NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Ask an expert: botanical art surgery - with Deborah Lambkin

11/2/2019

Don't forget - next Sunday is the third and final botanical art surgery with an expert in botanical illustration at Kew Gardens.

Expert: Deborah Lambkin
Venue: Main Gallery of the Shirley Sherwood Art Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Date: Sunday 17th February 2019
Time: 11am - 3pm

It's a great way of being able to ask questions about your own work and also about life as a professional botanical illustrator.

About Deborah Lambkin

Come and see me paint in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery @kewgardens on 17 Feb. I will be there to answer questions and to chat about my favourite subject- botanical illustration! #botanicalillustration #botanicaldrawing #art pic.twitter.com/3bZfzQD48j
— Deborah Lambkin (@DeborahLambkin) February 7, 2019

Some facts about Deborah Lambkin:

born in Ireland but now lives in London
trained at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin
official orchid artist for the RHS Orchid Committee since 2005 - and has painted over 200 different orchids
an artist member of the RHS Picture Panel which judges exhibits at the RHS Botanical Art Shows
One of only two Irish artists (to date) to win a gold medal at the RHS exhibition, the other being Wendy F. Walsh. She won an RHS Gold Medal for her collection of eight paintings of nerines in 1999.
Contributes paintings to Curtis's Botanical Magazine regularly.
This is an article she wrote about Dealing with plant specimens – Deborah Lambkin

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Where can you find a botanical art course in England, Scotland and Wales in 2019?

21/1/2019

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My directory of short courses, classes and workshops in botanical art and/or illustration in England, Scotland and Wales has been updated to include all those being held in 2019 that have been:

notified to me and/or
are being venues which had courses last year.

The Miller's House at Flatford Mill - now a Field Centre offering workshops and short courses

Where can you find a botanical art course in 2019?

The list is organised geographically.
Each area is prefaced by a list of botanical art tutors listed in that section.
Each course is delisted after it has been held - hence now is the best time of year to get an insight into the short courses on offer.

Places with courses, classes or workshops in 2019 include include:

England

London
East Anglia - Cambridge, Essex, Suffolk
Midlands - Birmingham
North - Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Yorkshire
South and SE England - Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, West Sussex
South West England - Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire

Scotland - Edinburgh

Wales

Cardiff,
Gwynedd,
Powys,
Vale of Glamorgan,
West Glamorgan

Hassop Hall Hotel in Bakewell, Derbyshire

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For your information

I can only list what I'm told about or find about - hence I don't pretend that this list is comprehensive.

This page ONLY lists Botanical Art & Illustration workshops, classes and courses

by Organisations
and/or at Educational Centres in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
and NOT in a private home.

(i.e. it's a reasonably safe bet that they comply with all relevant legislative and regulatory requirements for having third parties on their premises). I'm much less sure of compliance by domestic premises - hence why they are typically excluded.

Tutors and tuition providers can tell me about their course (if it has not been included) by providing the information requested at the bottom of the page and using the dedicated form for UK Course Information.

Reputable UK-based tutors are listed in the International Directory: Botanical Art Tutors (along with tutors around the world)

West Dean College in West Sussex

For Tuition in Other Countries

I'm also updating the courses in other countries and would appreciate updates.
See separate pages for Botanical Art Tuition offered in:

North America - USA, Canada and Caribbean
Australasia - Australia
Europe and North Africa - Austria, France, Ireland, Italy, Morocco Netherlands, Romania and Spain

These also have a form at the bottom of the page for tuition updates.
Courses in Africa, Asia and South and Central America will be added on separate pages in due course

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RIP Margaret Stones and Jessica Tcherepnine

6/1/2019

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This is way of a notice, to those who have not already heard, that we lost two outstanding botanical artists at the turn of the year.

Margaret Stones AM MBE GM passed away on 26th December in Epworth, Australia
Jessica Tcherepnine GM died on New Year's Eve in New York.

I'm doing a brief biography/appreciation of Margaret Stones today (see below)
I'm also in the process of constructing a web page for Margaret Stones for my section about Famous and/or Notable Botanical Artists in the 20th Century - chronicling her artwork and significant contribution to botanical illustration and will be highlighting this at a later date

Tomorrow I have a post about Jessica Tcherepnine.

