NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

Two NEW exhibitions at Kew (Oct 2023 - April 24)

16/10/2023

Two new exhibitions open at the end of this week at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew

Mat Colishaw - Petrichor - which includes premieres of new artwork
Young Botanical Artist - following the competition held by the Shirley Sherwood Collection in liaison with Kew Gardens.

You can find summaries of both below. I'll be writing reviews of both after I've seen them.

The exhibitions open on 20th October 2023 and continue until 7th April 2024.

Mat Colishaw - Petrichor

Mat Colishaw is a 57 year old English artist who works in photography and video. His work includes the creation of digital artworks using NFT and AI. He became well known when his work first surfaced as part of the Young British Artists group in the late 80s.

The Petrichor exhibition at Kew will dominate Galleries 1-5 and

showcases new commissions alongside existing works,
draws on an array of evocative imagery from the natural world.
includes sculptural installations, using a variety of pioneering techniques to explore the relationship between the natural world, art history, and how representations of nature in art can impact the way in which we see the world around us.

You can also see more about the Petrichor exhibition on his website.

“Bringing Mat Collishaw’s innovative work to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art is hugely exciting, and this exhibition promises to be an evocative and wonderfully unique experience, unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the gallery before. Drawing inspiration from the natural world and the tradition of botanical art, Mat’s use of cutting-edge technology alongside the innovations of the past makes this exhibition a tantalising prospect for visitors to Kew this autumn.”
Maria Devaney, Galleries and Exhibition Leader at RBG Kew

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VIDEO: Seasons through a Sketchbook (2021) by Dianne Sutherland

23/10/2021

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Dianne Sutherland has published a video (see above) of the sketchbook she has been keeping through the seasons of 2021. It includes her completed Volume 1 (February - Septs,ber 2021) and the start of Volume 2 (mid September to date)

It's an absolute pleasure to view. I love the way she covers her double page spreads with studies of the whole and parts of her plants - with notations and colour samples she's used to make records for future reference.

Nice music by a chap called Gavin Sutherland as well - with Irmi Wolvin.

You can find a listing of the plants and all the Sketchbook Contents at the end of Volume 1 - at 3 minutes 12 seconds - which shows that the sketchbook was started in February and finished in the middle of September - prior to the start of Volume 2. Dianne is now up to week 34!

The Seasons through a Sketchbook is a joint project with Debbie Crawford, a botanical artist who lives in New Jersey.

There's an article about their joint project in the September 202 edition of 'Botanical Artist'.

More about Dianne Sutherland

Portfolio website: Dianne Sutherland Botanical Artist - where you can"
- see more of her artwork - in watercolour, graphite, sketchbooks and as commercial work for an impressive list of clients
- visit her shop
Tuition website: Botanical Art Online with Dianne Sutherland - which provides information about courses, workshops and online options
Blog: http://diannesutherland.blogspot.com - has some long and very informative and helpful posts going back a number of years.

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VIDEO: How to paint like a botanical artist

3/5/2021

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Lucy T Smith, one of the botanical artists at Kew Gardens, who both works with the botanists and also provides tuition in botanical illustration, has created a new video.

How to paint like a botanical artist is a simple introduction to the process of botanical painting using watercolour. It provides a step-by-step guide on how to paint the perfect Primula flower.

Find out what equipment you’ll need, how to highlight the important details of your flower, and tips for bringing a botanical painting to life.

The painting is on YouTube and lasts just under 30 minutes
RBG Kew has very helpfully supplied indicators as to what comes up when in the video.

Timecodes:

00:00 - 00:20 - Intro
00:20 - 00:31 - What you'll need
00:31 - 02:25 - Preparation
02:25 - 03:55 - Painting the outline
03:55 - 04:54 - Adding initial details
04:54 - 07:55 - Laying down washes
07:55 - 09:56 - Mixing & painting the yellows
09:56 - 11:07 - Mixing & adding the orange details
11:07 - 12:21 - Mixing & painting the green stigma
12:21 - 13:18 - Building the colour using a dry brush technique
13:18 - 14:16 - Adding in another wash
14:16 - 15:27 - Mixing & painting darker colours
15:27 - 18:29 - Adding fine details
18:29 - 18:51 - The finished painting
18:51 - 19:20 - Why botanical art is important
19:20 - 19:29 - Outro

More about Lucy T Smith, her artwork and videos

Lucy T Smith tlking about creating botanical art - including botanical watercolours - at the Worldwide Day of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens in May 2018

Lucy T Smith is a highly regarded botanical illustrator who has won a number of international awards.

She has been Freelance botanical illustrator at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for the last 20 years.
She also works on commission.

You can see. more of her videos in my blog posts as follows

VIDEO: Watercolour painting of a pomegranate by Lucy T Smith (January 2021)
Kew Video: What is Botanical Art? (April 2019)
Lucy Smith filmed by BBC News (2018)

You can see more of her artwork on the following websites:

website http://www.lucytsmith.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/palmsmithy/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Palmsmithy/
Kew Gardens - Meet Lucy T Smith, award-winning botanical illustrator | Kew - Lucy is one of a number of highly skilled freelance botanical illustrators working at Kew to produce line drawings for scientific plant publications.

