How to Draw a Rose

Drawing roses is not as hard as it looks. In this tutorial you will learn how to draw a rose in 4 steps.

Shading will be important so if you choose to use a different reference photo, make sure you choose a photo that has obvious dark and light areas. This will make drawing it more enjoyable and I think you will be happier with the results. When you are finished you may wish to add it to our site. You can do that by uploading your rose drawing to our site.

If you do not like the step by step technique for drawing roses, you may wish to draw them using the upside down technique. However, for the example, I am going to use the step by step technique without the grid.

Let's begin!

1. Take your drawing pencils, kneaded eraser, and tortillon.
2. Find a ruler, or something with a strait edge, and the photo you will be using.
3. Make a grid (optional). Using your ruler, draw a grid over top of the photo you are using and make an identical grid on your drawing paper. Sketch very lightly, so as not to ruin your drawing paper and make it easier to erase as you go.

When drawing roses I never use a grid because the proportions do not have to be exact. This is why this step is optional.

Step 1

When drawing roses use a hard pencil and lightly sketch just the shape. A hard pencil is a pencil has hard graphite and leaves a light marking on your paper. Once you have determined how much space the rose will take up on the page, you can start lightly sketching out the swirling petals. Start from the center of the rose and work your way out. Focus on the edges as if the rose was 2-dimensional. If you find your marks are hard to erase, select a harder pencil or press a little lighter on your pencil.

When you are finished it should look something like this:

TIP:
Especially in the center of the rose you can see that the petals alternate directions. The first one starts and goes one way. Just before the petal ends the one behind it starts and goes the other way. As you go farther to the bottom of the rose, the next petal starts near the middle of the petal it is behind. Sometimes the petal in the center of the rose is large and swirls around many times before the next petal starts.

Step 2

Step 2 is an important step in drawing roses. It is when you start shading in your rose. Start by adding some graphite to the bottom of your petals. Then, use your tortillon, cotton swab, or whatever you would like to use and start pulling the graphite up the petals of the roses. The graphite will get lighter and lighter towards the top of the drawing. Keep working the graphite to the top of the page until your rose drawing looks something like this:

Step 3

Now take out your softer pencils. I used a 4B pencil. Look at the rose that you are drawing. Find all the darkest areas and darken them even more by lightly going over them with your softer pencil. Think about how the light is hitting the rose. Where will the shadows be? Is light reflecting off the tips of the petals causing them to look glossy or white? If you find that your graphite is not blending very well, take your tortillon and lightly rub over these areas until you are satisfied with the blend. When you are finished your rose should look something like this:

Step 4

Now to the fun part...... the background (if you want to keep it white skip this step). You could use your softest pencils (9B or 8B) and make your rose really stand out. Or, you could use charcoal. I recommend using a medium charcoal pencil because it is even darker than 9B graphite and smudges wonderfully. However, since I could not seem to locate mine, I used a 8B graphite pencil for this rose. Once you are done the background, use your eraser to lighten the lightest areas on the top of your petals. then finish by redefining all the edges with your 2B or HB pencil.

Delmus Phelps has great oil paintings. He also has a drawing roses page on his beautiful site. You should see some of his flower oil paintings.

Konand has an easy to draw flowers tutorial. This tutorial will teach you how to draw 7 different flowers.