Margaret Stones AM OBE GM (1920-2018)

Margaret Stones is a Botanical Artist renowned for her taxonomical accuracy.
Encyclopedia of Australian Science

Margaret Stones has died, age 98, in Australia, on 26 December 2018.
She was a very distinguished Australian botanical artist who provided a significant contribution to botanical art and illustration during the 20th century.

Some highlights of career included

one of the longest serving botanical illustrators for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Working on a freelance basis, she produced over 400 watercolour drawings of plants for Curtis's Botanical Magazine over a period of 25 years between 1958 and 1983
participated in some major projects - providing 254 drawings for a six-volume work (1967-78) for The Endemic Flora of Tasmania, and also illustrating the Flora of Louisiana commissioned in 1976 - which grew to over 200 exquisite watercolor drawings
received very many awards recognising her distinction in her field - including the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and the Order of Australia (AM) plus a Gold and Silver Veitch Memorial Medals and Gold Medals from the Royal Horticultural Society. She also held honorary degrees from both the University of Melbourne and Louisiana State University
taught and inspired very many botanical artists and talent spotted others - including Pandora Sellars.

Pandora enjoyed a great relationship with her and shared with me how incredible she was. An inspiration to botanical artists everywhere.
Margaret Best

Margaret Stones - pictured on 13 March 2003 at the "Imperial Honours" Exhibition at Melbourne University, just after her return to Australia | Courtesy of The Australian Women's Register

Early life in Australia

She was born at Colac, Australia, southwest of Melbourne, on August 28, 1920. Her father was a farmer and her early years were blighted by the difficulties associated with the aftermath of the Great War and the Depression.

Her artistic talents were evident early on and her family supported her in her endeavours to train in art.

She attended Swinburne Girls Junior Technical School (the first Technical School for Girls in Victoria) where she obtained a three-year scholarship to study industrial art at Swinburne Technical College, Victoria (1936-1938). Unfortunately her parents were unable to keep her on for the fourth year which would have given her a Diploma. However she did attend night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School for 18 months during 1940-41, while earning a living doing commercial art jobs during the day.

War work then interrupted her work as a commercial artist and she trained and worked as a nurse during the Second World War.

Her real involvement in botanical illustration began after she contracted pulmonary tuberculosis shortly after she completed her final nursing exams. She was hospitalised and confined to bed for 18 months - at Epworth to begin with and then later at Glenelg Hospital at Box Hill.

What might seem like a turn for the worse, in fact influenced her career for the rest of her life.

After complaining of going mad with the sheer boredom of enforced recuperation associated with her stay in hospital, she started to spend her time drawing .wild flowers. These were brought to her by her friends - some of whom brought plants to her from the Grampians, a range of mountains in western Victoria.

After she recovered from tuberculosis, she was invited to join the University of Melbourne Botany school summer expeditions to the Bogong High Plains, Victoria.

In 1951 she left Australia for London to further her botanical knowledge.

A new career and a new life at Kew Gardens

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The joy of a botanical art bibliography

3/1/2019

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Great Flower Books 1700-1900

My final Christmas present turned up today - Great Flower Books 1700-1900 came complete with its customs declaration as it came from the USA.

It's a comprehensive Bibliographical Record of two Centuries of finely-illustrated Flower Books by Sacheverell Sitwell & Wilfrid Blunt. It's the sort of book which will keep me occupied with more research of botanical art for YEARS! I'm guessing it's only other serious researchers who will appreciate why it gives me so much pleasure!

'Great Flowers Books 1700-1900' A Bibliographical Record of Two Centuries of Finely-Illustrated Flower Books by Sacheverell Sitwell and Wilfrid Blunt

I didn't know until just recently that there are two versions of the book.

The first edition was published by Collins in London in 1956.

The trade edition was composed of 1750 unnumbered copies printed on Gelderland white cartridge paper and bound by Mansells of London;
it was published simultaneously with a numbered limited edition of 295 specially-bound copies printed on Amstel paper.

The second edition was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in New York in 1990.
The bonus of the second one is that they very much improved the quality of the images included in the publication. However almost all copies are located in the USA - hence the need to import.

