Suggestions on how to model a specific type of rose?

I am fairly new to Blender and 3D modeling. I believe I have the basics down. I do well in tutorials and creating simple objects, even if they don’t turn out how I envisioned them. I’m hoping someone can help me learn to improve that, though. I am often ‘stuck’ on how to begin modelling what I hope to achieve… and this one has really stumped me.


I am trying to create this exact rose shape. I’ve tried starting with a single vertice, extruding it around in a swirl, extruding all of those and playing around with that. I’ve tried starting with a curve. I did single petals, which produced the best result, but it’s still not what I want.


(My single petal result)

The rose photo I posted as reference is very shallow, as in it isn’t carved deep into the rose. The petals are clearly distinguished, but aren’t exactly separate. It’s all one solid piece. I’m not sure if that makes sense.

So my question is… how would you begin to model this? Is this something you would do in ‘sculpt’ mode? Or is there a different way to achieve it that I have missed? Thank you in advance!

Can you join all your petals together into a single mesh, then fill in the blanks with the sculpting? My guess is topology would be a disaster and you would need to retopo. But I think it would do what you are looking for.

Oh, gosh. I didn’t even know what topology was… I believe that is the best way to create what I want, though. Thank you so much!