Revisiting botanical illustration for beginners: Bramble,…

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When I went out blackberry picking this year, it reminded me of a course I did many years ago. Botanical illustration. And one of the things I remember from the course is that botanical illustration isn’t just a flower painting. So let’s explore what I actually mean by this. Here’s what I managed to find and bring back with me to use as the subject of this painting, but I think I’m going to need a little bit of help here. Let’s have a look at a few of the books I’ve got on the shelf. Hi, I’m Diane, by the way. and I like to try out different styles and techniques in my journals and sketchbooks. I’m really not sure how he ended up with some of these books, but here’s a few that might help. Here’s the first book I’m going to use. It’s an illustrated book of wildflowers. And here’s another one. Do you remember this book, The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady It was published in the late 1970s, and it was a replica of her original diary. It inspired me to become interested in nature, and try and make some of my own paintings. I also like to look on Pinterest. I liked the page layout of this particular painting. this isn’t a blackberry, but I thought I would use it as inspiration for the same layout. I’ll explain more about how I’m going to use these references when I get to the drawing stage. Now that I’ve got some idea of what I’d like to paint, I need to think about materials. I’ve got a selection of watercolours that I haven’t used for a while, and some smooth, hot pressed watercolour paper. This is one of the things that I remember from doing the course is to do swatches of colours. And this really helps. Before you do the painting. One of the colours I’ve mostly struggled to mix is green. But I found a solution to this, and that is to take all the paints that I have, mix them together and swatch them. This is actually quite an enjoyable part of the process, The first colour I’m going to swatch is permanent sap green. I’m going to swatch it at the top. So I can see the difference between already mixed colour. And one is that I’m going to mix myself using yellows and blues. It’s a good idea to label the swatches as soon as you’ve made them. The blue that I’m going to use for my first series of swatches is cobalt blue, and I’m going to try it with different yellows. I love the names of the colours and just reading them out Cadmium yellow. Turners yellow. Lemon yellow. Raw Sienna. and Quinacridone Gold. Although that last name was quite difficult to pronounce. The idea is to mix each of these yellows with the blue, but in different amounts. So you start off with more blue than yellow, and then keep adding the yellow until you get a swatch of colours, and then I label it underneath. It’s not an exact science. It gives you an idea of the colours that you can mix. You can see how different the greens are when mixed with different yellows, and also how different it is to the already mixed green at the top. It helps to have the actual plan so that you can match the colours with your swatches. However, it goes without saying that I wouldn’t pick a rare or endangered species for this. This is a common bramble found in many places along footpaths, in fact, it’s cut down because it restricts access. I kept swatching the colours until I was happy with the match. And I also swatched colours for the fruit. I used Violet, Carmine and Cadmium Red. I also use these colours to paint the flowers. And I mixed up some lovely reds to match the berries. These are the final colours that I decided to use. The reference material had swatches on the final illustration, and I really like the idea of this type of layout where you show which colours you’ve used to create the painting. you’ll notice that I only used one type of blue, and that’s because the range of blues I had in my watercolour class was limited. But I did decide in the end to use Prussian Blue to get that darker tone. I also liked the fact that the notes were added around the painting, I usually write my notes in black, but I liked the idea of having a sepia brown colour for the notes. I use my reference material as inspiration and try not to copy it exactly, In the end, I used Prussian Blue and Quinacridone Gold for the leaves because this seemed to be the best match. But I did also use the Cobalt Blue in places. The Prussian Blue gave me this lovely dark green. it’s also interesting to see how the colours change when they dry. I love experimenting with colour and doing swatches. In fact, sometimes I’ve sat down and swatched paint and not actually created an illustration I also mixed the Prussian Blue with the red that I chosen, and this gave a lovely dark purple tone. The other reference material, apart from Pinterest, was a book that was published in the late 1970s, and it’s called Wildflowers and has these beautiful illustrations. The illustrator had painted three berries, and I noticed that that’s how they grew on the plant. One of the things for botanical illustration is to help with identification, the way that the plant is illustrated is to show it in all stages as At certain times of year the plant will have the flowers, and then later on they’ll produce their seeds or berries. It’s very rare to see them at the same time on the plant. But in a botanical illustration you would illustrate both the berries and the flowers because it’s all part of identification. I followed the format of having the three berries together on a branch, because that’s how they seem to grow. The fruit is really easy to draw. Actually. It’s just a circle with leaves at the bottom And then it’s a case of drawing smaller circles within the larger circle. In the course. We did the pencil drawing first on a separate sheet of paper, and then transferred it to the watercolour paper. But I decided to draw straight onto the watercolour paper. I then lifted off the pencil marks with a putty eraser. And now, after all that preliminary work, it’s time to do the painting. And