Painting Watercolor Roses: Learn to Create 3 Styles

1. Introduction: >Hi, I'm Medina Trescas water color artist and illustrator. Welcome to my studio. Today's class is a part of the series of floral classes where we paint flowers in different styles. Today we'll be painting roses in 3-D styles. Roses are beautiful subject to paint and they are always on demand on such markets as pattern, fabric design, wedding industry, and stationary art. If you are new on this channel welcome and thank you for joining. Press the follow button on top and let's get started. 2. Colors and supplies: In this class, we'll be using the following supplies: watercolor paper, I'll be using 140 pounds cold press by Canson, watercolor paint, water, paint palette, and paper towel. Eraser, pencil, fine liner, just make sure it's waterproof or you can use ink. Optional, I will be using my gel pen. You can use also whitewash or white ink. A big soft watercolor brush, this is a squirrel number four by the end tip. A medium watercolor brush with good tip. It could be synthetic one or it could be natural one. So this is number four. The small watercolor brush, so this is number two. Also we'll be using the following colors: caramel orange, caramel red, we'll be mixing it with magenta. So caramel red and magenta. Also we'll be using emerald green, irregular green, one shade of blue, violet or purple, and lemon yellow. These are the supplies and colors we'll be using today. 3. Rose in ink and watercolor: Let's draw and paint watercolor rose in ink and watercolor. I'll be using a fine liner, but you can use ideal ink. We will start drawing from the middle of the flower, because this is the most important distinctive part of a rose. Making an eight and surround it with a loop. The petals of rose are so similar to the petals of the circle end, if you've ever painted one a circle end, but I like triangle end. Have this a little bit of pointy end. But at the same time, they're softer, so they would bend, like this. Which we usually see here in the middle of a flower. As a little cup or a goblet. The goblet is surrounded by petals. Then look and see the second part of the goblet right here. It will be again, surrounded by petals. You can find the drawings in the project section of the course, and you can do a preventive sketch, just like I did before you start outlining it in ink. Also you can try this style in pencil and watercolor. In this way you'll be using a pencil watercolor technique, pencil and watercolor. You can notice there is a lot of geometry in rose petals, they look like hexagons, polygons or triangles. Here and there we can see a pointy petal. Of course they don't look really like triangles, but this point do you think the less suggesting among geometry in and these flowers? You can keep painting. You can keep drawing as many petals as you want to, so it's just important to have this little goblet and the bigger one surrounded by petals, opening like a cabbage. Then the rest of the petals are more open, and have pretty similar shapes. You just have to derive them here in there a little bit. So they don't look too similar. And you'll have to add this folding of the petals. So they don't look like succulents. This is enough, and then they'll have a stem, and let's have some leaves too. These are also pointed, bit around here. Then we go to the point also may have a little bit of scarred edge. You can be as close and as precise as you want to review it in class. Starting out to you. You can add more spontaneity than me. For example, another petal here, another petal here. Because in nature, you can find all kinds of shapes. Next what we will do is, we will take pretty lean brush. This is number four, round brush. But, then take number six. Number eight. This, for example, is number six but it's smaller. You want a pretty lean brush, and next I'll take some common red. I forgot to mention that. One more time. Make sure that your ink is water proof, because now we will apply water color. It won't dilute. Let's start from the middle. Here for flower is the darkest, and one of the petals are bending. They'll be lighter than they were there. You can see this bending on the painting, I'm leaving it totally white, because that's how I like it. I like one on ink and watercolor I have some more red spots, but also I'd like to add some fresh brush strokes with some spontaneity, so on. And just not always respect the lines. But we can still see them because watercolor is transparent. Let's add some color orange, and make our color more interesting and warmer towards the edge. Then I'll drag my brush and paper towel. And I will bring this color too. I can gradually bring it to the white paper like this. Again you can add some dots. Which has some romantic layer to our rose. Here. Next, Lets paint all around the stem. I'll take a warm shade of blue, with lemon yellow, and regular green. Really again, no need to be too precise. You can leave some white. Then painting the leaves. This is enough. I like how it looks. However, let's add a few more lines with more pigment, and less water to our rose, add some amazing, some emerald green to common red. The tip of the brush, imagine, just few more details. This is too harsh, so let's dilute it a little bit. Here I think we need a little pink, onto this white part because I think it's a little too white. This is better. This is our Rose in ink and watercolor. 