Step by Step, How to Draw a Rose Flower. Ink and Watercolour hints and tips.

1. Introduction : Hello, I'm ally, a mixed media artist from Cumbria in the Northwest of England. I paint local landscapes of the Lake District Fells where I enjoy walking. I enjoy teaching drawing and painting here on Skillshare and on YouTube. I sell my own work online and at local galleries. In this class, you'll be learning how to draw and paint a rose flower. We will start with observing the basic shapes of the overall outline of the flower before going on to draw and paint it in ink and watercolor. This will help to simplify the drawing process and make the complex rose flower less daunting to draw. We will talk about the importance of relaxing and enjoying the process of creating artworks to reflect your personality and style. I have included three roses to choose from or you can put your own to work from life. For your project, you will complete an ink and watercolor rose on watercolor paper. There is a list of materials required for you in the resources section. Let's get started with some observations and warm up exercises before we draw this pretty rose flower. 2. Warm up and observation: Fore starting any drawing or any finished piece of artwork, it's always a good idea to have a warm up. This warms up both your muscles and your eye, especially if you've not done anything for a day or two in the way of drawing and sketching. So try and get in the habit of practicing and warming up. Have some inexpensive paper to hand, some scraps of card, anything that you can save up and I have a draw of scraps of paper that I can practice on that it doesn't matter when I throw them away. So don't start on your watercolor paper. Start by having a little bit of a warm up to look at these shapes. So we've got three pictures here, your rose might look slightly different if you've got one in a vase in front of you. But you can see we've got one looking down on the rose, one at an angle with the buds as well included, which is rather nice and one from the side. And I think the thing that puts people off roses is the amount of petals that they have puts them off drawing it and attempting to draw it. But really, we don't have to count every petal. We just got to get the essence and the shapes. So if we look at the shapes, with most roses, and they're not all the same. Obviously, you have to use your eye and this is why I say we need to warm our eye up by looking carefully at things. But most roses have this little point at the end of some of the petals, and it's a similar point to the one that you find on the end of the leaf there and that can make it very distinctly rose like. These little bits that are taken out. The way they curl up there as well. So that's quite distinctive. The way that they fixed next to the stem here and this part of the stem where it goes fatter and the way that the leaves go around the bud there. There's all sorts of things that make it a rose, but mostly, one thing that really does is the way that the petals are fixed around each other, the way that they overlaps. We've got lots of overlaps here and lots of overlaps in here. Now, when you come later on to doing your finished drawing, you might want to spend hours and hours getting all these petals where they are, right amount of petals, I rarely do that because nobody's going to count later and say, well, there's 12 petals there and you've only drawn ten. As long as it looks like a rose, that's what we're looking for, the essence of the plant and the overall shape. Okay, so let's look at these shapes. So this one, if we look at this one first, would very much fit into more or less a box shape. So you might want to start with drawing a box to put it in because of course, we can erase these lines later on. But this is just a practice, like I say on a rough piece of paper. So it's more or less fitting into a box, and then you've got your stem going down here. So use your whole arm, use your shoulder when you practice in these shapes. This petal here is a lovely shape. Although we're in a box, it's kind of just going over the edge there. It's a guide is the box that you need to fit into. We've got this one going up here and out, another one coming up here, and always get that distinct shape at the edge there. We're just playing warming up, having a look. Then we can tighten it up and tighten it up and be more detailed as we go along and look at the way that comes down, that lovely shape of that bit of a leaf, another one here, and that's very much distinctly a rose. Look at all these little bits coming off the leaf. Nice pointy edges going to a fine tip. So one thing when drawing any flower, but particularly with these, if you imagine this big bloom out in the garden, what happens when it comes to the end of its life is it disintegrates and all the petals fall off because they've lost the fixing. So if we imagine this point here, and behind here where we can't see, they're all anchored to the stem. So every petal needs to come from that anchor. Otherwise, it's not going to look realistic. So if you have a petal that starts up here somewhere, it's not anchored to this stem, and it's not going to look real. So everything, all your lines have to come back to this point. Okay, and when that goes, they all fall out. We've got this how it's blooming, as it starts blooming, it's all opening up like that. And just imagine this as a goblet shape. So the problem we have when we're doing any drawing or painting is that we are creating an artwork on a two D flat surface. But the thing that we're