Find out about the new books providing
EITHER instruction and tuition in Botanical Art and Illustration in 2019
OR Compilations of Botanical Artwork as Portfolios or Flora
​
Below is a listing of NEW books for those wanting to study topics related to botanical art and illustration. ​

PLUS I'm also including new editions of collections of contemporary or historical flora with significant botanical illustration content by botanical artists and illustrators - both past and present.
Not every instruction book will make it into my listing of The Best Botanical Art and Illustration Instruction Books.
It all depends on:
  • how well received they are by those buying the book and rating it
  • when I get to see a copy!

​Others will find their way to other parts of this website!
The books listed below include
2019 - Botanical Art Instruction
  • Botanical Illustration from Life - A Visual Guide for Botanical Artists by Işık Güner (30 September 2019)

2019 - Botanical Art Portfolios & Flora
  • The Shirley Sherwood Collection by Shirley Sherwood (31 October 2019)
  • ​RHS John Reeves: Pioneering Collector of Chinese Plants and Botanical Art by Kate Bailey (28 August 2019)
  • Rosie Sanders' Roses: A celebration in botanical art by Rosie Sanders (19 August 2019)
  • Botanical Illustration from the Royal Horticultural Society: The Gold Medal Winners by Charlotte Brooks (June 2019)
  • Treasures of Botanical Art by Shirley Sherwood and Martin Rix (January 2019)
  • Botanical Artistry by Julia Trickey (January 2019)

NEW in 2019 Instruction books about botanical art and illustration 
​

Botanical Illustration from Life: ​A Visual Guide to Observing, Drawing and Painting Plants
by Işık Güner
​HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: 
​This book provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the basic techniques used by botanical illustrators in producing botanical illustrations combined with top quality design and production values. This will become the NEW handbook for all aspiring botanical illustrators.
Learn how to:
  • draw plants accurately by observing basic botanical shapes and structures
  • examine colour and textures in detail
  • develop your skills of observation and perception to: see shapes; judge angles; draw in proportion;
  • how to represent form through tonal value; use light and shade to make your drawing life-like; use watercolour washes and mix colours.​ 
RHS Gold Medal winning botanical illustrator and tutor Işık Güner shares her approach to:
  • observing and recording plants in the wild
  • researching plants
  • creating artistic compositions which record the plant accurately.
I LOVE the content sections - which are just so obvious but nobody has done before
  • Start - understand the role and history of botanical illustration and different approaches
  • Observe - an emphasis on the essential aspects of observation and practice when working with live specimens plus how to collect and preserve
  • Draw - covering the absolute basics of how to draw as a botanical illustrator, including how to hold a pencil, do a measured drawing, incorporate perspective and aerial perspective and produce complex drawings. Plus composition!
  • Paint - a very detailed but accessible explanation of how to paint botanical subjects
  • Explore - why you need to understand botany; understanding different types of plants - plus roots, stems, buds, leaves, flowers
  • Master - finding your style with practice and finding inspiration
It also fabulous images of a botanical illustrator at work.​
​About the author
Işık Güner (GM 2014, BISCOT GM 2011) - Işık's painting of Gunnera Tinctoria won an RHS Gold Medal and the RHS Best Painting in Show in Spring 2014.

She has worked as a botanical illustrator on various international botanical projects around the world. Currently working as the Art Editor for an Illustrated Flora of Turkey in Turkish (Patron: President of Turkish Republic).