it was much easier knowing which colours I was going to use, and meant that I could just add it to the drawing. I found this method of working much more enjoyable than trying to work it out. As you go along with the painting, This is something that I learned from doing this course, and I try and apply it within other paintings as well. I know it seems like a very long winded process, but each part of the process is really enjoyable. In fact, being a botanical illustrator is a very skilled job and obviously I’m not a professional. The other thing I like about it is that it combines a science with the creativity of being an illustrator. I like the two, disciplines coming together in that way. What I found is using this discipline to create a watercolour has really helped me. because there’s a structure in how you create the painting. It makes it much more enjoyable rather than floundering around trying to work out what to do. I’ve changed the colour at the top of the berry because this is how it looked on the plant, and I like how it graduated from the red to the purple at the top. because this is a transparent medium. You can’t go over the top with more paint and cover it up, so it’s less forgiving if you make any mistakes. I make a mistake later on in this painting and you’ll see what I mean. But I think there’s many ways of achieving the same thing. Sometimes these little tips can be building blocks that we can use, and it’s definitely worth trying them out. I spent an afternoon painting this I really enjoyed it as it took me away from all the worries and stresses of life. This is one of the reasons that I love to draw and paint. I find it’s a time when I can really get away from everything and just focus and concentrate on the painting. To finish the drawing of the berries. I added detail with a really fine brush. don’t know what they’re called, but they’re all things that stick out from the side of the fruit. And I tried to suggest them with the fine brush. I added in the darker tones with Prussian blue violet and come in red. The other thing to mention about a botanical illustration is that you’re meant to reflect the size of the actual plant. So here I’m trying to draw the leaves at 100% of their size. I went in with the green watercolour to start to paint the leaf, and then realised I had made a mistake. I hadn’t drawn in the flowers and I should have left that part white. You will notice, though, that when I do the flowers, I actually make them too big. And I’ve made them twice the size that they would be on the plant. but I decided to do that because it seemed to fit into that space better if I made them a bit bigger. But as I said, When you’re doing a botanical illustration, you’re meant to keep the proportions correct. I drew in the shape the flowers, and I used my book as a reference because I didn’t have the actual flower to look at. the watercolour is transparent and you can’t go over the top with another colour because it still shows through if you use gouache or a different medium that’s opaque, then this isn’t really a problem. This is one of the reasons that I find watercolour quite a difficult medium to use, because you have to know in advance which areas you want to leave as the white paper. I decided just to continue and leave that darker tone underneath. And I don’t think it’s something that you notice in the end. The actual flowers on a blackberry are pink and white, but I thought it would be easier to paint a pink flower rather than a white one because the background is white. I noticed that in the reference book, the artist had painted the white flower in front of the leaf, and that solves the problem of painting white onto white paper. And this is a little tip if you do want to paint something white is to make the background darker. In contrast. I also added in some birds just to show what the flower looks like before it opens. You will see that on the leaf at the bottom that I added in too much water and that’s why you’ve got that texture on it. This is known as a watercolour bloom, And you’re meant to avoid this by not having too much water on your brush. At this stage, I wasn’t happy with how the leaves were turning out. I was happy with the colour because I already worked that out, but the tone of the leaf as it sits underneath the flower wasn’t really working. I decided to leave it and move on to the notes I was going to do around the side of the painting. I found some information about the bramble and added it at the side. I also made a note that the flowers were shown at twice the real size. And then I added information about the fruits and the time of year that you can see. This plant. One of the reasons I struggled with painting the leaf was because when I looked at the plant, the veins in the leaf looked lighter than the surrounding area, but on the reference material, The veins were painted in a darker tone, so I wasn’t sure whether to paint the leaf as I saw it on the plant, or to use the reference material. It’s much easier to paint the veins on the leaf as a darker tone. rather than leaving them as white against a dark background. But this is something that I learned as I went along When I use books and pictures to help me, I’m not copying them exactly, but I am using them for hints of how to tackle the subject because they’ve already worked out. I struggle to paint the leaves in watercolour as once it’s on the page, there’s no correcting it. when I’m struggling with the painting, I like to leave it and then go back to it the next day. And when I came back to this the next day, I thought to myself, why am I struggling just to use watercolour? Watercolour purists would never use gouache on top. they certainly wouldn’t add highlights in white, This is one of the reasons I prefer to use mixed media. for me, it’s more of an experiment to see what the end result can be. And I learn from each painting that I do. In the end, I decided to add in red and white highlights on the leaves just to differentiate them from each other.

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