drawing is a three D object, and we need to make that three D. So we've always got to in our mind, imagine what we're doing. Even if it's from a flat photograph, imagine that we're going around it and working around it and that that is a three D object. So this could fit into a goblet shape. So when we come later on to put color on and things, you can see you can make that goblet shape by getting these shadows in here. This is a very distinct shape where it's all going down. And round and you can picture that, can't you? Those petals anchored there, all going round and up and this way. So they're not just going around this way. They're coming towards us and away from us as well. Okay, so well, let's look at this next one. So this would more or less fit into a circle, so you might begin with getting a nice big circle, and you might put a second circle in for this part here. Again, everything is anchored. Although we can't see the top of that stem there, if in your mind's eye, don't draw it, don't draw it like I have, but if in your mind's eye, you know where that anchor is and that you've got the stem coming down here. When you're drawing, you want all your petals to be anchored to that. So we'll start if you look at that line there, put that line because that's the base. We imagine it has that part of your hand there, that's the base of it, where it's going to come up from there and curl around. Okay. So with this one and with the next one, we really need to look at the way they are curling around each other. Now, this is a little bit messy now cause I've obviously gone over these lines several time, but I'll try and press on and show you. So if you start with the first petal in the center here, and it's going around like that. You can't see the actual down into the center because it's quite dark. But then you start building up, putting the petals around and they overlap in each other and you're seeing the edges of them. And then build that up and build it. Until we get. So we've got all those tight little ones in there. Like I said, nobody's going to be counting that you've got all these tight ones correctly done. And then when we come out, we've got the ones that are slightly opening up, and that's a shape. So if we look at this shape here, it's like a boomerang. So don't think of it as a petal. Think of it as a shape. Same when you're drawing people, same when you're drawing animals or anything, look at each shape. Can you see a circle? Can you see a square and fit the things into those shapes. If you start thinking petals, especially when you're drawing people, if you start thinking eyes or noses, or whatever, you start panicking. Just look at basic shapes that you can see there and then build it up and build it up and build it up. And then as we go out, the more and more open, and as I say, we get those distinctive petal shapes, and then opening up to the very big ones that are really open, and again, getting those shapes in. And don't forget those are coming towards us. So this isn't accurate, but it's coming towards us. So when we put some lines, in afterwards, if we come this way with our arm, stand up, move your arm so that we get some feeling of movement, and we get some feeling of it coming towards us. These lines here, the veins, very, you might not be able to see them from the camera here. But the not straight, the not like that. Quite often people will draw lines like that on flowers. Get some movement, the curving, the nice and curly. Okay. So we'll take a quick look at this one, and then we'll go ahead and do a finish piece. So this is a bit of a combination of the other two, really. So we've got that oblong shape in the center there. Of the ones that are still curled up and around. And then we've got it going out in a circle this way. So it's starting off, it's looking a bit like a daffodil there, isn't it? You've got some opening up and you've got some there and then we've got this. Again, we know where the stem is. It's here. And so if we start here, again, we'll start with that middle one, and then you've got all the ones going around it. I'm not going to do all those. I'll just squiggle. And then the more open ones again anchored down here, and then these ones coming out and towards you. Now, if you look at this one, and it's one the same on some of the others, I'll just turn to that up here a bit. If you look at these petals here, you've got the petal going up, and then it's curling over. So the shape we're getting here is something like this. Can you see that? This is the outside of the petal where it's curled over. That's an important observation to make and look at that where that happens. Look at where they're overlapping. If you're not confident with drawing an ink, do everything in pencil first because when you come to put your ink on, it's very easy to go over some lines where they wouldn't be criss crossing. Here, we're running out of paper a little bit. But this one here is a particularly lovely shape because it's going right towards us, you see the flat line of the top of the petal, and then from the back of the petal, you see this shape here. And then it's going down there. So it's like this. I'm bending right over now, so it's coming towards us with its shape over like that. Okay. So I hope that wasn't just a big squiggly mess to you. I hope that all made sense. Have a really good play looking at these shapes before you go on. And I should have said about the buds, but the buds are so easy. Just got that oval shape. You've got and then you've got the leaves coming around. Okay. So look at what makes them distinctive. Look at these points. You're going to need a nice point on your pen or on your brushes to get these lovely shapes of these points at the end of everything. So I'm going to get some watercolor paper now. Try and get a nice smooth paper that's easy to draw on that your pens are going to bounce along too much on, and one that takes a nice bit of water. So anything over 140 pounds in weight is what I would recommend. 