NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

The favourite art supplies of botanical artists

5/11/2017

I've created a new section on my website Botanical Art and Artists for information about and recommendations of Art Materials used by Botanical Artists and Illustrators. The aim is to

share - and pass forward - what we know to help people produce the very best botanical art.
identify alternatives for materials which fall short of the performance and quality people want and need.

Many of you will be aware that I've been steadily compiling tips, techniques and recommendations about the use of art media, materials and equipment for botanical art and illustration. If not, take a look for example at:

Paper and supports
Vellum

Some of the new pages in the NEW Section about Art Materials used by botanical artists

I've got a number of NEW PAGES to develop in this section.

One of the ones I'd like to develop first is a new page about Favourite Art Materials - the ones people openly recommend. The new page will cover both favourite art supplies and favoured art materials suppliers - to the extend that these have been independently identified by botanical artists and illustrators on their own sites.

What I'm now trying to do is identify all those webpages and/or blog posts created by reputable botanical artists that provide information about

their recommended art supplies for botanical art.
art suppliers that they recommend.

I've highlighted some examples below.

Highlight favourite art supplies.

For example a post which provides a compendium of recommendations is

Heidi Venamore's Favourite supplies for painting;
Heeyoung Kim's favorite art supplies for botanical art does the same thing - and covers pencils, erasers, watercolour paint and papers etc.

Others highlight one specific type of art material, the options available and what they've noticed about them. This includes products where you really like them right up until the point at which they need to be misplaced (often relating to comments on brushes)

e.g. see Dianne Sutherland's Which Brush? Spotters and Miniatures
and her equally helpful blog post Which pencil?

Five miniature brushes - pressed against the paper to illustrate the differences (Left to right: Winsor & Newton Series 7 miniature, Rosemary & Co spotter, David Jackson spotter, Raphael 8048 and Pro Arte series 107) - courtesy of Dianne Sutherland Ball

While others provide information on the tests they've done on different options eg for paper

e.g. Earlier this year Lizzie Harper used both blog posts and videos to demonstrate her experiences of different watercolour papers - see Botanical Illustration: Comparing Hot Press Watercolour Papers and Botanical Illustration: Comparing Hot Press Watercolour Papers (part 2)
Or one particular art medium that they use

Nominate favoured suppliers.

Others will highlight the art supplier they favour as being reliable and stocking good quality products.

If you have a recommendation

If you:

recommend art materials on your website or blog (i.e. anywhere the page has a URL)
have explored alternatives for specific types of media or equipment
would like to endorse the people you use for art supplies

please leave a comment - or contact me

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Review: Rosie Sanders: Secret Letters Exhibition

11/10/2017

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Yesterday I visited the Rosie Sanders: Secret Letters Exhibition at Jonathan Cooper's Park Walk Gallery just off the Fulham Road in Chelsea. The exhibition finishes on Saturday and I very much recommend you try and get to see it if you can before it finishes. Her work is simply stunning!

View into the Gallery from Park Walk

There's a very big incentive for those coming to London for the SBA Annual Exhibition to also make a visit to the gallery to see this one too. Gallery hours are 10am – 6.30pm on weekdays and 11am – 4pm on Saturday so it's definitely possible to fit two botanical art exhibitions into one day!

Three of the paintings in the Rosie Sanders: Secret Letter Exhibition

The exhibition focuses in particular on large and small paintings of roses - painted in a less conventional way - from the rear or as they have reached a stage where they are past their best but nonetheless marvellous convoluted structures.

The box with the secret letters - one of which is given to the buyer of each painting - is displayed in the window

The box of Secret Letters

The exhibition also includes

smaller paintings of parrot tulips (typically 15.35 x 19.68ins / 39 x 50cm)
large watercolour paintings of irises and a dandelion clock on backgrounds of black charcoal.

I think many of the more precise botanical artists might be surprised by Rosie's techniques. Rather than using dry brushwork, it's her practice to work much more directly - wet in wet and mixing her colours on the paper. She's extremely adept at developing very convincing structures through masterful use of tone and colour.

Her work is not matted. Rather the deckle edged paper is float mounted within a narrow quality frame.

The paper she uses is either

Arches 640gsm paper (for larger paintings with dimensions in excess of 100cm); or
Richard de Bas handmade paper for the smaller works.

The latter comes from a paper mill, at Ambert d'Auvergne in France, which has been handmaking paper for the last 700 years. (see this page for more about what the mill has to offer)

Prices of paintings are for the serious collector - one of whom is Shirley Sherwood. I arrived at the gallery after a visit to her home nearby where I admired her new acquisition of a splendid smaller painting of a very red rose past its best.

Don't miss some of the larger paintings on the lower floor of the gallery!

