RBGE Certificate of Botanical Illustration - end of Week 1

Well, where has this last week gone?  I arrived in Edinburgh last Saturday, feeling some trepidation but also excitement as I made my way to the family I am staying with.

Sunday gave me the chance to explore some of the centre of Edinburgh, but inevitably I made my way to the Royal Botanic Gardens, not able to wait any longer and wanting to see where I would be spending the next two weeks painting / studying. 

I was definately not disappointed as I walked through the gardens.  I was immediately drawn to the glasshouses that have evolved over several eras.  It was like walking into a sweetshop with so many beautiful botanical specimens.  My favourite has to be the glasshouse where the Waterlillies were - spectacular is not the word !

Back to the main reason for coming here, the Certificate in Botanical Illustration.  I have been wanting to return more to botanical illustration for a long time, after all that is the area of art that I started painting in many years ago.  In recent years I have been concentrating more on general natural history illustration and print-making. 

It can be difficult as an artist with some experience to find a suitable course to re-tune our skills.  We should not sit back and just presume we can paint and will carry on doing so at the same level of quality.  I was drawn to the RBGE because of my previous working background in ecology and botany and wanted a botanical illsutration course with an organisation where this was their main working ethos.  The certificate course has enabled me to dip my toe in the water gradually, and I must admit now my toe wants to go deeper and I would love to study for the RBGE Diploma.

The course has taken us back to basics and the students include individuals at all levels.  Exercises have included creating simple line drawings, measuring plant specimens accurately, using the tracing process, studying tone and leading onto the use of paint colours.

Pear tonal study - graphite pencil

Pear tonal study - monochrome paint

Pear - painted study

Colour tests for Pear study

We have been using a limited palette of Winsor and Newton watercolour paints - Perm. Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Rose, Indigo, French Ultramarine, Winsor Lemon and New Gamboge.  Using a palette such as this certainly makes you realise how many additional colours and tones can be created with these few initial paints.

All of the exercises are leading to us creating a plant portrait using all of the methods we have learnt so far and this will take most of next week to complete.  As well as that we have to compile a portfolio as we progress through the course and both of these are assessed to give us our final grade.

Hopefully there will be sometime this weekend to explore more of Edinburgh !



Lino-prints and then off to Edinburgh !

This time last week I was busy setting up for the second lino-print workshop for the Society of Floral Painters.  I have now tutored the two workshops and the interest seems to be going from strength to strength, with a third one having been booked for 2013 !

As usual we had great fun and most of the students had come to the first one, so they were coming with new ideas and were more confident (at least that is what I would hope !)  I also had several new students, who were soon less tense and getting used to this new medium for them.

More of the workshop images can be seen on the SFP blog: http://society-of-floral-painters.blogspot.co.uk/

My demonstration piece was a multi-layered lino-cut which I had been working on for a while.  With the help of a factsheet from the Printmaker Laura Boswell, http://www.lauraboswell.co.uk/ , I made a form of registration device to ensure that each layer was aligned with the one before.  I have only taken two prints from the cuts at the moment, as I want to improve an area of the design so that it shows up a bit more (the egg case cluster in the corner).

Printing the first layer using the registration device

The original design incorporating seaweed, mussel shell, mermaid's purse, egg case cluster and

wire- weed

The final lino-cut, there were three in total

I will have to return to this lino-cut design at a later date, as tomorrow I am off to Edinburgh and from next Monday I will be taking part in the Certificate in Botanical Illustration Course at the Royal Botanic Gardens.  I am very excited and nervous at the same time.  The course is for two weeks in total and I imagine it will be pretty intense.  One thing I am really looking forward to is to have two weeks of a complete focus on botanical art and hopefully 're-tune' my botanical illustration skills.  After all, that is where my passion in portraying the natural world began many years ago !

Happy painting and I will try and post whilst I am up in Edinburgh :)



Seashore Life Illustration Project with the Hants & IOW Wildlife Trust

There is a new 'page' that has been added to this blog which will show artwork that I am producing for the Marine Team at the Hampshire and IOW Wildlife Trust.

The project will be ongoing and will run alongside my other artwork and teaching committments, but it will be really exciting to be involved in another project with the Trust, after the success of the Swanwick Lakes Artist in Residence Project in 2010-2011.

Please click on the page tab above for further information about the project and to view the artwork being produced.

Happy Painting !

More eggs - and egg cases !

