10+ Beautiful Butterfly Painting Ideas

Aug 06, 2024

Butterflies, which belong to the order Lepidoptera (making them closely related to moths), are some of the most colorful creatures you will find anywhere. With over 24,000 species, they can be found in all continents except Antarctica. Because of the many colors that they don and the variety of intriguing wing patterns that they come in, it’s not surprising that artists around the world are drawn to them and have modeled their paintings after them.

If you are an artist yourself or if you are just looking around for some amazing butterfly artwork, then you’ve come to the right place. Scroll down and take a look at our collection of beautiful butterfly paintings.

If you also have an affinity for feathered creatures, you may also want to check out our list of bird paintings.

Butterfly Watercolor Art

Acrylic Butterfly Painting

Butterfly Art Painting

Abstract Butterfly Painting

Realistic Butterfly Painting

Butterfly Portrait Painting

Butterfly Fun Facts

Much like the subjects of these flower paintings, butterflies can practically be found anywhere around the world. But most of us do not know much about these creatures. Here are a few butterfly fun facts that remind you never to judge a book by its cover:

• The smallest butterflies are as tiny as 1/8 of an inch, while the largest ones can be up to 12 inches in length.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• These creatures do not have mouths. Instead, they have a long, straw-like appendage called a proboscis with which they soak up (yes, that’s right, soak not sip) liquids like nectar.
• Speaking of liquids, male butterflies drink from mud puddles to get salts and minerals that cannot be otherwise found in nectar.
• Some species of butterfly have even been known to drink blood from the open wounds of animals. If that isn’t enough to make you think twice about their eating habits, they’ve also been known to partake in sweat, tears, urine, dung, and—oh!—juicy decaying flesh as well. Wasn’t that educational?
• Since a butterfly’s diet consists only of liquid, these creatures do not defecate—even if they do feast on poo juice when the chance presents itself.
• However, if they do drink more than enough, they end up spraying a certain mist, which—although considered waste—is mostly just pure water.
• If a group of birds is called a flock and a group of fish is called a school, and a group of butterflies is called a flutter.

Watercolor Butterfly Painting

Butterfly on Flower Painting

Butterfly Fantasy Painting

Source

Butterfly Oil Painting

Creative Butterfly Painting

The Happy Medium

• When talking about mediums, a personal favorite will always be watercolor. Watercolor paintings give the subject an ethereal and dreamy quality, which—especially if used to depict butterflies—borders on fantasy.
• Compared to watercolor, which some might consider to be a little too washed out for their taste, acrylic paintings are more vibrant and lively. Using acrylic to paint butterflies allows the artist to bring out all the colors that these fluttering creatures are known for.
• However, acrylic turns a few shades darker after the paint has dried. If you want to keep those vivid colors, oil would be the better medium for you.
• And, of course, in the digital age, we also have the digital canvas. With all the programs available for artists today, you can do all of the above and so much more.

A Different Kind of Canvas

You’ve gotten this far, so you’ve already read about all the fancy paintings of butterflies done in different mediums, but have you heard of painting on a butterfly? A few artists in the name of art have taken the corpses of dead butterflies and turned their wings into a unique canvas. If the butterflies in your part of the world are the larger ones, then you may want to look into this style.

Despite some of the disenchanting facts you may have learned about butterflies, the fact that they are great painting subjects remains the same. So take a few ideas from the list on this page, and start your own project.