3. Pencil guidelines: Paper I'm using is a saunters Waterford, so it's really nice and smooth to drawn. And I've taped this to a board. You might be using a pad. You might have a gummed pad, and if you're using a loose pad, make sure you just tape it around the edge or pop a pin over it or something to hold it down when you put the water on. Okay, so I'm choosing to do this one just because I really love the shapes of these leaves. Well, they're not really leaves. They're the case that's sort of opened and gone down as it's come out of its bud. So I'd love to see you do the other two as well, and it'd be great to see what you've done afterwards when you upload your projects. I do thank you for uploading your projects. It's lovely to see everybody's work, but don't ever feel obliged to. You know, it's not compulsory, but it is nice to see, and I can give you feedback then as well. Okay, so like I said before, it's more or less fitting into a square shape. So one thing you can do to check that, is measure with your pencil. So from the top to the bottom there is about that. And then it more or less goes from there to there, so we've got this little bit here and this bit here breaking out of that shape. So you could start by putting a square shape in just to give you a guide to work to but you don't have to do that because you could just have that in your mind that that's what it's going to fit into and use the whole paper if you can. Okay. So I'm going to start with this with this central one here. Which comes about half the way up. It sets off, so it sets off about here somewhere up over. And that's the only lines you can see of that one there. Then you've got one that comes right across it. As I said before, it's one of those that's curling over. So you're seeing the lip, if you like, the edge of the petal air as it's curled over. And then you've got one coming the other way. So this is this goblet shape you can see here, the line coming down. And then up. As I said, this one breaks the line a little bit. Again, you're seeing the back here. But this is detail we can add later. To begin with, we're just getting the basic shapes. And that goes all the way up that line, and again, out at the top there across and down, the goblet shaping there, and again, we're seeing a little bit of the outside edge of that petal. Into the center because they tend to overlap like that, if you like. So you wouldn't find one going across that they're always going to be going you know, two lining up there. This is just the top of some other ones from the other side you can see a couple of tops there you can see, and then this one going out and a into here. And again, it's got that nice point there. This is the best shape here, it swoops right down, and then you've got that goblety shape. I tend to curve things a little bit more than they are. So you'll find something like that. I'll perhaps tend to come out a bit far. I think it's about light drawing curves and getting some shape into things, and this comes back to what we were saying before about getting that your own personality into things and a little bit of imagination as well. I do it without thinking putting extra curves in things. This is one of those leafy things coming down. And then we've got this really big one, big petal that's coming towards us. So as you're drawing, imagine you're drawing around that and it's coming towards you. And you've got that petal again folded over. So we're seeing both sides. And it's difficult to do this just with the pencil, unless you're using lots of shading and things. You would actually be going to be easier once you get the colors in to distinguish which is the back and which is the front of the petal. Again, it goes in, and it comes out towards us like this. We can see the underside of this petal. So this petal here, we can see the underside again in a little bit of a tulip. Goblet shape, and then you've got the back of another petal there or the front of another petal there. So we've not actually got that many petals showing. We've got one, two, three, four, five, sit, seven, and then those few little bits at the top where they're all nice and tight. So it's perhaps an easier one to choose than the other two. As far as detail is concerned, but nice with those shapes. And that's got a lot of these jiggled ibits, whatever the word is. And then, of course, the stem itself, you mustn't forget about. And it has got some leaves lower down, but I think I'm going to leave those off for now and just concentrate on this. So as far as pencil lines goes, that's probably enough. You don't want to put every little detail in with pencil line. You can quickly look back and I'm thinking that needs to be a bit wider there, and do a few alterations. Perhaps go away, have a brew and come back and see things that you want to change a little bit, and hopefully you'll have more time than me on this. So I'm seeing here now this petal isn't one. There's another part of another petal behind it. So you get your eraser. Some of the lines that are wrong. You can take those out before you come back with your pen. But just spend a little