The theme of eggs from my last posting seems to be continuing, at least for this one anyway !

My friend Jill, gave me some eggs from her family chickens and I just loved the subtle change of colours between the 'peachy' coloured eggs, and I thought the white one would be a challenge to paint.

I used Daniel Smith watercolours and several of the colours that I have granulate, which in some cases does help to portray the texture and tone.  There was quite a bit of  'wet-in-wet' in this painting and at times I wasn't quite sure whether it was going to work.

Eggs from Aurora, Twinkle and Star

Now for more eggs, or rather egg cases !  I hope to be working on some illustrations for the Hants and IOW Wildlife Trust Marine Team, for them to use for educational resources.  So I took the plunge this week and started the first painting.  I wanted to complete one for them to review, before I go full steam ahead with the others.

The egg cases are from species such as Skate, Ray and Dogfish, and I had previously found them along the strandline after high tide.  The have always fascinated me and I love their 'group' name of 'Mermaids Purses'.

Mermaid's Purses

I am reading a really good book at the moment, and it will appeal to those of you who are fans of the nature-writing genre.  Strands - A Year of Discoveries on the Beach is written by Jean Sprackland.  I first came across the book when excerpts from it were being read on BBC Radio 4. 

It says, This is the ultimate beachcomber's book.  A series of meditations prompted by walking on the wild esturial beaches of Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool, Strands is a book about what is lost and buried then discovered, about all the things you find on a beach, dead or alive, about flotsam and jetsam, about mutability and transformation - about sea-change.

In a chapter dedicated to Mermaid's Purses, the author tells us many things about these strange, almost mystical objects and goes on to say that her daughter, when young, used to collect them and use them as purses for small coins - the innocence of childhood ! 

Away from eggs and egg cases now.  I have always wanted to spend more time using colour pencils, so one morning everything else was cast aside and I sat down with my Ann Swan book (Botanical Painting with Coloured Pencils), and some luscious dark cherries that I had bought from the supermarket.

There was a good exercise in the book using cherries of a similar colour, so off I went.  I had most of the colours she had suggested, so that was a bonus.  What I did love was how the picture gradually emerged to look like glossy spheres of juicy cherries, in a different way to how a picture evolves with watercolour.  I was pleased with the result, but a further study of a single grape was not fit to be made public !

Off to one of my favourite counties this week - Dorset, for a few days of print-making at a friend's house :)

Happy Painting !



The calm before the storm - Wales and beyond

It was almost hard to believe watching the news reports over the last week, that the west coast of Wales had taken such a battering in the recent storms compared to when we were there a few weeks ago, in such fine weather.  Our thoughts have been with those people who have suffered loss and damage to their homes.

Our time in Pembrokeshire seems as though it all happened ages ago.  The good sunny weather really came on the 21st May (our 1st wedding anniversary), when we spent the day on Marloes Sands.  I am no landscape artist, but I managed a sketch of the view from where we had based ourselves.

On the 22nd we ventured to Skomer, an island I had always dreamed of going to.  I really was quite emotional as we climbed the steep steps from the landing area.  We were just greeted my numerous Puffins - on the sea and some in burrows right next to where we were walking.

We spent two days on the island and stayed in the converted farm buildings in the centre.  The sun continued to shine with occasional sea mist.  Despite being only 1 mile off shore, the temperature was cooler than the mainland so fleeces were required.

The landscape on the island is gently undulating and most of it was covered in Bluebells, with large areas of Red Campion and also Sea Campion nearer the cliff edges.

During the two days we took different routes around the island to ensure that we covered as much of it as we could.  Even then, there were still areas that we did not spend enough time at.

The photo opportunities were fantastic and we took over 300 photos!  The final selection of the best shots was wittled down to 92, which included everything, not just the Puffins!

We were also lucky enough to see a Little Owl whilst we were out walking.  There are several pairs nesting on the island.



Late at night Manx Shearwaters come back to the island after being out at sea all day.  They come back when it is as dark as possible to avoid being predated by Gulls. 

They are strange birds, with their feet far back under their body, which makes it difficult for them to walk on land.  Therefore they try to land as near to their burrows as they can.

We ventured out near midnight and eventually we heard eery calls, that were between a wail and blood curdling cry.  Apparently many many years ago, people living near the coast used to hear their calls and think that it was the restless souls of dead sailors calling in the night!