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Exploring the Future of Botanical Image Making with Laurence Hill

24/1/2021

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Yesterday I sat down in front of my television - switched to YouTube, found the Linnean Society YouTube Channel - and watched an excellent video about "Exploring the Future of Botanical Image Making | Laurence Hill" - which you also can see below. It's

a slideshow video with LOTS of images and commentary by Laurence
followed by a discussion via Zoom with questions asked by those who watched it in real time.
one of their Lunchtime Lectures series

Below you can find out

why I'm highly recommending this video
where you can find out more about botanical photography
where you can find out more about the work and botanical images of Laurence Hill

Our digitally connected world is profoundly image led yet the practice of botanical image making, and types of image commissioned is little changed in several hundred years. Laurence Hill uses examples from the Fritillaria Icones Project, to look at structuring images for online use and wider uses within botanical science and science communication.

I've known Laurence for some time - having first met him at the RHS Show in 2014 where he was exhibiting his botanical photography about Fritillaria. He is a botanical researcher who happens to take photographs to reveal different ways of recording plants. (see below)

He is always pushing the boundaries and thinking about new ways in which botanical images can tell stories and be more accessible to help others tell their stories.

The reason I'm highly recommending this video to botanical artists is that some of the things Laurence has to say will, I know, stimulate some artists into rethinking what they are doing in terms of drawing / painting / displaying / sharing images of plants. It's that basic. Laurence challenges the traditional and asks us to consider ways in which the effort employed might be made informative and useful and tell stories and help people understand the world we live in rather better. I'd be very surprised if there was no change in practice as a result of all the botanical artists watching this video.

Note: One of the good things about the Linnean Society is they've been recording lectures via video for some time. I also recommend a meander through the content on their YouTube Channel

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More about botanical photography

You can read more about botanical photography on the following pages on my Botanical Art and Artists website

HISTORY: Famous Botanical Photographers
CONTEMPORARY: You can find Notable contemporary botanical photographers on my page about people working on other media - Botanical Printmakers, Photographers, Sculptors and Digital Illustrators

More about Laurence Hill

In simple terms I photograph plants and share them with others but by applying a set of carefully considered rules these photographs have a value which goes beyond this unassuming act. For more than a decade I have used digital technologies to explore new ways of recording and presenting botanical science and I am particularly interested in how a systematic photographic approach can produce new insights. Similarly how digital image ‘sets’ as voucher specimens will enhance and extend the value of research. We need to consider how we present, link and verify digital data and the Fritillaria Icones website is my contribution to this emerging field.

Laurence Hill with his intensely botanical and extremely well presented exhibit of Fritillaria affinis and a discussion and demonstration of plant variability relative to the agreed taxonomic description of one species of a wild plant

You can read more about Laurence Hill and his digital photography as follows

website: http://www.fritillariaicones.com/ - his photographic botanical database to help with the identification, research and conservation of Fritillaria. This is an Open Access web based resource, available to anyone anywhere regardless of means and without the need to travel to various libraries and herbaria.
Laurence Hill has won RHS Gold Medals for Botanical Photography as follows:
- 2014 - Kobaimo - Japanese Endemic Fritillaria - Reflections on the RHS Botanical Art Show Autumn 2014
- 2017 - Deconstructed Fritillaria (Click to download PDF (19.2MB) of images) - see RHS Awards for Botanical Photography 2017
- 2018- Species Boundaries: Fritillaria affinis - see RHS London Botanical Photography Show 2018 - Awards and Medal Winners

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RHS Interview: Billy Showell talking about plants and her botanical painting career

4/8/2020

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If you've not seen this video about Billy Showell talking about her career as a botanical painter posted by the Royal Horticultural Society on their Facebook Page do take a look below.

The link should work for you even if you're not a member of Facebook.

Billy Showell is

a botanical painter, and well known author and teacher of botanical painting.
the current Co-President of the Society of Botanical Artists

She talks in the video about about how she combines gardening and painting plants - and how her career progressed from

no garden and liking to paint plants
then full time painting plants and then teaching botanical painting online and in workshops around the world
to aiming to plant native plants in her new garden to help her focus on themes.

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Book Review: 'Roses' by Rosie Sanders

9/9/2019

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I was expecting Rosie Sanders's new book about Roses to be very good - but wasn't expecting to be quite so bowled over by her watercolour paintings of roses which fill the pages of this large book.

Her botanical paintings are as as large on the page as they are on the walls of the gallery in Chelsea where her latest solo exhibition will be opening on the day it is published.

Rosie has been drawing, sketching and painting roses for this book and her latest exhibition (see the end for details) for the last three years.

She grows all her own roses and knows them all by name - even if she sometimes forgets where she has put them - until they flower!

