This section has Video TIPS for botanical artists - videos that include a lot of practical information.
I'll be updating it over time and will replace featured videos with better ones as I find them
or you tell me about them. 

Scope

This page covers botanical art videos providing general painting and drawing tips  

​PLUS there are FIVE MORE PAGES about:

Have you seen a good video?

If you've seen a very good video (available in full on YouTube) and/or think you've produced a good video which deserves a space on this page please send me a suggestion using the form at the end

Caution!

I'm afraid there are an awful lot of poor videos about botanical art on YouTube. That's poor as in:
  • the video quality is very poor - quite a few of these are several years old (but not all)
  • the quality of the botanical art and/or the techniques demonstrated are not the standard you need to aim at
  • the demonstrator believes in "winging it" and has not thought too much about what they're going to say in advance.
I review videos on YouTube periodically - and these are the type that I do NOT select.
Banner Image: Hylocereus ocamponis by Mary Emily Eaton (The Cactaceae Vol II, plate XXVIII) - sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Artists featured in Video Tips

Artists featured on this page and associated pages - Video Tips: Painting Flowers and Video Tips: Painting leaves include:
  • Billy Showell CBM - the equipment needed for botanical art - plus a demonstration of painting flowers
  • Helen Fitzgerald GM - how paint a leaf (plus lots of other tips on her YouTube page)
  • Sigrid Frensen - stages involved in created a botanical watercolour painting
  • Krzysztof Kowalski - showing experience as a flower painting in achieving intense colour in his first botanical art painting
  • Mindy Lighthipe - videos and creating transfer paper and pen and ink techniques
  • Angela Lober - a video about the complete process of botanical illustration
  • Anna Mason - short tip video about painting blueberry bloom (more videos about painting flowers here)
  • Sarah Morrish - step by step painting of a lily bug, painting yellow flowers and drawing and painting fungi
  • Gaynor Dickeson - tracing an image to watercolour paper without creating indentations
  • David Reynolds - creating a 'tea wash' without brush marks
  • Merial Thurstan - creating greens and creating a record of the range of greens created by two colours.
  • Julia Trickey - drawing acquilegias
Over time I expect I'll be creating pages for individual artists as the video bug - once bitten - seems to lead to more and more videos!

Note that some videos are produced as marketing for other products (e.g. longer videos and/or tuition) but so long as the marketing is very low key and the videos are long enough and provide a lot of information I'm fine about this!  In general and if possible I will start the videos where the content starts. The page will not be listing videos which are only available in full through an art school unless it offers enough information in its own right. These are also the videos most likely to be replaced in future.

The complete process
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One of the best videos I've seen covering the process of producing a botanical illustration from choosing and collecting a specimen to creating studies and the composition to the finished artwork. This video is about the process Angela Lober used to bring the Norfolk Island pine to life on paper.

The film was produced for ‘Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden’ on show at the Museum of Sydney, 30 July 2016 – 30 October 2016.

Stages involved in creating a botanical watercolour painting

Next a 7 minute video about Botanical painting with Sigrid Frensen.

This shows the different stages involved in creating a botanical painting including: 
  • collecting samples of plant material, 
  • photography, 
  • pencil studies in the studio, 
  • developing a colour palette, 
  • tracing and transferring the study of the specimen to watercolour paper - plus knocking back the tracing marks using a putty rubber
  • constructing the final drawing

The words on the video are in Dutch, however you'll find the video self-explanatory if you watch carefully.

How to paint a very large plant in a short timescale
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An Amorphophallus titanum (titan arum) called "New Reekie" blossomed, for the very first time in Scotland, in the Lowland (Wet) Tropics House at the Glasshouses of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on 26 June 2015. The height of the spadix and spathe combined was 267cm!

Three botanical artists who teach at RGBE created a team to paint a huge watercolour of the plant. Jacqui Pestell, Işık Güner and Sharon Tingey Natural Illustration had to work very quickly as they only had a few days to paint it at its peak condition.

This is the video of the weekend when they got down to painting! It took 13 hours and 4.5 square metres of paper.

Click Vimeo to watch it in HD at full size on Vimeo

Equipment for Botanical Painting
​

Billy Showell: How to Paint with Billy Showell - The Equipment

Pen and Ink tips by Mindy Lighthipe
​

A very useful video for those wanting to use pen and ink for botanical illustration - using crow quill nibs and a rapidograph.

Pen & Ink is the staple of Botanical and Natural Science Illustration as it is the least expensive technique for reproduction. Clarity and simplicity of the black ink on paper requires a steady hand and refined skill. In this video I demonstrate the tools used in Pen & Ink. I demonstrate the beginning strokes for using the crow quill pen to create line work and the rapidiograph pen to create stipple.

How to paint........
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A video related to Billy Showell's book "A - Z of Flower Portraits"
Painting Yellow Flowers by Sarah Morrish
How to paint fruit in watercolor - blueberry 'bloom' by Anna Mason
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How to paint the textural detail using the white paper and washes

How to paint pineapple segments

This video by Gaynor Dickeson shows the early stages of wet and then dry brushwork while painting a pineapple segment. It highlights the alternate use of a brush holding paint and a brush holding just clear water - used for softening edges.

How to draw and paint fungi

​by natural history and botanical art artist/tutor Sarah Morrish

Leaf Printing

This is a  Harvard Art Museums video of a demonstration by the process of leaf printing. Using a copy of a version of Albrecht Dürer's "Rhinoceros" woodcut as her palette, curator Marjorie (Jerry) Cohn shows how botanical leaf prints would have been inked and printed in the 16th century.
Do you have a suggestion for a new video?

I appreciate that many videos are made by botanical artists working on their own.

Please note I will not be listing videos which are out of focus or shaky. Occasional mishaps with objects going out of shot are fine but not poor camera work generally.

    Suggest a good video you've seen or created