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 section covers botanical art videos providing general painting and drawing tips  

ON THIS PAGE
  • Artists featured in Video Tips on this website
  • The Complete Process: longer videos about the complete process on this page

​PLUS a list of videos on FIVE MORE PAGES about: (details of what they contain are listed below)
Banner Image: Hylocereus ocamponis by Mary Emily Eaton (The Cactaceae Vol II, plate XXVIII) - sourced from Wikimedia Commons

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 a 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.

Artists featured in Video Tips

Artists featured on this page in "The Complete Process"  include:
  • Lucy T Smith - a 40 minute video for the V&A Museum about traditional botanical illustration techniques for drawing and watercolour painting
  • Angela Lober - a video about the complete process of botanical illustration
  • Sandrine Maugy - a video of tips for getting details right
  • Sigrid Frensen - stages involved in created a botanical watercolour painting

QUICK TIPS - ASSOCIATED VIDEO PAGES
Artists included on the following associated Pages are as follows. I'm including a link to their website the first time their names is recorded below.
​Video Tips - Painting in Watercolour
Video Tips - Painting Flowers, Fruit and Berries
  • Billy Showell CBM - the development of a peony painting equipment needed for botanical art - plus a demonstration of painting flowers
  • Rosie Sanders - painting big flowers
  • Julia Trickey - tips for painting flowers and fruit
  • Anna Mason - how to paint apple blossom, an iris bud , a realistic poppy centre and snowdrops
  • Sarah Morrish - step by step painting of a lily bud
  • David Reynolds - How to paint a flowering gum in watercolour
  • Helen Fitzgerald GM ​- How to paint a flowering red gum
  • Lizzie Harper - how to paint winter jasmine
Video Tips - Painting Leaves , Lichens and Fungi
  • Angela Lober - the process of painting a Norfolk Island Pine
  • Merial Thurstan - creating greens and creating a record of the range of greens created by two colours.
  • Julia Trickey GM - various tips - from using card to create shapes to 60 second tips for painting leaves; autumn leaves
Drawing and painting different shaped leaves
  • Helen Fitzgerald GM - painting curved leaves; how paint a leaf (plus lots of other tips on her YouTube page); autumn leaves
Drawing and painting different leaves
Media & Tools
  • Dianne Sutherland - painting on vellum; painting serrations and clean edges
  • Lisa from Jackson's Art Supplies - use of masking fluid
Video Tips - Pencil Drawing
  • Gaynor Dickeson - tracing an image to watercolour paper without creating indentations
  • Mindy Lighthipe - videos and creating transfer paper and pen and ink techniques
  • Anna Mason - short tip video about painting blueberry bloom 
  •  painting yellow flowers and drawing and painting fungi
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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A comprehensive 40 minute video moving through traditional botanical illustration processes and techniques 
- by Lucy T Smith / produced by the Victoria & Albert Museum for its exhibition of Renaissance Watercolours.

​It has excellent macro views of various processes which include:
​
INITIAL STUDY IN GRAPHITE
  • sizing through measuring the vertical and horizontal external dimensions of the form and features of a pomegranate - using proportional dividers - and transferring life size dimensions to paper
  • drawing form from life - with the pomegranate at eye level - using line and hatching tone. The process of drawing from life engages eye and hand in learning how the subject matter is formed and works.
  • erasing and refining drafting lines 
  • dissecting the pomegranate transversely (i.e. across the middle not from top to bottom) to produce a view of its interior features
  • measuring and drawing the interior features - including tonal shading and emphasis of important lines
PAINTING THE WHOLE POMEGRANATE AND INTERIOR VIEW IN WATERCOLOUR
  • choosing and mixing watercolour paints
  • testing colours and creating colour swatches - glazing layers of different colours' checking swatch colours to the subject
  • drawing in with paint using a fine brush and very dilute paint in a local hue - after erasing and knocking back the initial drafting lines until they are barely visible. The paper is turned so that drawing by line is made easier.
  • initial washes - in very dilute watercolour - as the base for the painting
  • use and position of a strip of paper for testing - to assess the colour and dilution of the wash
  • painting seeds referencing the initial study and subject - using small hatching strokes
  • layering colours to reinforce both hue and tonal values
  • preparation of wash and brush in paintbox prior to application of wash to exterior
  • development of very dilute washes on the exterior - in different colours and mixing of same to merge colours without hard edges (using a W&N Series 7 sable brush)
  • build up of colours, shapes, form, textures and mottling using less dilute washes and hatching and cross hatching strokes
  • development and refinement of edges - without overly hard edges
  • use of brush with fine point or splayed to create different effects e.g hatching, scumbling, stippling (dots).
  • final touches re. surface imperfections
Lucy T Smith is a highly regarded botanical illustrator who has won a number of international awards.
  • She has worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for the last 20 years as one of a number of highly skilled freelance botanical illustrators producing line drawings for scientific plant publications - and occasional paintings
  • She also works on commission.
You can see more of the artwork produced by Lucy T Smith on the following websites:
Below you can view one of the best short 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. The words on the video are in Dutch, however you'll find the video self-explanatory if you watch carefully.

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

13 Top Tips to get details right in botanical art

Sandrine Maugy lists 13 top tips for getting the details right when creating botanical art - using wet in wet washes for underpainting and first washes. (May 2020)
These are (in summary):
  1. Drop the Pencil (don't rush it)
  2. Draw Line Studies - from different angles
  3. Use your Eraser (a lot!)
  4. Don't assume anything - and don't expect anything
  5. Rely on Botany
  6. Do a Tone Study
  7. Don't be Lazy
  8. Involve Details early in the shadows
  9. Involve Details in first wet and wet colour washes
  10. Don't fiddle (with your paint) - to avoid overwork
  11. Refine with Dry Brush Work
  12. Don't paint (exclusively) from Photos
  13. Add a Blemish
Sandrine explains each of these in more detail in the video

How to paint a very large plant in a short timescale
​

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

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........
​

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
​
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.

NEW Videos
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Do you have a suggestion for a new video for this website?

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