Botanical illustration

[Neil Bromhall]

I've always enjoyed art as a hobby and so I've joined a botanical illustration course.
We have a very talented teacher.
It's been fascinating seeing the structure of plants when trying to paint them.
Are any of you buddy artists? If so maybe you'd like to post some of your work.
Let me know and we can make a separate section on the forum.

I've discovered that I'm more colour blind than I thought I was. It's therefore a good thing I just want to keep my botanical illustrations as a hobby.
There are some really brilliant artists out there. Digger and Sue did you see some of the fabulous artwork at the Chelsea Flower Show last year? They were stunning.

[digger]

Hi Neil, Yes I got to see the artists work at Chelsea it was marvelous stuff. I am no good at all trying to draw anything,unless it's a third angle projection on an engineering drawing,:-) and I gave that up some years ago. Good luck Neil i hope you enjoy your artists course.

[sue1002]

I have to admit that I was taking more notice of the flowers and gardens and didn't notice the artwork - shame on me.

[digger]

The best piece of artwork that i saw on the day was,near to the entrance. Someone had made a labrador dog from chicken wire and painted it black. It was very good and looked like my Sally,but it was expensive to buy it.

[Paul Narramore]

Digger

Were you a draughtsman? Me too. LCpl Royal Engineers.:D plus six years in civvy street.

[digger]

Hi Paul, Yes I started out with the intention of being a millwright, I got inducted into the drawing side, fortuneatly i got a placement overseas in Saudi Arabia, so I spent a large chunk of my late teenage years in the alchohol free middle east, (no one told me I would never be able to drink), when I got back to the UK, my employers put me straight back to school where I studied cad cam, after that I went into development work with Jet engines and back to school to study cnc programming and industrial robotics, That lead to me working at the AWE in aldermaston, which then led onto turbine development work for an American company, I was lucky and travelled quite a lot India,Switzerland, Germany I was happy at work when I was up the Punjab I met some lovely people who are still friends today. Anyway back in Blighty the accident happened whilst on development of the (can't say) engine , which led to my early retirement. Never ever go near the business end of a turbine, whilst some plonker switches it on!!!

[Neil Bromhall]

Ouch!
Fortunately my botanical art classes are not so dangerous

[Miranda]

...'the business end of a turbine' - that sounds nasty, digger! I might add, don't land face down in a pile of rubble when you're out cycling! That hurts too.

As for botanical illustration, a few years ago the RHS ran a series where they put illustrations from the Lindley library in the magazine and I spent many happy hours gazing at the details of these beautiful pictures and thinking about who might have painted them. One of the things they said in the magaxine is that the best way to capture a flower's colour is with water colours - photography generally doesn't quite get it right. I've found this with the pictures I've taken myself - sometimes it works really well, but at others it isn't right at all. I guess that's part of the draw that keeps some people taking photos, you have to keep trying to get it right. When you do, it feels really good.

[digger]

Some of the botanical illustrations in water colours are really beautiful, I am in awe of people who can draw and paint such beautiful images, I am hopeless, matchstick men is about my limit

[digger]

[quote=Miranda;5123]...'the business end of a turbine' - that sounds nasty, digger! I might add, don't land face down in a pile of rubble when you're out cycling! That hurts too. yes it did kind of spoil my day !:)

[Neil Bromhall]

Al though this is not a botanical illustration I thought you might like to see an example of symetry in plants. This is known as the Fibonacci series as worked out by Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci 1170 - 1250
1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 etc
This sequence is known as the Fibonacci series, and is well known in mathematics. Each number is the sum of the previous two. The ratio of successive pairs tends to the so-called golden section
Plants do not know about this - they just grow in the most efficient ways. Many plants show the Fibonacci numbers in the arrangement of the leaves around the stem. Some pine cones and fir cones also show the numbers, as do daisies and sunflowers.
Why do these arrangements occur in nature? In the case of leaf arrangement, or phyllotaxis, some of the cases may be related to maximizing the space for each leaf, or the average amount of light falling on each one. Even a tiny advantage would come to dominate, over many generations. In the case of close-packed leaves in cabbages and succulents the correct arrangement may be crucial for availability of space.
http://www.branta.connectfree.co.uk/fibonacci.htm
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Fibonacci.html

[digger]

That's really interesting Neil, I had not even considered the arrangement of growth in this way.

[Miranda]

Ah yes, the Fibonacci sequence, they really do your head in. We looked at some of these a while back and it really made me wish I'd been taught more maths and physics as a child. Fascinating stuff. You can see the pattern in so many places - strawberries are good ones to peer at. Anything naturally forming that has spirals will do.