How to Paint an Easter Bunny: Step by Step Guide

Painting an Easter bunny is one of those subjects that feels instantly nostalgic. Spring colours, soft fluffy body, a hint of childhood Easter mornings. It is also genuinely one of the easier beginner paintings because the bunny shape is basically three circles and a couple of curves. The hard part is getting the sky and grass background right, which we will walk you through.

Here is the full step by step from the Paint Juicy team. The two-colour background blend, the simple bunny shape, the sharpie trick for clean facial details, and the finishing touches that turn a plain bunny into something worth hanging up on Easter weekend.

What you need before you start

The Easter bunny kit is simple and the colours are spring-fresh.

Acrylic paints in these colours: Titanium White, Mars Black, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Cerulean Blue, Yellow Green, Light Green, Dark Green, and Quinacridone Magenta. The browns are the main colour for the bunny body, the greens and blue handle the background, and the pink (magenta plus white) is for the inner ears. Our guide on the best paint for paint and sip projects covers why acrylics work for this kind of soft subject.

A canvas in horizontal (landscape) orientation. The bunny sits in a grassy field so a wider canvas suits the composition.

Brushes: a wide flat brush for the background sky and grass, a medium round brush for the bunny body, and a fine round brush for details. A black sharpie or fine-tip black paint pen is genuinely the best tool for facial details (eyes, whiskers, paws).

Plus white chalk for sketching the bunny shape on the dark grass background. Pencil does not show up well on painted backgrounds but chalk does, and you can wipe it off with a damp cloth if you want to adjust the shape. This is the pro move.

Plus the usual palette, water, paper towels and an old shirt.

Step 1: Paint the sky background

Turn your canvas horizontal. The sky takes up the top two thirds of the canvas, the grass takes the bottom third. Start with the sky.

Squeeze some Cerulean Blue onto your palette. Load your wide flat brush and paint horizontal strokes across the top of the canvas, working down about 5 inches (more or less depending on your canvas size). You want a clean sky blue for the top stretch.

Without cleaning your brush, pick up some Titanium White and paint below the blue band, letting the two colours blend where they meet. Keep pulling the brush downward and adding more white as you go, so the sky gradually lightens from deep blue at the top to almost white near the horizon. This is wet on wet blending and it creates the soft sunny sky effect in a single pass.

Leave a small gap of unpainted canvas at the bottom third where the grass will go. Let the sky dry completely before moving to the grass step.

Step 2: Paint the grassy foreground

The grass is where your bunny will sit so it needs to look soft and spring-like, not dark winter green.

Mix Yellow Green with a touch of Titanium White on your palette to get a fresh spring green. Load your wide flat brush and paint horizontal strokes across the bottom third of the canvas, working from the bottom up to where the grass meets the sky. Keep the strokes loose and slightly varied in tone.

Without cleaning your brush, pick up Light Green and paint over the top portion of your grass area, letting it blend softly with the yellow green below. This creates the impression of rolling grass with natural tonal variation.

Finally, using the tip of your brush or a fine brush, add a few short vertical strokes of Dark Green across the grass for texture. These short upright strokes represent individual grass blades catching light. Scatter them across the whole grass area, not in rows.

When you are happy with the grass, let the canvas fully dry before moving to the bunny step.

Step 3: Sketch the bunny shape with chalk

Now for the bunny itself. Use white chalk for this step, not pencil. Chalk shows up clearly on the dark grass background and it wipes off cleanly if you need to adjust the shape.

Decide whether you want the bunny sitting in the centre of the canvas or off to one side. Off centre usually looks more interesting.

Start with a medium circle for the head, positioned roughly where the grass meets the sky. From the top of the head, draw two long curved lines rising up into the sky for the ears. The ears should be tall, almost as tall as the head itself. Traditional Easter bunny ears are long and slightly floppy at the tips. Keep the two ear lines a couple of inches apart at the base where they attach to the head.

For the body, draw a larger rounded shape below the head, mostly hidden in the grass so only the upper portion shows. The classic Paint Juicy bunny is shown peeking out of the grass with two prominent front paws resting in front, almost like the bunny is sitting up watching you. Sketch two rounded paw shapes at the front of the body where they meet the grass line, with small toe divisions visible.

If something looks off, wipe it with a damp paper towel and redraw. Chalk is forgiving.

Step 4: Paint the bunny body in warm brown

The classic Paint Juicy bunny is brown, not white. Brown bunnies look warmer, more natural and more characterful, and the brown colour pops beautifully against the green grass and blue sky background.

Mix your base bunny colour on the palette. Take Burnt Sienna and add a touch of Yellow Ochre and a small amount of Titanium White. You want a warm mid-brown, like milk chocolate. Not too dark, not too light.