'Great Flower Books' is very much a collaborative endeavour with essays by

Handasyde Buchanan - a noted London book collector / bookseller, who wrote Nature into Art: Treasury of Great Natural History Books
Sacheverell Sitwell - an English writer and art critic who wrote Fine Bird Books 1700-1900 with Handasyde Buchanan before this book
Wilfrid Blunt - who wrote The Art of Botanical Illustration - which was published in 1950, just prior to this book - for which he was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society

It occurred to me that he must have consulted a fair few - of not very many - of the books listed in this volume in order to write that book.

Front and back covers of the book

The Title Page - with authors and credits

The Title and Contents pages identify who did what in this collaborative endeavour with

essays by Buchanan, Sitwell and Blunt
a Bibliography compiled by William Stearn, Sabine Wilson (who she?) and Handasyde Buchanan
which was then edited by Patrick M Synge - who was a plant hunter, an Editor of the Horticultural Journal and who was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society

So all in all, a top notch set of contributors to this book! That doesn't too often these days!

I'll be consulting and reading it with some reverence for those who put the book together.

The Contents Page

I have in fact got to the point with book-buying now where almost everything I buy is second hand -

In fact, the first thing I do when I get a 'new' book is to go straight to its bibliography to see what books it lists as resources - so as to see if I can find any new ones I've not read!

So the notion of buying a book, the bulk of which is essentially a bibliography does not strike me as too strange!

I've come across all sorts of small joys by studying the bibliographies in books and academic journals

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Botanical Art and Artists: looking back, looking forward

1/1/2019

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Today seems a good day to

look back at the momentous year for botanical art in 2018 and
look forward to what's happening in 2019 for botanical art and artists around the world

First I'd like extend all my readers my very best wishes for your botanical art and travels in 2019.

May your paper work properly, your brushes not drop hairs, your paints behave as they're supposed to, your pencils sharpen and keep their points, the frames arrive on time, your artwork not get lost on its travels post - and for you to discover new plants and tutors who inspire you to do more superb botanical artwork!

Botanical Art and Artists in 2018

I must confess I absolutely and totally ran out of steam re. covering botanical art towards the end of 2018 and had a very quiet few weeks towards the end of the year - despite a pile of books to review (which will now be reviewed this month - for all of you with money to spend from Christmas)!

Botanical Art Exhibitions

So much had been happening during the course of the year in relation to botanical art exhibitions around the world that I had to race to keep up - metaphorically speaking - for most of the year. (More literally, there was a point during the year when I could barely walk!). There were exhibitions I wanted to see that I just couldn't get to and ones which I've seen which I still need to write about....

Some of the Catalogues from the Worldwide Exhibition of Botanical Art currently on display at Kew

One of the main reasons for all this was the HUGELY successful Worldwide Exhibition of Botanical Art in 2018.

I LOVED seeing all the photos and videos about their exhibitions that people posted to Facebook and their websites. It really felt like a huge community effort by the botanical art community across the world.
I also loved writing the blog posts about all the exhibitors in the exhibitions (for which I had information). It was great to make contact with so many new groups (for me). I also learned so much about botanical artists worldwide - and all those who were listed in a blog post got a link to their website from mine!
In addition, it helped me write about a lot more artists across the world for my leading artist pages on the website

Decals decorate the exterior of the Gallery to mark the decade since it opened in April 2008.

Four other highlights were:

the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew and its one millionth visitor - see One millionth visitor to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art!
the visit by the Florilegium of RBG Sydney artists in April - for the exhibition of their work at Kew. See"The Florilegium: The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney" exhibition at Kew Gardens and List of artists exhibited in "Down Under II: Works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection". It was a simply stunning exhibition and I met some lovely ladies for the first time - and I very much enjoyed what I now call "Australia Day" (which reminds me I still need to upload all those photos of the artists and Herbarium visit to Dropbox for you!)
the largest ever RHS Botanical Art Show in July - at which 16 GOLD MEDALS were awarded(!!!) - see RHS London Botanical Art Show 2018 - Awards and Medal Winners. Hye Woo Shin went one better than her previous Best Exhibit Award and received a Judges Special Award for her exhibit of "Plants of Dokdu Island"

Hye Woo Shin and her Special Judges Award for her RHS exhibit "Plants of Dokdu Island"

New Pages in 2018

There were a number of new pages on the website in 2018 - and there are lot more in draft. Probably the new pages are of most interest to students of botanical art are the ones about

Online Botanical Art Courses. I'll be looking to developing this further in 2019.
NEW Books about Botanical Art and Illustration - new Instruction books will remain on this page for 12 months after publication

Traffic growth

Growth in traffic to my website has been exponential in 2018.
Traffic has been on a marked upward trend since the website started in 2015. However, traffic is now three times more than that in 2016.