I took some short video shots as well yesterday and will include the video in this post after I've done the editing - which always takes a little time.

Two of the large paintings of roses - seen in the lower floor - both have sold.

Sales have been very brisk - Rosie's work is always very popular!

I counted sixteen paintings of the 26 paintings in the exhibition sold to date. Prices of those paintings still available can be seen on the website and are in five figures for the larger paintings and £3,800 for the smaller paintings.

Paintings also include large paintings of tulips and irises as well as roses

For those who couldn't get to see the exhibition - this is my video of a walk round the exhibition. It starts outside in Park Walk, shows you the window of the gallery with the box of secrets and then looks around the walls on the ground floor and lower floor.

Rosie exhibits with Jonathan on a regular basis - typically a solo show every one to two years which always do well as her work is very collectible. You can see all currently available work on the gallery website.

You can also see her work in her book Rosie Sanders' Flowers: A Celebration of Botanical Art (affiliate link).

Gallery: Jonathan Cooper, 20 Park Walk, London SW10 0AQ
Bus: 211, 11 and 22 on the Kings Road or 14 and 414 on the Fulham Road
Tube: South Kensington and Sloane Square

My previous reviews of her work and exhibitions:

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VIDEO: Wendy Hollender compares watercolor papers for botanical drawing

6/5/2017

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Following on from yesterday's post (see VIDEO: Lizzie Harper compares painting on different watercolour papers), Wendy Hollender contacted me to tell me she had also produced a video about testing different papers.

Still from video where Wendy displays her baseline "gold standard" sample - from the OLD version of Fabriano Artistico HP 140lb - which she has decided must be replaced

Her video (and blog post) display

her "baseline" comparison of OLD Fabriano Artistico HP 140lb (which has now changed and hence needs to be replaced)

PLUS a different set of papers from those tested by Lizzie Harper (with some overlap)

Stillman & Birn Zeta (pad style)
Fluid
Stonehenge Aqua Paper made by Legion (two samples)
the new Fabriano Artistico paper
Saunders Waterford High White (the new paper)
Arches HP paper
Canson L'Acquerelle HP paper

Some comments on the video before you watch it:

Wendy does not paint during the videos.
Primarily she is a coloured pencil artist who uses watercolour as an underpainting. It needs to be stressed that her paper is used for mixed media work using both watercolour and coloured pencil.
Her purpose in doing the video was to find a good quality paper for the sketchbooks she makes for her students to purchase.
She excluded all the papers she decided she could not work with - so if a paper is not in the above list you may think it was not liked. There again it might not have been tested!
Wendy shows the sample papers she has tested and the images she created - but you don;t get a good look at them (see her accompanying blog post for a much better look - below)
At the end of the video she recommends the paper she decided was going to work best - and explains why.

Perhaps the most important conclusion she makes is that taking time to get to know a paper properly is necessary if you really want to make a proper assessment. In other words she could work with all the papers in the list if she adjusted how she worked.

So here's the video (which you can also view bigger via YouTube - click the YouTube bottom right in the video when you start it).

Her blog post provides more details about Evaluating Hotpressed watercolor papers for botanical drawing. It covers:

her requirements of botanical art paper
a composite image of all the different sample pages
her recommended paper - and a description of it
images of all the samples of papers she tried and could work with

Remember all the images have watercolour under-paintings and then coloured pencil drawings.

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Both this video and the one from yesterday are now included on my page in the Education section about Paper for botanical artists. This also offers guidance on how to test paper.

The most important advice I have to offer is that only YOU can work out the best paper for your work. That's because everybody works slightly differently and what works best for one artist will not suit another.

So take your time and do some testing:

be OPEN to trying new papers/types/brands/sides/weight;
order complete sheets of a variety of papers to test;
remember to try both sides;
do try heavier weight papers that do NOT need stretching (wetting the paper releases size and changes the surface);
do try Cold Pressed (NOT) as well as hot pressed - some outstanding botanical artists do all their work on NOT;
try different ways of working e.g. adjust the way you work so as to work with the paper rather than against it.

DO YOU HAVE A VIDEO OF YOUR PAPER TESTING?
If so, please do let me know.
If it adds value to the ongoing debate I'm happy to share it via this blog and my website.

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VIDEO: Lizzie Harper compares painting on different watercolour papers

5/5/2017

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This post is about a BRAND NEW and very useful video comparing paper for botanical artists by professional artist and illustrator Lizzie Harper, who specialises in botanical, natural history and scientific illustration.

a still from the video

In the video, she tests samples (not sheets or blocks) of five different watercolour papers.

She made it as her contribution to the collective effort to find a new paper for botanical artists after the problems with Fabriano Artistico HP. There have been a number of problems with that paper experienced by many botanical artists have in recent times. Some artists have given up on waiting for Fabriano to find an answer...