We then heard gentle thuds on the ground near where we were walking and realised that it was the birds landing.  To avoid scaring the birds we only occasionally put on our head torches, but it was truly an amazing sight, with thousands of these birds flying onto the island.

The next day you would often see the remains of unlucky birds that had been caught by gulls.

After our wonderful trip to such a beautiful area of the country it was back home.  As I am taking the summer off to concentrate on my artwork, I was quite excited as I have so many painting ideas buzzing around in my head.

One of the first things that I concentrated on when we got back was to carry out a review of the watercolours I use.  I particularly wanted to concentrate on the transparency of the colours I use and their lightfastness.  This was spurred on by reading a blog article from Vicki Lee Johnston, a talented botanical artist based in Australia.  http://vickileejohnston.blogspot.co.uk/2012_05_01_archive.html

So I have now got 2 palettes/paint tins on the go, with transparent colours in one and then semi-transparent colours and opaque colours in another.  I will write more about these palettes in a later posting.

The garden that we have created is starting to look brilliant with an array of flowers coming into bloom.  Sadly, as I speak a lot of these have been battered by the recent strong winds and heavy rain.  Despite this I managed to get a picture of our Passion Flower.  When I bought it, it was a pewny little specimen and now it is flourishing.

As for artwork, I have just completed a commission for a painting of some seagulls eggs.  I really enjoyed painting this and used gouache.  The client was very pleased with the finished piece, so now on to the next one!



Happy painting !

Latest sketches & Early Purple Orchid - Devon

Just a quick blog posting before we head to Skomer this morning.

These sketches were completed in Devon last week and in addition there are some images of an Early Purple Orchid painting that I have started and will finish when I get home.

Primrose

Wisteria stems

Early Purple Orchid painting - in progress

A trip in Timothy, Devon Hedgebanks and Twisted Sweet Chestnuts

Blog post written on 16th May:

Well, after an abscence I finally have some worthy sketches to post on the blog.  Painting has been hard to establish over the coming weeks, but finally now I am in wonderful Devon, new inspiration has given me a great kick-start.

We are staying on a friend's farm for a week and it is the midst of the Devon countryside surrounded by glorious hedgebanks that are starting to be swathed in wild flowers - more of those later.

The first sketch that I completed was of a Marsh marigold that was growing by the edge of the river.  I love the venation pattern on the leaves but wasn't brave enough to draw a large leaf.

The sketchbook I am using is a 'Moleskin' watercolour journal, with slightly off-white paper with a very slight texture, that I wouldn't quite call cold-pressed.  I had always thought that there was some 'snobbery' surrounding this make of journal, but I can now see their appeal. 
The paper is similar in colour to Fabriano Artistico natural white, which means that for reference purposes I do not need to make many alterations in terms of paint colours.  It also takes a certain amount of moisture which is great for using wet in to wet, to lay down initial washes of colour.

We ventured out this morning with our friends to visit a beautiful estate near Collumpton that is being restored.  The parkland is stunning and there is a line of Sweet chestnut trees that used to line the original driveway many, many years ago.  At a guess the trees must be nearing 300 years old and virtually all of them are still in full growth.  There are many cracks and fissures in the trunks and the varying patterns of the bark twisting up through the trees is amazing.  My mind is buzzing with ideas for paintings !  Some images of the trees are below:

 

   

We visited a local village pub for lunch and my journey was in an Austin 7 that is 83 years old!  My solid body shape took up rather a lot of room and I hung onto the passenger door in the hope that I wouldn't fall out !  The car is called 'Timothy' and is looked upon rather affectionately.  As the journey back to the farm was up some rather steep hills I declined the journey as there was the risk that I and the car wouldn't make it !!

The wild flowers in the hedgerows and banks seem a bit behind down here compared to in Hampshire.  Saying that though, there were swathes of Early Purple orchids in the hedgerow verges today, seen as we whizzed past them in Timothy.

Nearer to the farm the flowers are starting to open and the narrow lanes and steep banks provide a wonderful micro-climate for these plants to grow in, along with ferns, mosses, lichens and later in the year fungi.

Spot the plants and flowers in the montage below:

More sketches to complete tomorrow, then off to Pembrokeshire at the end of the week to celebrate our first year of marriage and then another special visit to tick off of my 'wish-list' - a two day trip to the island of Skomer to photograph Puffins and hopefully do some more sketching.  Cheerio for now!