Botanical Art And Artists Traffic in 2018: No. of unique visitors (blue) and pageviews (green) per month

In 2018 my website received (see chart below)

654,354 pageviews (green column)
469,482 unique visitors (blue column) to my website

At one point this summer, I started to think I might make it to 1,000,000 visitors to my website by the end of the year! However although this didn't quite happen - it will be happening very soon - probably end of February/March! (you can see my counter in the right hand column). I must think of some way of celebrating!

This year I need to get into training so I don't run out of steam!

Botanical Art and Artists in 2019

I'm looking forward to some more great things for botanical art and from botanical artists in 2019. I'm going to say a few words below about

my plans for my website in 2019
exhibitions in 2019

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Lucy Smith filmed by BBC News

22/12/2018

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Botanical Illustrator Lucy Smith was telling me earlier in the week about how exciting it was to be filmed creating one of her botanical illustrations for the Kew Herbarium Archive by a BBC News crew who came to Kew Gardens. (This is part of a wider filming project by the BBC at Kew)>

Her item was due to run on yesterday's news.

...and so:

the good news - the title given to the piece is The woman who draws the world's plants
the good news - you can still see the video on the BBC website - just click the blue link above. In it she describes how she draws a NEW species and what she has to do to dry botanical material in order to see its features properly - and how long it takes her to produce an illustration
the bad news - the piece about her got bumped by a drone! BBC News needed extra time for the impact caused by the awful men who closed down Gatwick by flying drones with a view to causing maximum disruption!

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: Do take a look at the video - it's only short but packed full of information!

There's also an article about Lucy Smith on the Kew Gardens website
RECOMMENDED READ: Meet award-winning botanical illustrator Lucy Smith & discover her line drawings

You can also read more about Lucy and what she does on:

her website http://www.lucytsmith.com
her Facebook Page - Lucy T Smith Botanical Artist
her Twitter account - Lucy Smith at https://twitter.com/palmsmithy

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Sarah Jane Humphrey - being a botanical illustrator

13/12/2018

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Sarah Jane Humphrey in her studio

In this video, Sarah Jane Humphrey is interviewed by Melanie Chadwick about her career and how she found her way into a career in illustration and her own botanical illustration niche.

Sarah Jane Humphrey GM is a botanical and natural science illustrator, author, tutor and now shopkeeper.

2018 has been a big year for Sarah Jane

in June 2018, her book Botanical Art with Scientific Illustration was published. READ my REVIEW: Botanical Art with Scientific Illustration by Sarah Jane Humphrey for more details
in July 2018, she won her first RHS Bold Medal Gold Medal by the RHS for Medicinal Fruits and their symbiosis with Pollinators (after a previous Silver and then Silver Gilt).
in November 2018, she opened her own shop in Falmouth called Botanical Atelier at 19A Arwenack St. Falmouth. TR11 4AS where she is delivering botanically oriented events and workshops.

To date her career has involved

graduating from Falmouth University with an Honours Degree in Illustration.
becoming represented by the Wildlife Art Company for illustration work. She was their very first female Scientific and Natural History Illustrator.
securing contracts for botanical, natural history and scientific illustration work from a variety of clients and publishers
delivering workshops on Botanical Illustration in Cornwall

View the video to find out more about how she developed her career to date.

Websites:

Portfolio https://www.sarahjanehumphrey.com/
Botanical Atelier https://botanicalatelier.co.uk/

Botanical Art with Scientific Illustration by Sarah Jane Humphrey

The video is part of Melanie Chadwick's series of interviews called Creative Conversations on YouTube.

Each episode we chat about running a business, struggles and successes as well as sharing tips and advice which may be helpful to others working in the creative world. Pull up a chair and enjoy!

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