How to paint Roses

It’s not that I don’t like roses. I do. Sort of.

I know . . . what’s not to like? Flowers. Pretty. Smell good. I know.

Maybe it’s because they remind me of a not-so-great time of my life. Maybe it’s because there are so many artists that paint incredible rose paintings.

Whatever. I just have stayed away from painting them. Until this week when my mural client asked me to paint some some climbing roses on the wall.

Are you kidding me? First, fairies and now, roses?

Ok. So I smooshed a couple of colors of pink into a round blob, added some leaves and called them ‘roses’.

But today it hit me. I need to learn how to paint roses. It hit me in the middle of faux finishing 12 frames antique gold, trying to finish a painting that’s horrendously overdue, and starting a project for a new brand of spray paint for an advertising group.

Yep. Now’s the time to figure out how to paint roses. My way of painting roses.

Oh, I’ve spent a few hours on YouTube watching artists whip out roses so easily and beautifully. I’ve even tried a few of their techniques.

Then I go back to my own Smoosh ‘n Push.

But these roses today are done with my same ol’ layering method.

You only need 3 colors. Light pink for the base, white for highlighting and a deeper pink for shading.

I did a bud, an open bud and a full blossom.

Why paint one when you can try and figure out three when you’re in the middle of three major projects?

It’s my little psycho mechanism when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

I even drew some little shading patterns for you. ‘Cause if I’m learning how to paint roses, you might as well too.

I threw in some stems so we didn’t have floating rosebuds. But you could just paint some simple leaves around the roses too.

Wish I’d thought of that when I was painting.

Maybe if I planned these things out a little better then . . .

Nah. Not gonna happen.

Paint a little dot in the ‘middle’ of the bud then a little line next to it. Then paint a curved line down to the stem.

For the open bud, start with another little oval dot.

You can use a liner brush for all of your shading and highlighting but I used a flat. I sideloaded the paint – which just means dip just one corner in the paint.

Then start adding some curved lines.

Yeah, I know this looks a mess here, but I wanted a little extra shading.

Then take White and paint some curves on the ‘outside’ of each petal.

Then apply a wash of light pink. By ‘wash’ I mean a light coat.

Okay. So that’s my little rose painting tutorial. Not too bad. For a quick layering tutorial, not too bad.

I’ll play around with it some more, maybe do some wet-blending to get more definition. 

But I think I’ll wait until I don’t have so many things on my plate.

Or not.