How to Draw a Rose Easily

Roses are one of the most popular flowers to draw -- and one of the most difficult. In this article you'll learn how to draw a rose in an easy style without references.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Charcoal, Conte crayon or soft pastels
• Drawing paper
• Kneaded eraser
• Damp washcloth and dry towel for cleaning hands
• Cotton swabs for blending
• Krylon spray fixative

1. Sketchbook page with rose center swirls showing placement Sketch a swirl more or less where you want the center of your big rose to be, and a slightly smaller one up where you want the rosebud to be. Give yourself some space around them. Copy my swirls as close as you can, especially at first. With practice you'll get to where you can do these as a doodle, but the exact shape of the doodles does matter to this style.
   
   If you want to draw this rose in color, practice in black and white first until you're familiar with it. The values (how dark and light areas are) are much more important than what colors you use. You might draw the roses in red or yellow with green leaves or do something fancy like a pink and orange shaded rose, or get whimsical and create a blue rose with purple leaves to fit your decor. But if the lines are strong and the lights and darks are placed right, it will look good no matter what colors you use.
2. Rosebud nearly done, large rose has some petals added. I added three petals to the bud -- and the bud is almost done, all it needs now is sepals and stem. I added some petals around the center of the big rose too, but kept the lines short where they're going to go down to the next row of petals. We're going to do the line drawing first, then shade by smudging, then strengthen the lines where we want them to be dark.
   
   Carefully blow loose dust away from your drawing and try not to touch any of the dark areas. If you smudge it, squish the kneaded eraser a few times and then carefully remove the smudges. It's better to press and lift than rub the way you would with a normal eraser, but if the smudge isn't right near a line, you can sometimes rub. Every time it's dirty, stretch the kneaded eraser and fold the dirty part to the inside. Stretching and folding a couple of times will always give you a clean surface.
3. Line drawing done, the rose, bud and leaves are recognizable Follow the lines of my drawing very carefully, copy my drawing or outline roses from decorative painting books this way until you're used to the structure of a rose. Look at the shapes of the petals. There is often a dip in the middle of a petal, or part of it turns over out. I made a change to mine to simplify it, since I decided there wasn't room for a petal I'd put in -- so I erased one of my lines to change this. Kneaded eraser will pick up most of the powder from charcoal, Conte crayon is a bit harder to erase completely.
   
   But if you can't completely clean it, just get it light if you make a change. You can draw over it later when we're shading.
   
   Sepals are added to the bud on the top, and a stem that comes out from behind the large full rose. Add some leaves to balance the design. If you want a vine of roses, put curved stems to connect the motifs and draw these roses in a row, turning the buds to alternating sides, adding clumps of two buds, just be creative with it.
   
   At this stage the drawing's done if it's a line drawing to use for painting or tole painting or anything else. You can doodle this line drawing of a rose on phone pads or sticky notes, draw it in your scrapbook with colored pencils or gelly pens, use it anywhere as a line drawing. But we're going to go one stage farther because this is in a soft medium that can smudge.
4. Take your cotton swabs and begin gently shading and blending. Try to make the darkest shading fall at the base of petals or between petals. Stretch and clean the kneaded eraser, squish it to a point, and start drawing on the smudged part with the tip to lift out highlights if you get too dark. Darken the leaves a bit more than the rose for contrast in the black and white, if you're using color they can be equally dark for a red or dark colored rose. Strengthen the lines on dark areas like the leaves and stems, but leave soft lines on the big flower.
   
   Spray it with Krylon workable matte fixative and you're done! Don't spray till you're through smudging and lifting, because after the spray's on, you can't lift or blend. You can add things after using workable fixative, but you can't take away what's under it.
   
   To draw this in color, experiment with soft pastels or colored Conte crayons. Try doing gold-yellow roses with dark red leaves, or red and pink roses with green leaves, or blue roses with purple leaves. Try a fiery warms rose shading with red, orange and bright yellow where the lightest highlights are. This design can be applied in many ways.
   
   Test the color patterns in pastels first, and then copy the outline to use for decorative painting. Look for books on One-Step Painting by Donna Dewberry and others for how to create designs like this in acrylic and oils on walls, trays, anything you like. Or just keep doing them in pastels and hang them with a country decor. This design is useful wherever you want the romantic touch of a rose.

Tips & Warnings

• Draw this design and variations often. Practice helps make your lines smooth and curving instead of slow and jagged.
• Try drawing roses in magazines, from greeting cards, from gardening books. Every rose is a little different and this will help give you ideas for decorative roses.
• Try drawing real roses from life in your yard. If they aren't as perfect as magazine roses, they may be all the more beautiful because they are unique -- and that will make your drawings realistic.
• Be careful to keep cleaning your hands while drawing, to avoid unintended smudging.
• Don't spray fixative till you're absolutely sure you're done.
• Leave plenty of space around the start of your drawings, and don't go right to the edge of the paper. Always leave at least a quarter inch from the edges of your paper because you may want to mat and frame the art -- and don't want to lose some of your drawing under the mat.
• Don't ever let a leaf or bud or anything exactly touch the edge of the paper or mat opening. That's called "kissing" and it makes the composition ugly -- it drags the viewer's attention right out of the picture. If it "kisses" when matted, slide it till it doesn't or "float" it on a plain mat by attaching with archival double-stick photo tabs.