Niki Simpson and Juliet Williamson win Jill Smythies Award 2018

Every year the The Jill Smythies Award is awarded to one or more botanical illustrators - for outstanding botancal illustrations in publications.

Last week, on 24th May 2018, the Annual Anniversary Meeting of the Linnean Society started with the presentation of annual medals, recognising outstanding contributions to the Natural Sciences by a variety of different people.

The Jill Smythies Award was founded in 1988 and awards a prize of £1000 to a botanical artist for outstanding illustrations.

I've now created a page about the The Jill Smythies Award which lists the people who have received the award to date and how nominations are made. The list includes some famous names in the world of contemporary botanical art have received the award plus a lot of very experienced botanical illustrators who work in Botanic Gardens across the world.  It finishes with a summary biography of Jill Smythies.

I've checked and you don't have to be a fellow to nominate somebody for the Award!
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Niki Simpson receive her Jill Smythies Award

Niki Simpson

Juliet Williamson

Juliet Williamson receiving her Jill Smythies Award

​The Jill Smythies Award 2018
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For 2018, the Council agreed to make two awards: to 

• Niki Simpson - who has developed a technique for digital botanical images similar to conventional botanical illustration plates.
• Juliet Williamson - who illustrated The Kew Plant Glossary: An Illustrated Dictionary of Plant Identification Terms - which contains 700 of her line drawings.

Juliet seems to be quite a private person and there's very little about her online other. However my 'sources' say she's been producing botanical illustrations for Kew for years - dating back to 2002. ​(However I'm very happy to correct any inaccuracies).

Niki is pretty well known within the botanical illustration community for being the first person to recreate botanical illustration using digital imaging technology and software.

Niki with a display of her digital botanical illustrations for the viewing by the Fellows of the Linnean Society. Photo copyright Niki Simpson.

The aim is for scientific, reference-standard images. Each composite illustration is a comprehensive plant portrait of a single taxon or plant species, showing the diagnostic and, where space allows, the characteristic features of that plant. All parts and dissections are shown to scale by a metric scale bar, and where appropriate, the notable parts are colour referenced. In addition, each illustration contains a time bar showing the month/s of flowering, a title block and symbols indicating the plant's life form and sexual arrangement.
Visual Botany - Artist Statement

I've previously featured Niki's work on my page about Artists using Other Media which highlights her exhibition catalogue Niki Simpson: Digital Diversity | Exhibition Catalogue on Issuu. I spent a lovely afternoon in the Linnean Society when her book was published - looking at the way she manages to develop her plates. - which is a complex process.

Finally - the medallists from all the different categories have a group photo - and this is the one for 2018.

The Linnean Society Medallists 2018 (24 May 2018)