She's also been making notes about her roses on a regular basis, what they have been getting up to and what colours they are displaying. Many artists find writing about their subjects helps to fix their image in their brains - and Rosie seems to be no exception. The notes are divided between facsimiles of her handwritten notes and typed up versions of the same. I rather assume the latter are the ones which might just have rings from her coffee mug on them as she sits in her garden in the morning with her cup of coffee surveying what has been happening to her roses in the last day or so.

This approach to the text helps make this book feel a lot more personal to Rosie and I really like it. More of the individual seems to come to the fore. Rosie's writing is graphic and excellent and I personally found it very readable. I do wonder however whether reading handwriting might make this book a little bit more of a challenge for those who don't use English as their first language.

Red Sensation

Shades of Red

What I particularly like about this book is there as a much clearer sense of the process - which should particularly appeal to those botanical artists who like her paintings.

On some double page spreads we also have preliminary drawings and colour charts of the colours used in the painting - with colours randomly noted either next to the colour boxes or in the text. She also includes some fast watercolour sketches recording habit and colour notes.

This is a timelapse video of Rosie Sanders painting a rose in watercolour.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté's book of paintings about Les roses is the pre-eminent tour de force in the "books about roses by botanical artists" category of artists' botanical art books. His roses are perfection and I doubt anybody will ever better it in terms of portraying perfect specimens.

However in terms of painting roses in reality - I think Rosie's book will also be seen as a tour de force and a standard. She paints roses as we see them in the garden - some new and fresh with both buds and blooms - while others are fading and past their best, In effect she has created a florilegium of roses growing in her garden - and has painted some on more than one occasion - notably her one yellow rose 'Celebration'.

She seems to have a particular affinity with the back of a rose and what happens behind or underneath the petals of the rose in question. It suggests an artist in love with all stages of the life cycle and the multiplicity of colours and shades they can go through from first bud to last breath.

Book cover only has the title on the front cover on the paper slip cover

The Introduction to the book provides a history of the rose in in the history of ancient times, middle ages and more recent time - as a symbol, in art, in war, in religion, as an emblem of love. It also comments on the different types of rose and where they hail from. I found it one of those introductions which is so packed full of information that it's probably best read in small chunks.

However there is no obvious connection between the Introduction and the paintings. It's almost as if we have two books in one cover.

What's missing from the book - and I do think this is worth noting - is any sort of introduction to Rosie and why she likes painting roses and what her project comprises. Instead we find bits out as we read her notes - and I do very much recommend you read all the notes!

The book has an interesting and unique index in which every rose in the book is presented by a thumbnail. Below you can see two of the tree pages which form the index.

An Index by rose (and name and size) at the end of the book

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This is a woman who likes BIG projects and has a track record of pulling them off in spectacular fashion!

Notwithstanding the bits which don't quite work for me, I think this is an excellent book which will be much appreciated by all rose lovers - who will doubtless appreciate that many of the roses were sourced from David Austin.

I also expect that very many botanical artists will be buying this book in order to study Rosie's approach - which - in short - is grounded in much time spent in intense observation and an awful lot of effort in creating hundreds of studies, sketches and paintings - of which these are the ones which deserve a public stage.

The production qualities of this large book are also excellent. The photography of both drawings and paintings is top notch and the printing is superb with a very robust cover and binding. (For those interested in such things the reproduction was done by Rival Colour Ltd. - who are based in Greenwich - and the printing was done in China (as happens to most books these days) by 1010 Printing International Ltd and is a company associated with books which have won British Book Design & Production Awards.

ORDER THIS BOOK

Rosie Sanders' Roses: A celebration in botanical art from Amazon UK
Rosie Sanders' Roses: A Celebration of Botanical Art from Amazon.com

Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Batsford Ltd - an imprint of Pavilion Books
Publication date: 26 Sept. 2019 - the date her exhibition opens in Chelsea
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1849945527
ISBN-13: 978-1849945523
Product Dimensions: 24.5 x 31.1 cm
RRP: £30

In effect, the book is the same size and format as her last book Rosie Sanders' Flowers: A Celebration of Botanical Art

The dark side of the moon

About the author and artist - Rosie Sanders

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Facebook Live Video: Shevaun Doherty & Jess Shepherd talk paints, palettes and brushes

1/9/2018

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This is a novelty - the first Facebook Live Video I've ever seen of a live non-scripted conversation between two botanical artists talking about:

their preference for paints
which brushes they use
the palettes they use
their painting processes

You could NOT get two botanical artists who work more differently than Shevaun Doherty and Jess Shepherd! Which just goes to show "there is no one right way" to create botanical art.

I know these two really well - and this is really EXACTLY what both of them are like.
If you've ever fancied taking a workshop with either of them this is who they are and how they talk!

I arrived half way through so have posted it to my Facebook Page - and discovered that it converts to a video after the Facebook Live finishes. Then I can take the code for it and use it in the "embed code" module on Weebly.

So now I give you a Saturday afternoon chat about artist materials for botanical art.

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