The papers tested are:

Moulin du Roy HP,
Arches 300gsm/140lb HP,
Canson Heritage 300gsm HP,
the new Saunders Waterford from St Cuthberts Mill and
Botanical Smooth. 300gsm HP also from St.C.Mill.

The close-ups are good of her painting and her verbal descriptions of what it felt like painting on the papers and how each performed are excellent and informative.

I won't spoil the ending by telling you which two papers she says she'll be focusing on in future.

This article on her blog shows you close-ups of the papers and the results achieved.

I will add a note of caution and advice.

Of late artists have found that samples of some paper have not been the same as either sheets or blocks of paper they have subsequently bought from the same manufacturer. Canson Heritage is the latest to be "under the spotlight" on this score.

Hence if you'd like to repeat the test for yourself - because people work in different ways and what works for one person is not necessarily the best paper for somebody else - I suggest you

use paper from sheets or blocks for your test.
try different weights and both sides of the paper as some botanical artists have discovered that just changing the weight or the side of paper you work can make a big difference!

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This video has been added in to my new page about Paper on my website. (I also have a page about Vellum)

My Paper Page is still a work in progress but it covers:

Basic paper data - to make the most of paper you need to know how it is made and how it can perform
Paper-making and different types of paper - improve your understanding of how papers are made and why they perform differently
How to test watercolour paper - general principles plus tests for watercolour paint, coloured pencils and pen and ink
Reviews of different papers by botanical artists - all aiming to identify the best paper for botanical art and illustration - including a video
Different brands of paper identified as suitable for botanical art and illustration. Some are suitable for some media only (this section has still to be developed)

I'd love to see more videos of botanical artists testing different papers and the results you've achieved so I can share them with others via my page. It's a lot more permanent than sharing on Facebook!

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What to use instead of Fabriano Artistico?

31/1/2017

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I'm getting a lot of enquiries from botanical artists as to what progress has been made with "the Fabriano Artistico story" and the major change in how the paper behaves.
Below you will find

the story so far
my recommendations for how to find a new paper; and
a brief review of an alternative surface - vellum.

Fabriano Artistico and Botanical Art - the story so far

Fabriano Artistico has been much favoured by botanical artists for very many years. For many years it has been a surface which stands up to the demands of those wanting to create very precise paintings of botanical specimens

Then something changed. You may not have read my previous posts on this topic.

"Fabriano Paper - an update" by Katherine Tyrrell (SBA Winter Bulletin)

Plus I did an update for the Society of Botanical Artists Winter Bulletin - an extract from which summarises what has happened since the meeting with Fabriano last summer.

Fabriano have done some trials since the meeting. To date they have been unsuccessful at identifying what needs to be different to produce the old surface. This means no prospect of a change back to the old surface in the near future.
We’ve now agreed to go through the same exercise with St. Cuthberts Mill. They recently produced two new papers as a response to the problem. This Mill only produces fine art paper and has an incentive to produce and/or refine paper to meet the needs of a group of artists with specific requirements.
Fabriano Paper - an update (SBA Winter Bulletin)

Recommendations

My recommendation to people needing a replacement for Fabriano Artistico is as follows.

YOU NEED TO EXPERIMENT!

The reason for this is that the way that YOU personally work makes a BIG difference to whether or not you like a paper.

You should TRY:

different makes of watercolour paper
different weights of paper - they can perform quite differently
BOTH SIDES of the paper. There is no one right side - there's only the side which works for you! :)
testing paper at different times of year - environmental factors can also make a big difference to how watercolour paper behaves (and you should make a note of your environment when testing)
Vellum - it doesn't misbehave!

Remember you don't need to do a full-on botanical artwork to test watercolour paper! You just need to use the botanical painting techniques you commonly use when creating your paintings.

I'm going to create a NEW Page about watercolour paper for botanical artists on the website. This will document what people have been saying about different watercolour papers. However I'm going to need them to also describe how/where they work so this may take a little time...

I'll also be asking artists at the upcoming RHS Botanical Art Show what they're using - particularly those whose work looks really good on paper!

In the meantime...

Vellum

Amongst full time professional botanical artists, I've noticed a very significant move from Fabriano Artistico to vellum. Botanical artists are visiting or contacting William Cowley & Sons a lot!

Vellum is also of course a very traditional surface for botanical painting used by very many famous botanical artists in the past.

