How to Draw a Medieval Rose

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Felt tip pens or brush pens
Drawing paper
Pencil
Kneaded eraser or white vinyl eraser
Protractor (circular is best, but semicircular is fine)
Colored pens or watercolor for coloring (optional)

Step 1

Center of the medieval rose design

Start with a double circle in the middle of your rose design, about a quarter of the size you're going to draw the medieval rose. Most protractors have circle templates in different sizes, so use one of those to get a smooth clean circle. Draw another circle inside it to make it the double circle center of the design.

Divide 360 degrees (the number of degrees in a circle) by five, the answer is 72 if you don't have a calculator handy. But if you forget or draw this without looking at the article, divide 360 by 5 to get the number of degrees per petal. Putting one tick mark at the bottom center of your double-circle center, use the protractor to mark short lines at five 72 degree intervals around it.
Step 2

Center, lines dividing petals and leaves added

Extend the tick marks to short lines about the width of the center, so that it looks like a five-spoked wheel. End each of the strokes with a pointed little diamond shape, curved slightly on the sides rather than having side points.
Step 3

Petals drawn, one left open to show the first line by itself

Connect the sides of the petals with a curving line that comes up, swoops down in the center and comes up again to curve over and meet the next line at the base of the little leaves. These should be fairly even.

Then draw another curve across to connect the two side bumps and make it look like a petal curling over itself. I've left off one on the example to show how to draw the first line.
Step 4

Medieval Rose design completed in pencil

Finish the basic design by adding three short lines from the center into each petal, the center line longer than the two on the sides. These are like petal veins on the flower, and complete the heraldic design.

In the next stages, we'll ink and color it. My penciling is very dark, too dark to erase easily because I was going for something you could see at each stage. Keep your pencil drawings light when you plan to ink and don't use a soft B range pencil, use an HB (No. 2) or H range pencil instead. Pressing hard will groove the paper.
Step 5

Medieval Rose inked

Ink the design carefully, using a black pen. You're done if this is part of a coat of arms where the rose is described as "White" or "Argent" because the rose is rendered flat in the color of the heraldry.

Rendering it "Proper" means putting the center in yellow, the petals in the color the rose is supposed to be for the coat of arms (often red if just used for decoration) and the little leaves colored in green. A red rose in heraldry that isn't termed "Proper" would just be filled in red including the center and leaves.

Heraldry gets fussy and interesting, and roses or any heraldic design can be any of these seven colors: argent (white or silver), or (yellow or gold), gules (red), vert (green), azure (blue), purpure (purple), sable (black). No other colors are used in traditional European heraldic designs, but in Japanese heraldry pink and other colors are used often. Brown, "sanguine" (maroon) and orange were all colors of dishonor for things like treason or cowardice, so they don't appear in coats of arms designed for people in historical societies without a nasty persona story to go with it.

"Proper" means drawing a heraldic subject in the colors it really is, so a brown bear in a coat of arms is "proper."
Step 6

Medieval Rose gules, proper for heraldry or decoration

We'll color this a rose gules (red) proper -- and give it all the little details that would make it stand out on the page if you're using it in a border. Sometimes when it's just for decoration, the overlapping centers of the petal edges are painted a shade lighter for contrast. The center is yellow, and I decorated the outer rim of it in a darker yellow for contrast, and the little leaves are green.

If you are making a medieval border, connecting these rose designs with vines and putting leaves on them occasionally or birds perching on the vines can be charming and authentic. Try crossing the vines like crosshatching and be sure each rose is sitting flat on the vine, medieval borders were only sometimes realistic. Very often devices like the rose were drawn in a way this stylized, and the best source to find the authentic way to draw anything for a medieval border or scroll or project is to look at books of real heraldry for how things are drawn.

The medieval rose commonly stands for ladies, for love, for virtue and for many positive things. It has a bloody history in the War of the Roses in England, where the houses of York and Lancaster both had roses in their heraldry, one white and one red. I'm not taking sides with my medieval rose though, this is purely for decoration!

This rose design is traditional and not copyrighted to anyone, being over a thousand years old and copied by scribes throughout the Middle Ages. Enjoy it, copy it and use it in many different crafts. It looks great for an embroidery pattern, or in wood or leather carving, or any craft where you want a medieval look to your work.

Comments

midcenturymaven said

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on 9/3/2009 Fascinating history. Is the medieval rose the same thing as the Tudor rose?

mskris said

on 9/3/2009 This article is fascinating. I had no idea that the drawing was so formalized. Thanks for good instructions and a wonderful history lesson.