Load your medium round brush and paint inside the bunny shape you sketched, covering the head, ears, body and front paws. Work in small directional strokes that follow the shape of the body, rather than smooth flat coverage. Bunnies are fluffy and you want your brushwork to suggest that texture from the start.

Once the base brown is down, mix a darker shade by adding Burnt Umber and a touch of Mars Black to your base colour. Use this darker brown to add shading along the edges of the body, the underside of the ears, around the cheeks, and along the lower edge where the body meets the grass. The darker shadow tone gives the bunny dimensional depth.

Now mix a lighter shade by adding more Yellow Ochre and Titanium White to your base colour. Use this lighter brown to add highlights along the top of the head, the upper ears, the centre of the face, and the tops of the front paws. The light areas catch imagined sunlight from above.

For the inner ears, mix Quinacridone Magenta with a generous amount of Titanium White to get a soft pink. Paint the inside cup of each ear with the pink, leaving the brown outer fur around the outside of the ear. The pink ear lining is one of the bunny's signature features.

For extra fluff texture, take your fine brush with the lighter brown highlight colour and add tiny short strokes along the outer edges of the head, ears and body, suggesting individual fur tips catching the light. These small fur strokes are the move that turns a brown shape into something that reads as actual fur.

Step 5: Add the face details

Here is the tool that genuinely makes this step easier. Use a black sharpie or fine-tip black paint pen instead of a brush. Sharpies give you clean crisp lines that are hard to achieve with a brush on a fluffy painted surface.

Draw the eyes. Two small solid ovals on the face, spaced wider apart than you think they should be. Bunny eyes sit on the sides of the head, not the front, so position them toward the outer edges of the face.

Draw the nose. A solid black inverted triangle or rounded shape in the middle of the face, just above where the mouth will go. Brown bunnies have dark noses that contrast beautifully against the warm fur.

Draw the mouth using a Y-shape. One short vertical line coming straight down from the bottom of the nose, then two curved lines branching out to the sides at the bottom. This is the classic bunny mouth shape.

Add the two front teeth. This is the signature detail of the Paint Juicy bunny and the most charming feature of the painting. Just below the V where the mouth lines meet, paint two small white rectangles side by side. These are the two prominent front teeth poking out below the mouth. Outline them with a thin black line so they read clearly against the dark mouth area. Without these teeth your bunny just looks like a generic rabbit. With them, it is unmistakably a Paint Juicy bunny.

Add whiskers. Three or four thin black lines coming out from each side of the face, angled slightly downward and outward. Long and confident, not short and tentative. Real bunny whiskers stretch well past the edges of the face.

Add a few small lines to the paws to suggest toes, and a small dark outline around the bottom of the body where it meets the grass.

Finally, with your light green paint and a fine brush, dot a tiny highlight into each eye (a catchlight), plus a few small green speckles around the base of the bunny suggesting fresh grass touches.

Step 6: Finishing touches

The bunny is technically done at this point. If you want to push it further, here are a few optional touches that take five minutes each and add real personality.

Add flowers in the grass. Small dots of magenta, yellow, or white scattered across the grass suggest wildflowers. Just three or four dots per flower, clustered together. Easter scenes love a scatter of flowers.

Add a rainbow in the sky. Using your fine brush, paint a soft arc with magenta, yellow and light green in thin curved bands. Do not do the full seven-colour rainbow, a suggestion of two or three colours reads better.

Add Easter eggs around the bunny. Small colourful ovals in the grass, decorated with tiny dots or stripes. Classic Easter composition.

Add a second smaller bunny in the background if you want company for your main bunny. Smaller scale, less detail, just suggested.

Stand back from the canvas and assess. Sometimes the painting is already done and adding more would ruin it. Less is usually more.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

The brown body looks flat and one-dimensional. You skipped the highlight and shadow steps. Go back over the body adding the lighter brown along the top of the head and ears (where light catches) and the darker brown along the lower edges (where shadow falls). Three tones of brown is what makes the bunny look fluffy and three-dimensional rather than like a flat brown shape.

The ears are too short. Traditional Easter bunny ears are exaggerated tall, almost as long as the body. If your ears look short or stubby, extend them upward into the sky. Height is part of what makes a bunny look unmistakably Easter.

The face looks flat or sad. Usually the eyes need catchlights. Add a tiny light green or white dot to each eye. That single highlight pulls the whole face forward and gives the bunny personality.

Why we know this works

Paint Juicy has hosted over 42,000 guests across Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory, with seasonal Easter paint and sip running every spring. The sharpie-for-face-details trick is one we developed after watching beginners struggle with fine brush lines on fluffy painted textures. If you are curious about joining us at a themed session, our FAQ on what to expect walks through the format.