4. Painting a rose in painterly style: Now let's paint a rose in a painterly style. I'll take some magenta for the middle of the flower because it has to be dark. So let's take more pigment and add some cadmium red. However, I want it be flowy, so I'm taking enough water. I'm starting from the middle of the flower, making just few brushstrokes and leaving white space between them. You have to be really intuitive of this one, and after painting ink and water-colored rose, we're already more familiar with the shape. So we are going in little loops and as we're going farther from the middle of the flower, we will be adding more and more water to our petals. So again, I'm adding water and I'm going further. Then just start forming the petals and leaving these white spaces between them, outlining the petal. I' going to add more orange. I'll get the color over here and here. So magenta with orange and then I'll have the goblet again and show it here. You can you see it. So it looks like it's looking in there. Then next just go intuitively. We can always add more petals later so don't worry too much. Try to relax and enjoy. So we don't have colors in right here, so just petals which are open and I have some white space between them. I feel like we need another petal over here and more rounded petals here. This is too round so I think I want to shape it more angular like this. While it's still wet, let's add some orange here and there and if yours is not wet, don't worry. Also I wanted to paint a hand here, holding this flower and I made a really light sketch. You can find the drawing of the hand in the project section of the class where you can find all the drawings. So if you don't feel confident, you can just outline them from there. Just put print them. So here is my hand. I decided to make it blue. I still think we need another petal somewhere here. Why not, right? Now I'll mix some emerald green with purple. Let's make the stem. Oops, we touched the flower which was still wet, or I did and it already bled in and it's okay. The leaves we'll be painting this way. They can go as crops like this. Second shape, we leave as long as it's wet until I'm happy with the result. Painterly style and rose style is a lot about muscle memory. So the more you'll practice one shape, the easier it'll be to repeat it. So if you're painting the leaves in a certain way, it's easier for you to do it and if you're trying a new shape, then it'll be harder. But once you practice it, it's going to be easier too. So let's fix this. I'll take some more magenta. We have a little bit of this, below we have ruby leaf and we'll add some pure more dark lines. Let's let it dry and add few more precise lines to our painterly style. So this part where I want to add a few more lines is pretty dry. The middle is still wet but I'm happier with the middle because we have enough white space left between the petals and they show where the petals are. So we'll take some really watery pink and I'll add some precision to these petals which don't have white paces to show where the petal starts. Add some here. Maybe a few here. It's still pretty wet. Okay. Let's try not to overdo it. One more little petal here. This is our rose in a painterly style. 5. Painting a realistic rose: For a realistic style usually we'll use reference picture and do the drawing first. So I have a light sketch here, but I'll make it darker. So first, we have, of course, middle of a flower which are all these petals which are so close to each other. In close telling detail, goblet or a cup, like this. Then you have your petals. Just a reminder, don't make your sketch as dark as mine. Do it as light as possible so you can see it through watercolor but not too dark.So here we have another petal, bending another part of the goblet. Of course, you don't have to do it exactly like this. You can just improvise some petals. I'm trying not to make many petals. Actually like the roses are varying from five petals to hundreds of petals. So if you want to try really easy roses like wild roses, you can start with five petals ones. Those are beautiful too. I didn't pick the roses with too many petals. Our class requires it to trace each along. So let's draw separate petals. So this is our drawn rose. I hope your sketch is not as dark as mine. I made mine dark so you can see it. Next we'll take a big brush and we'll mix a lot of very very light watercolor wash. So it has to have a lot of water and just a little bit of pigment of color. I took a soft, huge, brush and I'll cover the entire rose with this solution. So this color has to be like the lightest color on your reference picture. That's how light it has to be. So let's try to color it in a smooth beautiful watercolor wash and to have smooth watercolor wash, we don't have to let the edge to dry. So we have to work pretty fast. For nearly [inaudible] we're using a glazing technique, where we're leaving the layers to dry in-between each other. So we're making one layer, painting one layer and letting it dry and then we go in the next one. So this is our first layer and what we are doing , you can see we have excess of water right here. So we'll dry our brush and we'll take a different brush and we'll absorb excess of water. Because otherwise it would blow into the petal. Usually I would care that but in realistic stuff, we want our washes to be as smooth as possible. Now we have to let the first layer totally to dry before we start applying the second layer, where we will be painting the shadows. So now when our first layer is totally dry and I hope your lines are not as dark as mine, and they're super light. We'll start [inaudible] as shadows to our [inaudible] They can all start probably little. Let's take some magenta and