​She is also a multi-lingual visiting tutor for the Diploma in Botanical Illustration at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and also delivers tuition through workshops in Europe.
​SPANISH
Publisher: Editorial Parramon, Barcelona
Language: Spanish
ENGLISH
Publisher: Search Press in UK
Language: English 
​Publication date: 30 September 2019
Format: Paperback
208 pages | ?? colour images
Size: 22.9 x 29.2 cm

Average Customer Rating out of 5 stars:
  • in UK: 4.9 (based on 43 customer reviews) 
  • in USA: 4.8 (based on 44 customer reviews)

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NEW in 2019 Botanical Art Portfolios and Flora
​

The Shirley Sherwood Collection: Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art by Shirley Sherwood

​​HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: This book is a celebration of the Shirley Sherwood Collection of contemporary botanical art. The collection includes some 1,000 paintings which Dr Shirley Sherwood collected over a period of 30 years. It is considered the most important private collection of its kind in the world.
The book showcases the beauty and diversity of the collection and:
  • features 285 botanical paintings
  • by 144 artists
  • from 36 countries. 
The paintings are arranged in chapters by geographical origin of the artists, and each artwork is beautifully reproduced on a single page.

​Many of the artists are from the British Isles but there are also impressive and varied paintings from Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Australia, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

​The many ways used to create plant portraits are explored in watercolour, pen and ink, oils, diamond point etching on paper, vellum, glass and canvas. Biographies of all the artists featured are provided at the back of the book.
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Kew Publishing
Publication Date 31 October 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1842466933
ISBN-13: 978-1842466933

Average Customer Rating out of 5 stars:
  • in UK: 5 (based on 5 customer reviews) 
  • in USA: 5 (based on 3 customer reviews)
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About the author
Dr Shirley Sherwood trained as a botanist at The University of Oxford and subsequently earned her D.Phil as part of the research team of Nobel Prize winner Sir James Black, whose group discovered Tagamet. She began collecting botanical art in 1990 and in that time has travelled around the world looking for botanical artists and their work, excited by the expanding field of this old/new discipline. In doing so, she has built the most important private contemporary botanical art collection in the world, comprising over 1,000 works by 303 artists from 36 countries. Dr Sherwood was awarded a Veitch Memorial Medal by the RHS in 2004 and in 2012 received an OBE for services to botanical art.  She and her family also helped fund the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - the first gallery of botanical art in the world. (see the Archive of Botanical Art Exhibitions in the Gallery)
​​RHS John Reeves: Pioneering Collector of Chinese Plants and Botanical Art by Kate Bailey

This is the story of the Reeves Collection of Chinese botanical paintings, the result of one man's single-minded dedication to commissioning pictures and gathering plants for the Horticultural Society of London​
  • Sixty images from the RHS Reeves Collection of Chinese botanical artwork
  • An insight into what life was like as an East India Company tea inspector in early nineteenth-century China
  • Contemporary scenes of Canton, now the city of Guangzhou
John Reeves was a tea inspector who began collecting artwork for the Horticultural Society of London (which became the RHS). ​His Collection is now held at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library in Vincent Square, London. The paintings are accurate and richly coloured plant portraits of plants then unknown in the West. They also record those plants being cultivated in nineteenth-century Canton and Macau.

​Kate Bailey reveals Reeves' life as an East India Company tea inspector in 19th century China and shows how he managed to collect and document thousands of Chinese natural history drawings, far more than anyone else at the time - in his own time. Unfortunately, Reeves did not enjoy  the same degree of recognition as other naturalists in China - despite years of work collecting, labelling and packing plants and organising a team of Chinese artists until he left China in 1831.
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: ACC Art Books
Publication date: 28 August 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1788840313
ISBN-13: 978-1788840316
Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 27.3 cm

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About the author
Kate Bailey worked as a solicitor until age 54 she enrolled at Camberwell College of Arts for a degree in paper conservation. After obtaining an M.A., and being accepted for a Ph.D., for three years Kate stalked Reeves in libraries, museums and auction houses. A post-doctoral year at the V&A followed, working on a collaborative project into the pigments found on Chinese export paintings using the Reeves pictures for comparison. Kate continues to research, write and lecture on Reeves and related art-botanical subjects.

