I’ve provided two photos of the rose for you to draw from. One is a color version, and the other is a slightly contrasty back and white version. Some people prefer drawing grayscale from a color photo, while others prefer working from a grayscale photo. If you are a beginner, I suggest using the grayscale photo.
Here are the supplies I use:
Strathmore 400 series Drawing Paper, Medium surface
B, H, 2H, 4H, Pencils
A small blending brush (Read how to make a blending brush.)
Kneaded eraser
Tombow Mono Zero Eraser (Round tip)
Xacto knife to trim the Mono Zero Eraser into a point.
The Line Drawing
Make a good line drawing of the rose. You can make your line drawing by eye, by graph, or by tracing. I prefer tracing because it’s quicker. Please don’t make your line drawing as dark as mine. I made mine dark so you can see it. Your line drawing should be about as dark as the shadows on the rose, or it will show through the shading.
Shading The First Petals
I tapped the line drawing with a kneaded eraser until it lightened, and I added a few more details that the tracing missed.
To see which pencils to use, I made test swatches on the edge of the paper. I chose the pencils that made the values I saw on the rose with the least effort. They were 4H, 2H, and H pencils.
I’m not going to draw a background behind this rose. I’ll draw the sides of the rose, the areas of the rose’s belly that are white and ‘touch’ the white background, with line only.
Some of the shading on the petals is so delicate that I decided to use a small brush to lay it in. You can ‘load’ the brush with graphite by brushing it back and forth over hatching in a test area. You can correct brushed shading by tapping it lightly with a kneaded eraser, but it’s challenging to do that smoothly, so it’s a good idea to practice with the brush before you use it on your rose.
I used 2H, 4H, and H pencils to hatch in the value patterns on each petal of the rose. Then, I used the brush to add the lightest shading. There were two types of value. One was created by shadow, and the pigment in the petal created the other. The rose is backlit, which means that light shines through some of the petals, making them brighter at their bottoms, which is counterintuitive to where the shadows would be in standard overhead lighting. To match my shading to each petal, I quickly moved my eyes back and forth from the drawing to the rose, checking one against the other and correcting any difference. This eye movement becomes easier with practice.
Each petal is unique and has to be shaded in its own way, so there is no formula for how to shade a petal. However, I usually start with the darkest part first, like the dark edge or the darkest shadows, and save the lightest parts for last.
Second Row of Petal Shading
Drawing is a lot like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Nearly anything can be broken down into shapes or pieces of value. The game is to find the different value shapes and put them together by filling them in. I’m drawing the petals a row at a time to help sort them out in my mind, and to help you see them as only shapes.
I’m using 2H, 4H, and H pencils and a small brush to shade the petals. First, I make sure the shape of the petal is drawn correctly, and then I darken the edges with the H pencil where needed. Next, I add 2H and 4H hatching for the medium and light values, and then I add the lightest values with a brush. After the petal is shaded, I compare it to the photo and correct it where necessary with my erasers, then I touch up the erased spots.
Third Row of Petal Shading
I’ve drawn a few more petals. Each one is uniquely shaped and shaded differently. Nature is diverse and lovely; nobody studies her as closely as bees, butterflies, and artists. Take your time and understand that each petal is only a shape with gradated hatching that you can mimic with practice and patience.
Final Petals and Flower Sepals
I shaded the final few petals and added the flower’s sepals. I used H and 2H pencils for the sepals. You can see the vein on three of them. I drew the thin veins by drawing up to and around them with a sharp lead.
Stem and Left leaf
The stem is a little darker at the bottom and to the right than at the top and left. I used the H and B pencils to create the subtly gradated hatch for the stem.
My pencil tips and other tools weren’t small enough to make the veins in the leaf as small as they truly were. I drew the veins as small as I could, and then I drew the shading around them as much like the real leaf as possible.
Creating a smooth hatch with a soft B pencil on this paper is challenging. I used a sharp H pencil to fill in the hatch marks, but the leaf still looks rough or grainy compared to the hatching I made with harder leads for the rose.
Right Leaf
The leaf on the right is entirely different from the leaf on the left and shows much more dimension in form. I drew it with sharp 2H, 4H, and H pencils. First I drew the veins, next I hatched in shadows, and then I added the highlight patterns. There is a lot of highlighting on this leaf, although it’s subtle. Except for the middle vein, the veins were all dark lines. Because I used hard leads, I didn’t need to fill in the hatch to create a smoother texture, as in the last leaf.
Here is another Rose Drawing Lesson you might enjoy that concentrates on form. It’s made with a rougher tip of pencil hatching, which is not as challenging as this rose’s shading.
Happy drawing,
Carol
Photo credit: Anna Pavlin