Embedded Files
Roses and Castles is the colourful canal folk art that was used to decorate working narrowboats in the 19th century. Its title is somewhat misleading; although both roses and castles feature in the designs, so too do a number of other flowers (sometimes real, sometimes imaginary), cottages, churches, rivers and lakes - anything in fact that could be part of a romantic landscape.
Roses & Castles covered virtually everything in or on the narrowboat including the vessel itself. The drinking can, the horse’s harness, doors, fitted furniture, lamps, anything and everything was decorated with bright and cheerful chocolate-box designs.
The video shows how people used to live on canal barges and they way they decorated them to make it look nice and colourful.
This video demonstrates how to use paint and a thin brush to get smooth strokes. Using a little pressure on the brush will make wider strokes for the middle of your shape. Use one stroke for each part.
Before you start painting your object you need to plan its shape and how many roses you need and where to place them. This will be affected by what you are paining (for example a teapot, a mug, a heart or a window). You can use some scrap paper for this. Just draw a basic circle for each rose not too small, not too big. Make them close to each other but not touching. Draw a leaf shape at the top of the rose . You can add more leaves to fill spaces or other flowers and patterns that we will look at later .
Activity 1
You will need :- Black sugar paper, Scissors, Soft, longer headed, round tipped brushes. Red, Brown, Yellow, Green, Pink, White ready mix poster paint . Chalk
Cut out a heart shape from black sugar paper.
Using chalk, draw your circles so that they are in the same formation as in the video.
Paint each circle. You can choose to have three of the same colour roses or three different colours. The circle is always darker than the petals.
Using a darker colour (brown or black) paint an 'eye' which will show the direction of the rose.
With a lighter colour (pink, lemon, white- depending on the colour of your rose), paint the direction strokes as shown in the video .
Look at the image opposite carefully, which strokes are longer, wider, smaller? Where do they point to? Which are curved? Are any straight?
Page updated
Report abuse