See also two of her articles published in The Plantsman: The Reeves Collection of Chinese Botanical Drawings (December 2010) and Science and art in the RHS Reeves Collection (June 2016 - co-authored with Charlotte Brooks)
​Rosie Sanders' Roses: A celebration in botanical art by Rosie Sanders

Over 80 stunning paintings and sketches are shown for the first time in book form
About the author
Rosie Sanders has been painting plants and flowers for a very long time - she earned her first RHS Gold Medal in 1981. She has been very successful in selling her large watercolour paintings of blooms. 
​The book is a revealing insight into the artist's muse and the author's sketches and drawings are also included to show the full artistic process. 

​The book is introduced by an extended essay on the resonance of the rose as a timeless motif - all across the world - in our art, literature, poetry, folklore and gardens.
The artist writes a personal letter on each of her rose paintings (to be given unopened to the final recipient or buyer of the painting). Many of these personal letters sit alongside the paintings, as they explain the creative and emotional process she went through to create it.
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Batsford Ltd
Publication date 19 August 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1849945527
ISBN-13: 978-1849945523
Product Dimensions: 24.5 x 31.1 cm

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​You can see images of some of her paintings of roses in my Review: Rosie Sanders: Secret Letters Exhibition at the Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery in 2017.
Botanical Illustration from the Royal Horticultural Society: The Gold Medal Winners
by Charlotte Brooks
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: For all botanical artists aspiring to enter the RHS Botanical Art Exhibition and win a Gold Medal - and for all botanical art lovers everywhere. This book makes a major contribution to both
  • the recording of contemporary botanical art
  • ​learning about how to produce top quality botanical art.
READ my 
Book Review: RHS Botanical Illustration - The Gold Medal Winners
The book comprises:
  • an introduction covering (1) the Lindley Library Collection of Botanical Art; and (2) the development of medals for botanical art - and notable awards made
  • commentary by the Chair of the RHS Picture Panel on the current process for aspiring botanical artists to achieve medals at the show
  • profiles of a selection of the Gold Medal Artists - 60 in total - from all over the world. This includes accounts of how some of them approached their work.
  • the Historical List of RHS Gold Medal Winners - which runs to six pages and 168 RHS Shows!
  • a detailed list of all the illustrations by their botanical latin name

The introductory essay by Charlotte Brooks is very interesting. It introduces the RHS Collection of Botanical Illustrations and its history - and how the RHS related to botanical illustrators in the past and present. I knew some of it but not all. 
​​Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: ACC Art Books
Publication date: 26 Jun. 2019
​e-Book edition: none identified

​All images are of illustrations added to the RHS Lindley Collection

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Treasures of Botanical Art by Shirley Sherwood and  Martyn Rix 

RECOMMENDED: An excellent introduction to some of the treasures of botanical art - both past and present
This is the second edition of the book associated with the inaugural exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens. ​This revised second edition is smaller and has more images and fewer words. It's a fascinating book in that it mixes
  • the best work by contemporary botanical artists - mainly from the Shirley Sherwood Collection
  • with historic artwork that is part of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew Art Collection.
  • It also includes biographies of all the artists​
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Kew Publishing
Publication date: 28 January 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1842466631
ISBN-13: 978-1842466636
Product Dimensions: 19 x 2.5 x 24.8 cm

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Below is a display of the book in the Gallery. I can personally vouch for the fact that this book provides excellent colour reproduction of the works which were in the exhibition.
​Botanical Artistry by Julia Trickey
This is a book about the portfolio of Julia Trickey and showcases her artwork.

It also looks at the motivations behind some of her projects about plants and paintings she has completed and reviews the processes she uses.

She is drawn to the less than perfect specimen and often paints larger than life.
Paperback: 88 pages
Publisher: Two Rivers Press Ltd; Publication date: 21 Jan. 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1909747459
ISBN-13: 978-1909747456
Dimensions: 20 x 0.7 x 20 cm

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Botanical Artistry from Amazon.co.uk
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Other books by Julia Trickey
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