NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Kew Commemoration of Pandora Sellars at Herbarium

1/10/2017

On a recent visit to the The Library Reading Room in the Library, Art and Archives at Kew I came across a commemoration of the work of Pandora Sellars who died on 9th May 2017, age 80 - see below. If you get a chance to visit and look at one of her paintings I very much recommend you do.

Tribute to Pandora Sellars (1936-2017) in the Library Reading Room in the Kew Herbarium Building

This is what the Kew Tribute to Pandora Sellars says

Importantly, the commemoration recognises her role as a very important mentor to many botanical illustrators all over the world.

Pandora Sellars was renowned as one of the best painters of leaves ever - her complex compositions and values/colours are unique in the world of botanical art. She also contributed a significant number of paintings of orchids (and other plants) to Botanical Magazine publications.

REFERENCE:
You can:

read my earlier tribute to Pandora in Pandora Sellars - an appreciation of a great botanical artist (16th May 2017).
find The Kew Library Reading Room in the Herbarium building, off Kew Green, to the right of Elizabeth Gate.

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How to become a botanical illustrator

24/3/2017

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How do you become a botanical illustrator? What does the job involve?

How do you get a job in botanical illustration at one of the major botanical gardens that employ botanical illustrators?

Below is a 5 minute video created to illustrate a career in botanical illustration. It features botanical illustrator Catherine Wardrop, who is one of two botanical illustrators employed by the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney. She works at the herbarium and prepares black and white illustrations in pen and ink for botanists and publication in of Flora of New South Wales revisions, Flora of Australia, Telopea and other scientific journals. She also curates key Margaret Flockton works.

Note: the video is old but the principles of the approach to creating a botanical illustration for a scientific publication remain the same.

Still from the video showing Catheron Wardron working on a botanical illustration created from pressed Herbarium material

It shows techniques used by botanical illustrators - including

the use of mechanical pencils and Rotring pens,
retrieval of pressed materials for the herbarium and other specimen material
discussions of the brief for the illustration with the botanists as to key features for inclusion in a plate
scanning and tracing of herbarium material
tracing of material in pencil to get dimensions correct
use of a loupe
review of drawings with the botanist to ensure the illustrator has understood what the drawing needs to display
scanning of the diagrams into Photoshop and then transferring them into Illustrator software in order to manipulate images to design a botanical plate.
inking of images on drafting film using Rotring pen
scanning of images for publication

It also illustrates how much of her work is done while sitting over a microscope!

You must love both nature and detail and have a number of drawing skills to be a professional botanical illustrator. Skills required include:

how light works on form
how forms appear as they turn
how plant material looks as it is coming at you or going away
knowing how to represent both form and articulate how it moves in space very clearly - with no ambiguity.
technically realistic in image-making
proficient in use of a technical pen
use of technology and image software.

The video finishes by explaining her educational background and how she got a job in botanical illustration. Catherine has a a first degree in printmaking and a Diploma in Plant and Wildlife Illustration from Newcastle University in New South Wales.

[Note: Newcastle University has a Degree in Natural History Illustration. This page outlines requirements and the core and optional courses for the degree.]

More about jobs in botanical illustration

Botanical Illustrator Profile - again featuring Catherine Waldron
Careers in Botanical Art and Natural Science Illustration - article by Mindy Lighthipe
For Scientific Illustrators: Finding Jobs - Gina Mikel

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The Bauer Brothers & Natural History Museum Collections

21/11/2015

I've been updating the website for a significant number of aspects relating to the Natural History Museum. By the time I got to the end it seemed appropriate to highligth this via a post!

On the UK Exhibitions page, you'll now find a new section covering exhibitions at the Museum and an entry for the NEW exhibition in the Images of Nature Gallery.

Title: The Bauer Brothers: Masters of Scientific Illustration
Venue: Images of Nature Gallery (on the ground floor in the Blue Zone - see the Map of the NHM (pdf)
Dates: 7 November 2015 - 26 February 2017
Scope: illustrations by two of the most famous botanical and natural history artists of all time. Franz Bauer (1758-1840) was employed as "Botanick Painter to his Majesty" and drew all the new flowering plants that arrived at Kew Gardens from plant explorations all over the world. The younger brother Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826) spent most of his career as a natural history artist and travelled the world on various expeditions. He's best known as the botanical and natural history artist on an expedition to explore and record the coastline of Australia.
Book: Published in association with the exhibition The Bauer Brothers: Images of Nature

I've not been to see this exhibition as ye but plan to see it very soon. Anybody travelling to London over the Christmas/New Year period would be well advised to make time in their day to see it. I've seen some of their work before at the NHM and it's stunning!

The Bauer Brothers "excelled in learning the principles of botanical illustration according to the Linnaean system of classification. This technique typically depicts the entire plant in flower, but separately represents the bud and fruit, often dissected to show the internal structure."

On the Permanent Collections (UK) Page, the section highlighting the Natural History Museum now includes links to:

Women artists - more than 120 women artists have work in the Museum's Library and Archives
The Bauer brothers collection
Modern botanical illustration
The Linnaean collection
The Darwin collection

On the Herbaria, Seed Banks and Fungaria page, you'll find it now lists the range of botanical collections in the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum. You can see digital images of a lot of the herbarium speciments in the collections by searching the associated databases.

These include collections which came from:

George Clifford (1685-1760), a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant. This is significant because....

Linnaeus worked at Clifford's estate near Haarlem between 1735 and 1737. Linnaeus described the plants growing there and wrote the Hortus Cliffortianus

Paul Hermann - He was the Medical Officer to the Dutch East India Company in Sri Lanka between 1672 and 1677 and his collection of plants and flowers is one of the first major collections of the botany of the East Indies.
John Clayton - his specimens have considerable importance in botanical nomenclature.
Sir Hans Sloane - the noted physician, scientist and collector, the President of the Royal Society from 1727 to 1741 and the man behind one of the most signficant collections and gifts to the Museums.