mix it with some common red and a little bit of green. So you remember the green is complementary of red. So it don't make it deeper and darker and still will be a nice way to darken it, we'll make it beautiful. So we are starting with the darkest parts. Then just coloring it like this, outlining on the next two petals. Then I'll go under bending part of a petal. I wash the brush. I'll draw it from and I'll smoothen this part. So the transition is very, very soft. The same way right here and under. You might want to take a smaller brush and paint it. The roses are always darker in the middle even on the bending petals will be darker than bending petals right here, because it's still has a lot of color in the petal itself. It wasn't burned by sun, right there in the middle. So underdeveloped petal will be way darker then the open one. Again where smoothening. After I will darken this bended petals to a little bit especially the ones in the middle, it will be rich in contrast too. So again, before a petal would open, where its include dark colored. Then we're softening the edge like this. So next to the bended petal is the darkest red here. Then it softens there. Next let's add some are transitioning to a lighter color. So we'll just add more Carmen, more magenta. This way it will have less green. That'll be a lighter color. Right here. We should make it lighter because here it will be dark again. So it always will be a light dark, light dark. So this part will be too dark we can't make this one even darker because we'll change the color of the flower. So we need to have it the darkest right here. Then it goes lighter in there. So it's very similar to ours [inaudible] and realistic style. It just has more petals. So just relax and enjoy one petal at a time. [inaudible] Try not to get tangled in the petals like I did. So it's going to be dark at the edge in here, where it's closer to the middle of the flower. It gets lighter to the edge of the petal, always [inaudible] You can see we have to darken it here because this two colors are the same, but we have to show that this petal is above, this one and that is underneath. We wait until it dry a little bit, we will make a more precise line there. Let me switch to a smaller brush. Here we have to dabble because it's covered by this petal on the top and it's covered by this petal on the bottom, so make it dark and smooth-en it near to the middle, and we'll make it dark again. We'll make it smooth to the middle. This way we're obtaining more dimension. Dimension in general. Say if you are making fewer mistakes here and there, it's totally fine. Nobody will come to check, in general, it looks right, it's enough. Don't be too harsh on yourself. Here, this is quite red, with a little bit of water. Small paint until it totally dilutes in a previous cover. Like this. If you have few lines left like this, it's okay. That's some texture. Roses are pretty smooth on petals, so we don't need a lot of texture. But if you have some lines, it's okay. It looks natural. Again, we have dark color closer to the middle and it gets lighter. This petal is a little bit showing. Don't do like me paint from left to the right if you're right-handed. Because otherwise you can smudge what you just painted. You can try it with different colors too, if you want different roses, just go. You want a yellow rose then just go with mixing yellow with violet, with purple to make that dark yellow and just do the same thing and we said for an orange and peach roses it's fine. Again, you can rotate the page anyway you want. I'm not doing it so you wouldn't get confused but you can. If you have painted a painting with me, it's so similar, but a rose is easier than peony. It will be easier to paint thousands of petals than peony flowers. I use a layer until three, four layers maximum. Some are resistant to more layers. Usually I have three layers. I'd go with first layer, which is the lightest, then paint with shadows and then if we have texture, that will be our third layer but we don't have much texture here. But for the fourth layer it would be details. After shadows will probably look right into details. After this layer we'll try. This was the hardest part. The challenge is not to get tangled in the petals. Sometimes you don't understand which one's above, which one is underneath but I think we did good. Maybe there are a couple of mistakes. Sometimes I notice on later. Here's the shadow to show that this petal is blended and we need darker here. Now we will let it dry and next we'll add the last details to our realistic rose. The second layer is totally done and now let's take a lot of pigment and just a little bit of water and add the final details. [inaudible] and just look, what do you think you we missed? Draw a line here. More precision somewhere. These mended pattern, a little bit here. Lowest. All those tiny details which make the painting look more finished and more polished. Maybe a little bit of texture, some here,on this edge and beneath it, and a little bit here. Try not to darken it too much just where it's necessary. I think our realistic rose is looking pretty realistic and I want to add more dots. I wanted to make it look a bit more magic. 6. Last Thoughts: Thank you for watching my class. I hope you had a chance to paint with me. If you liked this class, please leave a review and upload the project to the projects section on the class. I can't wait to see your beautiful roses. If you are sharing your art on Instagram, please tag me so I can see your beautiful results. See you in my next class, bye.