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Easy & Simple Rose Technique

Hi friends! This is a mini tutorial that will show you the technique I use to paint roses in some of my paintings. I did these in my Spring Bicycle and Garden Fence Painting and so many others!

This is a simple method that is great for the beginner painter or someone that doesn’t want to paint a realistic rose, but rather a loose, abstract one. 

You can do a lot of things with this! You can add a quote, a monogram or even a bible verse to your canvas with the floral designs in the corner or edges. 

My favorite thing about this technique is sometimes you can just zen out and paint the flowers & not really plan where you are going. It’s much like doodle painting!

See Also:

Learn how to paint a wreath with roses!

Materials: 

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Yield: One Painting Any Size Canvas

How To Paint Simple Decorative Roses

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Learn how to paint simple and easy roses with this loose stroke, decorative technique. Add these roses to any canvas painting project.

Active Time 30 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Materials

• Acrylic Paint
• Painting Surface (Canvas)
• 4 Round Brush
• 8 Round Brush
• 5/0 Round Brush (Spotter brush)

Colors

• Medium Magenta
• Cad Red Deep Hue
• Cad Orange Hue
• Deep Green Permanent 
• Primary Yellow
• Titanium White

Notes

You can use any palette of colors for this technique! I will demo a yellow, pink and red rose. You do not have to use the exact shades of colors I used and can even apply this technique to different color roses.

Color Palette:

There are so many color combos you can do with this technique! You also do not have to use the exact shades of orange, yellow, red and pink. 

Directions: 

1. Prepare your palette of colors and the surface you will be painting on

I am doing this on a blank 8 x 10 canvas! You can paint the background a solid color or even do a wash! 

The colors on my palette are: titanium white, medium magenta, cadmium red deep hue, deep green permanent, cadmium orange hue and primary yellow. 

2. Paint a circle about the size you want your rose to be

I used a #8 round brush for this, however, you can use any size round brush! Larger roses would require larger round brushes. 

Paint a circle about the size that you want your rose to be. Try to get your paint strokes to go in a spiral direction. 

In this demo, I am doing a pink, orange and yellow rose so I painted three different color circles. 

3. Paint some leaves while your circles are drying

With my 4 round brush, I mixed a little red with my green. This gives you more of a natural green looking color. 

Then paint some loose leaves next to each of your circles. 

Tip: to get some color variation in your green, try loading your brush in different amounts of the red-green combo. 

Then I painted a long stem for a different type of leaf. I used a 5/0 round brush for this to get that thin line. 

And on both sides of this thin line, I painted tiny leaves using my 5/0 round brush. Also, I added a bit of yellow to that green-red combo. 

You can keep going with these leaves and do more if you want! 

4. Paint the petals of the roses

Now that the circles are (mostly) dry, I will demo how I did all the rose petals. 

I started with the yellow rose. On my palette, I mixed orange with some yellow. 

Then I used my 4 round brush, started in the middle of the circle and made some small curved marks. 

The type of stroke I am doing here is a “comma stroke”. You can read more about how to do this stroke here, however, it doesn’t have to be a perfectly shaped comma stroke. Just a curved line! 

Keep painting these curved, comma strokes and have them get slightly bigger as you work your way to the outer edge of the circle. Also, they are kind of staggered. 

When you do get to the outer edge of the circle, go outside of the lines so the curve of your stroke forms the circle into a flower shape! 

Repeat these steps for each of the circle. For the orange rose, I did red strokes for the petals. 

If you want, you can mix a little orange with your red to get the strokes to be a little red-orange. 

Then for the pink rose, I did red mixed with a little pink for the petals.

5. Add A Lighter Color In The Petals

You can leave the roses as they are with the two colors you used to paint them. Or you can add additional petal strokes with a lighter color.

To do the lighter color in the yellow rose, I mixed titanium white with primary yellow.

Then I painted the lighter colored strokes. These strokes do not have to go over previous strokes, they can overlap and go in their own fashion. But still, start in the middle and work your way outwards.

Do the same for the other roses. Mix white with whatever your base color was for the rose. 

Lastly, I like to take this a step further and make sure the center of the roses are nice and dark. I took red and painted small dots in the center of all three roses. 

6. Keep Going! 

You can keep adding more designs to this! I decided to fill my whole canvas with different leaves, baby’s breath, berries and some more roses! This is so fun and relaxing!

You don’t need a plan, just keep painting! 

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