I focused on created a new page all about Vellum which has been developed since the Fabriano Artistico "crisis". This includes:

What is vellum and the different types of vellum;
How to paint on vellum including a summary of tips; and
Suppliers of vellum and pumice in the UK and USA

There are two major bonuses to working on vellum:

It does not degrade like paper can do (if not well protected) over time
Colours painted using watercolours read much better on vellum compared to paper. As a result paintings can have more impact when seen across a crowded room - or botanical art exhibition!

and two significant considerations:

vellum is more expensive than paper
vellum usually needs to be mounted to look good - and that requires some expertise. (All Rory McEwen vellum paintings are mounted on boards - as are the new small works on vellum by Fiona Strickland - see below)

"Almost Over" Watercolour on Kelmscott vellum 8.5 x 11.75ins (21.6 x 29.8cm) (artwork size). 13.5 x 16.5 x 1.37ins (34.5 x 42 x 3.5cm) (framed size) Copyright Fiona Strickland

REFERENCE:

Fiona Strickland exhibition at Park Walk Gallery - Fiona now uses Kelmscott vellum for small works - you can see a mounted and framed example above.
Brigid Edwards's exhibition of new botanical paintings on vellum - Brigid has been using vellum for a long time

Left to right: Artichoke, Plane Tree and Parrot Tulips copyright Brigid Edwards

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A Meeting with Fabriano about Hot Press Paper

15/7/2016

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Left to right: Billy Showell SBA, Sandra Armitage President of the SBA, Gael Sellwood VPSBA, Dianne Sutherland SBA, ASBA and Elaine Searle ASBA blind testing watercolour papers at R.K. Burt & Co.

On Tuesday, a number of botanical artists using watercolour and coloured pencil met with the Marketing Director and Marketing Manager of Fabriano Paper at R.K Burt & Company - the paper importer who imports Fabriano paper into the UK.

The purpose of the meeting was to:

enable Fabriano to understand better why so many artists have been experiencing issue with recent production of their hot press papers (Artistico and Classico 5) produced by Fabriano.
promote a better understanding by artists of how paper is made - and how often - and the factors in normal production runs which can cause output to vary
compare the characteristics of other papers with those of Fabriano to enable the Fabriano mill to determine whether defined desirable characteristics are achievable. This was achieved via blind testing of a number of papers using simple tests involving a range of various commonly used techniques for applying, spreading and lifting media on hot press paper. This highlighted clearly the standards for different dimensions of functionality that a hot press paper must achieve to enable the production of top quality and very precise art.

You can read a detailed write-up of the meeting in UPDATE #2: Fabriano Paper - a meeting and conclusions. There will also two more blog posts about the paper production process and the blind testing process.

Left to right: Polly O'Leary SBA, Sandrine Maugy SBA, Morryce Maddams UKCPS, Ann Swan SBA, UKCPS, Chiara Mediolo - Marketing Director, Fabriano and Giuseppe Prezioso - Head of Marketing for Fabriano

Fabriano came away with a very clear understanding that:

botanical artists are very demanding when it comes to testing watercolour paper.
the quality and performance of the watercolour paper they choose to use is vital to their production of such very high quality paintings!

We also concluded that it might be productive in future to do the blind testing in advance so that this can be more realistic in terms of the ways artists work - in terms of the number of layers of paint that can be applied and lifted and reworked.

The meeting was very positive and productive. However it's not going to produce a solution overnight. Indeed it might take quite some time. Fabriano will use the information from the meeting to start the process of addressing the issues raised by running a test at the end of July. This will use data collected from the meeting.

All parties came away feeling that it was now much more likely that Fabriano can develop improved production parameters and quality testing to ensure future production of their paper continues to be much loved by botanical artists and all other artists wanting precise control over their media of choice.

I'll be providing further updates as and when there is more information on the progress made.

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A Botanical Art Paper Review

4/4/2016

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From discussion to testing!

There has been much discussion amongst botanical artists in recent weeks and months due to what appeared to be some significant changes in the quality, surface and performance of Fabriano papers much used by botanical artists.

See my blog post Fabriano, R K Burt and St Cuthberts Mill - and fine art watercolour paper for precision painting for a discussion of some of the aspects of what has been happening.

As a result we're now beginning to see artists writing about and showing the results of controlled tests done on the various papers.

Dianne Sutherland has produced an excellent blog post - Paper Matters: St Cuthbert Mill vs Fabriano. It covers:

various types and weights of paper produced by Fabriano (in Italy) and St Cuthberts Mill (in the UK).
systematic and structured tests involving the various techniques used by botanical artists - as you can see from some of the samples in the image below
a well-informed and well balanced commentary by Dianne who is a very experienced botanical artist and teacher.

It's very definitely a RECOMMENDED READ!

The blog post on Dianne's blog at http://diannesutherland.blogspot.co.uk/

I'll be pleased to highlight other reviews of papers much used by botanical artists.

Just leave a comment or contact me and let me know if you have also done a review that you'd like to share.

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