bit of time. But you've got the feel for the rose. You don't have to be exactly right. And another thing I should have mentioned with the leaves, can you see how they're serrated on the edge? So again, that's something that's quite distinct with the rose. I haven't mentioned thorns. None of these pictures have actually got thorns on. So we'll come back in the next little clip with some ink and do the actual drawing of the ink. 4. Erasing lines and assessing drawing: How much detail and shading you put on there is entirely up to you. Don't be afraid to go dark in places. The light can't get into all the bases of those petals. The light is being blocked from getting in there. So there are places where it's really, really dark. You can see here, it's really dark. So press on a little bit harder with your pen in places and get that contrast between the darkest and the lightest areas a bit darker along here. So don't forget after you've done your watercolor, you can always come back with your pen. So don't overdo it with your pen because you can put extra on later if you want to. And as I said before, it's a very delicate thing, very delicate petals. You don't want to be heavy handed and have really dark lines on there. So give it a few minutes to dry just to make sure it's completely dry, and then have a nice soft eraser. So the thing is, if you have a good quality paper, And a good quality eraser. It's going to make life much easier for you. Don't use an old razor that you find in the back of a cupboard that you had from when you were at school, and it's going to take all the paper off and all the ink off. Have a decent eraser, a nice soft one. And if you're not sure how good it is, again, practice on a different piece of paper, test it out, see how good it is. Get all those pencil lines off, and then we'll come back with some color. And again, how much color we put on and how details we go with that is entirely up to you. You can see that looks completely different. Now I've got rid of those pencil lines. Actually, I've just missed one there. Whoops. It looks entirely different, much crisper. And I'm quite happy with it. I think what we wanted to achieve was to get the essence of a rose. We know it's a rose. It's not a daffodil. It's not a daisy. It's distinctly a rose. So it doesn't matter if things aren't exactly as they are on here, if they're not exactly as I said in the introduction, nobody's going to have this photograph or that particular rose to say, you've got that wrong. As long as you've got the feel for it, as long as it looks believable as a rose, so everything's hinged on that stem there. And it looks Rose like Rose character, then you should be happy with yourself for that. Again, I've just missed a little bit there. So, like I said, the actual painting of it is really a personal preference. The whole thing about income water color is that you've got that combination of the detailed or more detailed drawing with a bit of a loose paint wash because there's no point drawing and going details with your paint when you've already got that there. You don't want to hide all that lovely drawing that you've done, and all that character that you've got of your flower. We're just adding a touch of color. Now, if you wanted, you could do this very dark background so it pops out. I'm just going to do it against a white background. So just be patient, let things dry, go off and do something else, come back to it. I'm just going to look for those other two photographs. If you look at these, you could do a lovely background with this one, just wetting the paper and dropping some pinks and greens in so that you've got the background there before you put your colors on top, and you would just do that in layers coming forward and do these lovely buds as well. And then that gives you the feel of that being outside in the garden. So this is just one color. It's just pink. So I think what I'm going to do, excuse me, I'm losing my voice today. I'm just going to make different strengths of the same pink, the same color. So with different amounts of water. So some stronger with more paint pigment and less water, and some with slightly more water. And you start off with the more watery paint and then build up to the stronger paint as you're putting it on. We'll do the flower first, and then we'll do some of the stem as well and those little bits of green in there. But I'm not going to overdo it with the paint because the drawing is there, and I'm quite happy with the drawing, and you want to show that drawing off. And also, you could lift out some highlights with a bit of tissue or something or just with your brush as well if you wanted to. 5. Ink Drawing: Ink pen that I'm using is a UNI pin fine liner, and it's a size note 0.5. And you'll see there it says waterproof and fade proof. So it doesn't matter what make of pen you use. There are lots of different ones on the market. It just matters that it's waterproof, because if you're going to be adding your watercolor paints to it, you don't want to to to smudge. So if you've not used your pens before with watercolor paints, give them a test. Again, get some scraps of paper. If you've got a little bit of a scrap of watercolor paper or the back of something else that you're throwing out, use those scraps to test out your materials. So test out that your ink once it's dry. Well, you can go over it with watercolor paints. So do let them dry, cause even though you know, it's in a pen, it's not a dip pen or anything like that. It just does need a few little minutes to dry before you go on