, brown ring, dark middle ring, and yellow-brown ring.

It makes it appear more bumpy, like seeds do. You don't want to hit the canvas very hard when you're bouncing the brush along, or else you'll get white spots. Just smush the paint, not the canvas. After this, let it dry.

Next, we'll mark out where the petals are going. You can paint them willy-nilly, but I like to keep things a certain way when I do flowers.

You'll want petals that are fully visible, with wider apart lines, and you'll also want petals hidden behind other ones. Those we'll keep lines closer to the last set. I've pointed at each type, but something like what I've drawn works well.

Now we take a thick round brush and start slapping on the petal spots. We're going to go past the line into the background, but that's alright. Here, I'm using a yellow mixed with white to keep things light for later on.

Remember that nothing needs to be exact. If you only have a medium or smaller paintbrush, you can easily still complete this painting, it only changes the time it takes. Do things at your own pace! Nothing bad will happen if it starts to dry, I promise. After this, let it dry.

Once the petals are marked out, we're going to go to full white paint. Here is where I paint on the ends of the petals - in white - so that it covers the background the best.

Make sure to think about the small petals hidden behind the large ones and the ones of which you can only see half. If you need to, refer to the finished piece at the beginning! After this, let it dry.

Now, take a light brown/yellowish shade and put a bit on a dry brush. Then just dab it on around the ring like you see here. Keep it light, because you can always put more paint on, but once it's on there, it's there for good.

Then take a light brown shade with a little yellow in it and separate your petals. You want it to look natural, and each line should connect back to the little spikes you drew before the petals. After this, let it dry.

Next, we're doing the fun part: the petals! Start with the tiny ones peeking out from the back. Go in with plain yellow, whatever shade looks best to you. I mix a tiny bit of white in mine to make it work a little harder.

Fill in all the background petals before adding a little bit of yellow-orange to those petal-dividing you just finished. It makes the whole piece feel a little more warm! After this, let it dry.

Then, you can add streaks of slightly darker yellow (I used brown to darken it a tad) to give the background petals some texture. I put in some white streaks as well for good measure, just where it felt right.

Then I painted in the front petals! This part is fun with a large brush, but you can get more precision if using a medium one. Whatever feels right, go with your gut.

For the main petals, I started adding some white streaks and highlights wherever it felt best.

Spots where the light hits the edge of a petal are good places to start but use a small brush and a light hand with these white streaks. Pretty soon you'll feel like you're finished. That's because you are! After the white, let it dry.

Next, we need to cover the edges. If you paint around the edges, then you've already got this covered.

For those of us like me who always forget, it's nice to add a border. I mixed my teal color with a bit of black to make a dark teal/navy shade and used a flat square brush very slowly to only cover the edges. Now, you're done with the whole piece! Make sure to sign and date the back.

Your beautiful new painting, after it dries, is ready to be hung up in a new place. Now, choosing the best spot is always the tough part.

If it's a circle or square canvas, you can hang it from any side and any corner. We recommend rectangles stick to a side; but as long as you like it, we think it should hang wherever it looks best.

Easy sunflower painting sets us all up for success. Would you like to have more art classes in Kansas? If you want this to be a more regular event here at Only In Your State, make sure to tell us about it in the comments and share it with your friends.

You might also enjoy the book "Keeping a Nature Journal." And bring it along when you take some of these extraordinary hikes in Kansas.