How to paint loose Roses in watercolor - Day 1

Hello everyone, welcome to day one of our 30 days of watercolor. We are starting with the rose. It is classic, it is beautiful, it's simpler than you think, so let's get into it. You do not have to be following our 30 day guide to participate today. I'm going to be showing the rose, talking about the basic construction of the rose, and then we will add it to our flower guide at the end. So the way that I start a rose is I do a couple of dots in the middle. And with roses, because there's lots of layers, there's lots of layers really close together, you're going to want lots of lines, and also remember to keep white space to signify the separation between the lines. These little strokes I'm doing are kind of in between a moon shape and a half circle. So you can mix it up and play with the shapes, but keep in mind that towards the center of the rose, the shapes are thinner and closer together because the rose is closed, right? And as the rose blossoms outward and the petals are more open, the strokes become longer and the petals are fuller, so we want that half circle to be bigger. So a major tip I have too is to really stagger your strokes. You don't want them lining up, you want them overlapping each other. So keep in mind the direction of your rose. In this rose, you're not looking straight down on it. It's kind of pointing towards the upper right, the center of it. And so I did these fluffier petals that are towards the end of your rose. I did them along the bottom of the rose and not anywhere near the top because I wanted to give the illusion that you're looking at it from the side. On some of these bigger petals, before they're dry, you're going to want to drop in a slightly darker pigment towards the base of the petal. This gives the illusion of curvature as the petal is blossoming outward. And you can see already that it's starting to give that illusion of a curved petal. If it helps you, look at a reference picture of a rose while you're painting it because you'll see the tips of the petals as they're blossoming out are really light. And as they go in deep inside the rose, they're dark. So when we are trying to create that illusion in watercolor, especially in this loose style, blending darker pigments at the base of those petals really benefits us. So I'm also going to show you what two different types of rose buds will look like. I'm going to do a little bit more of an open rose bud and a really new baby rose bud. So with rose buds, keep in mind you're not really seeing a ton of blooming out of the rose. So this whole inner part is going to be really closed in, it's going to be really tight. And if you're looking at it from the side, there's really not going to be a lot of petals above that little center we've created. That part is going to stay up top nice and tight. But because flowers are shaped like a cone, we're bringing that yellow shape down into a cone so it can meet the stem. Since we're seeing it from the side, we're going to see that connection of those rose petals and the stem. Again here, I am just adding pigment into certain places where I know it would be darker because the petal is coming down deep into the rose. Just continue to be mindful of your white space, especially when you're working small with a small little rose bud like this. Your white space is key because it really gives that illusion of lots of swirly, tight layers within the rose. For the tiny baby rose bud, it's going to be a teardrop shape and you're going to keep the tip of the teardrop kind of jagged to give the illusion of lots of petals really tight and layered inside there. But this is mostly going to be covered with greenery, so I'm not too stressed about the shape of it. Rose stems are really thin, but they've also got lots of little bumps and knobs and thorns and stuff on them, so don't worry too much about getting that perfect. Also because this is a loose style, I'm not worried about getting too much perfect anyway. And where these roses connect when they come together, that's going to be more of a thicker joint. And I know there are lots of different types of roses and rose bushes, but these are how the roses look in my backyard. So for this more open rose bud, the greenery has started to come off of the petals, but it's still not quite laying flat, and so it's still coming up and hugging it a little bit. Another tip that I have is if you're unsure of what stroke to make or how to make your stroke, use the tip of your brush. Because the tip of your brush will be really thin, you can make thicker, more exact strokes after you get maybe kind of an outline of where you want to go, but it really helps boost your confidence. Also if you keep your strokes thin, you end up keeping more of that white space, which is the goal. And so on that little baby rose bud, as you can see, I really hugged that greenery in tight and kept the lengths really varied for interest. So the key with forming these leaves is all about pressure. Light pressure at the beginning, pushing down on the body of your brush towards the middle of the leaf, and then letting off the pressure towards the tip of the leaf so that you get that nice, thin point. You'll also notice that a lot of the time I go through before something is totally dry and I add just a little bit of contrast with a slightly darker pigment to just a few of the areas. Again, I'm using light pressure at the bottom and tip of the leaf and a lot of pressure towards the middle of the leaf. I am doing two strokes to really keep a line of white between each of those strokes so that it gives the idea of the veining within the middle of the leaf. And here I battled with myself. I wasn't sure if I was going to show some of that greenery that's at the base of the rose because of the way it's angled, I'm not sure if you really would be seeing that all that much, but I do feel like it finished off really nice. So you let me know in the comments what you would have done if you would have added it. I do think it looks nice. I'm just not sure if you would actually see it that much. So now we have finished with our rose and you can totally practice this a bunch more before you add it to your watercolor flower chart. And if you're following along, we are on day one, we're going to put it in that first. And you can do this however you want. You can do a rosebud, you can do them really tiny and try to fit them all in. But I chose to do one nice big rose that filled the whole box. And now that I'm watching this back, I'm thinking I might add some leaves that kind of drape into the box below it. Just a little bit to give some kind of movement throughout my whole watercolor flower guide. Like maybe the boxes interact with each other. But like I said, you do whatever you want to do. Keep it nice, neat, perfect, however you like. And that is it. Thank you guys for being here today for our day one tutorial about roses. Check back tomorrow for day two in our 30 days of watercolor flowers. I will see you guys then. Bye.