with your paint. So one good thing about getting the pencil lines in first is so that we're not going to be going over those lines crossing where they shouldn't be. So you need to do a little bit of concentrating now, being a bit more free and easy with to get the character with the pencil. And now we need to tighten it up a little bit with the pen. So, I like to start at the top and work down so that my hand isn't smudging what I've already done. You know, it's an easier way for me to work. And I will sit down at this point to do the pen drawing because it's going to take me a little while. And I don't have to worry about moving my arm just as much. So I would start with these little ones at the top where we said, you know, they were just poking out and very distinctive shape here. And I'm holding a pen quite lightly. I don't want to you know, a rose is a delicate thing. I don't want to be putting a lot of pressure on and making very heavy black lines. And that's the reason I chose a size not 0.5 as well. I don't want a really heavy line. I don't want to be doing this with a sharpie or anything like that. So we've just got those few little bits of lines there where those petals are showing above there. And then I'm going to put this lovely crinkly shape of the top petal there, which is going round. And as you're looking, you can see it going down here. And you go along here and we've seen a little bit of the lip, it's a bit thicker. We go backwards and forwards. We have a couple of little lines there. At the end as well we've got a nice bit of a shape with where it's poking up down. Like I said, we've got that goblet shape as it goes down to where it meets that one there. If we look carefully now, there's lots of veins on this and they're all light, and they're going in different directions. They're not all uniform. Again, we're getting a feel for those shapes. It doesn't matter if you put every single vein in, you get looking at where they're curling around, the shapes of them around that lip there because they're coming down and toward us. And then look at the shadows. Now, there was some shot shade on this top one. So in ink drawing, it's up to you how you do the shadows. Some people like to do little dots. I tend to do dashes. But I put very little pressure on my pen and do some bits of dashes there. Okay? So that shadow is just going to start and give us the impression of the fact that this is more three D. The lights hit in the front there, but it can't get around the sides. We'll put all the petals in and then come back and build up some of the shadowy shapes. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to carry on with that. I'm not going to talk through the whole thing. So very carefully, looking at each petal, getting those shapes in of the edges, wether nice and pointy and get a few of those shadows and veins starting to build it up. 6. Painting the petals: What I've done here is I've mixed I've put the same amount of water, just a little drop of water in all three of those, and I've put some of this rows in here. It's a Windsor and Newton one. And then I'm going to take some of that out of there. So that's nice and thick. Pop it in the next one. And then take some of that out of there and pop it in the next one. So then you've got three strengths. You've got dilute going to much stronger. So if we wet one petal at a time, Have a good brush with a good tip. So the tip of your brush is the most important thing here with roses because we've got those shapes where they go into those little points, get your water into that point and cover that petal. This is where we need to take our time, one petal at a time. You could go over the whole thing if you wanted to, make it a bit looser. But we've got those distinct petals. I think it'd be nice to do them and get the shadows and shapes in where they're overlapping. Obviously, they cast shadows on each other. So that's all wet. So that one petal is all wet. So we'll go to that loose pink when I mean loe the one with the water in it, and we'll pop that in. You don't really need to paint with it. You just need to let it flow into that water that's already there. And obviously, it's not going to matter too much if you overlap the lines here a little bit. It's this outer line that you don't want to go over. You're just pushing the pigment around really in that water and not overworking it. And then if you look here, where we've got the shadow, and we've already done that shadow with the ink. But if we get the strongest mix now, so we're not going to go with that medium mix because actually this one is very light. It's just this dark bit here, and we're just going to pop that thicker mix into this area. And again, we don't need to work it. We don't need to brush it too much. We're just dropping in the pigment and letting it flow. And it'll keep moving as it dries, and that'll dry nicely without any help from you, don't start pushing and pulling it around. I'm just going to put a bit here because it sort of folded around on itself as well there. So you're just dropping in the color, where you can see those bits of shadows and folds and letting it flow. Now, what I would do now is instead of doing this one that's right next to it because they can flow into each other, I would go and do one over here or here and build it up like that. As that's drying, I'm doing one over here, and then I can come back to that area. So just do one at a time using either the two colors well, they're all the same color, the two mixes that I've just used or all three of them depending on how many shades and shadows you can see in each petal. If you're using different colors, that's absolutely fine too. You might want a few different colors. You might want to put some orange or something underneath for the light shining through and then some more colors on top. Just have a really good look at the rows that you're doing. Obviously, this one, not this one here is different altogether because you've got quite a lot of white there. You need to think about your shadow colors as well for that. I'm going to carry on and do all of those. I'm not actually going to film that because I've shown you what we've done there, and then we'll come back and do the stem and the leaves. 7. Painting the stem: I'm reasonably happy with that. And I've kept it very, very simple using just that one color. Of course, you could expand on that and use more colors. You could allow that to dry and then put layers over the top. Just remember when you're putting layers over layers with water color, to be very careful just to imagine that you're painting on glass and do it very lightly. You don't want to lift the colors from below. So one thing to remember, this technique is called painting wet in wet, which you're probably familiar with. So we wet the paper, and then we add the paint to each other whilst it's all still wet. And the only thing you really need to remember that with that is to always be adding a stronger mix the second time. So you start with one that's more watery, and as you go on, you have a stronger mix with more pigment and less water. If you do it the other way around, you'll end up with a mess. So that's really the one thing you must remember with this. All we need to do now is put a little dash of color on the stem and the leaves, and because I've kept the flowers so simple, I want to keep those simple as well. Those of you that are gardeners will observe your flowers and see that lots of red flowers and pink flowers have that color going through the stem. If you look at the stem here, it's a little bit ready. Because I don't want to introduce lots more colors to this, I'm just going to use one green, probably a sap green and add some of this pink to it to get a ready color, and then I'll just put a tiny light bit of sap green on the leaves here. Now, because we've used that wet in wet technique on the flower with the petals, we want to use the same technique going further down. Otherwise, it's going to look like two separate paintings. So we need to use the same technique. So wet your leaves, the not leaves, what casings, whatever they are. I'll do two at once here. Using the tip of that brush, get your green. They're actually very, very light in color. So we've only got one. I've only mixed one mix of green up not lots like I did with the pink. Oops, I've gone over the line there. Don't worry about if you've got a good paper and you go over the line, get a nice synthetic brush, and you can lift that color out. So this is a lot lighter in some areas. So what you can do while it's still wet, to give it a bit more shape is just lift some of that color out. So this is a dry brush, and this is a synthetic brush, so it's easier to lift out with a synthetic brush rather than with your sable brushes. And where I've gone over the line, I can also lift that out very carefully. You won't make as much mess as I have. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with these lovely rose photographs. Okay, so I'll do the rest of those and then we'll come and do the stem. So like I said, the stem color, I've mixed that sap green with the rose red, and it's actually made a lovely color that's just right for this stem. So we'll wet the stem. F. And we'll pop that color in. And you could go darker with that and red if you wanted to. But really, the flower is the star of the show, so you don't want lots of detail in your stem. So we've already got the shadow there coming down the side with the pen. Like I said before, once it's dry, you can always put more pen on if you want to. But I really think that's enough for mine. So if you want, you can expand, you can put more colors on, you can put a background on. You can try all three of those. So for your project, I'd like you to do at least one, but maybe two or three and pop those in the, like I say, upload those if you can, and if you would like to. Because if you do that, I can then give you some feedback. Okay. So just to recap, the main thing when you're painting any flower, drawing any flower, should I say, is to first of all, look at the overall shapes, the shapes of the flower and each petal, rather than getting stuck right in the detail to begin with. Keep it loose to begin with, and then you can add the detail later. 8. Conclusion: Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that. If you've got any questions at all about the process about the drawing and the painting of any flowers, these ones in particular, please do ask. You can ask me here on Skillshare or you can ask me over on Instagram in the messages. I'll always get back to you when I can as soon as I have the time. You can also see lots more flower demonstrations over on YouTube, which, of course, are free to see there on YouTube, and I do do some on my Facebook page as well. So if you go over to my website, you'll see all the links there. So that's just ally lawson do U K. Let me know what you think, and I really look forward to seeing your projects and seeing all these beautiful roses. Thank you very much for taking my skill share course today, and I'll be back again soon with another one. Good bye for now.