Pine cone

This pine cone has been lying around the house gathering dust for ages, so I thought it was time I drew it. I don't know what species of tree it came from.

Pine cones, like pineapples, sunflowers, corn on the cob, and countless other natural objects, show fibonacci spirals in their structure. Its tricky to get it right, and I had to resort to putting little coloured stickers on the scales so I could follow the spirals round without getting confused.

Pedunculate Oak

 A couple of quick sketches of twiglets with developing acorns on the pedunculate oak (Quercus robur, also known as the English oak or common oak)

Another Nepenthes

I posted a pencil sketch of the pitcher plant that sits on my kitchen windowsill last year, but now I've had another go at it in coloured pencil.

We were at Hampton Court Flower Show a couple of weeks ago and saw some amazing pitcher plants on display, which reminded me of this article about the Giant Montane Pitcher which acquires its nutrients in an unusual way (unusual even for a carnivorous plant). Its well worth a read.

Enjoy!

An inspiring start

Its almost a month since I returned from Edinburgh, where I spent two fabulous weeks at the botanic gardens for the intensive teaching block of the first year of the diploma in botanical illustration.

Here's a small selection of the many photos that I took:

It was a lovely bunch of people, with fantastically talented tutors, in a beautiful place.

I learnt a lot.

I've been updating my course journal, and going through all the notes and photos that I took, and have made a start on the first couple of assignments (maybe more on that later...)

This wasn't my first visit to RBGEdinburgh - I've been a couple of times before - but this was the first time I've been in the summer, and it was glorious. Here are just a few of my favourite pics from the gardens:

I can't wait to go back again next year!

Tiny little pear

In early summer, some fruit trees naturally reduce their load during the 'June Drop' where some of the excess fruitlets are shed. This is our pear tree, just before it's June drop:

At the weekend I painted one of the little fruitlets.

Hopefully this year will be a good pear crop!

Daffodil and Diploma...

I've just finished off a study page of daffodil bits: whole plant, flower longitudinal dissection, pod, transverse section of pod, bulb and roots, and dissection of bulb. I love cutting plants up to see how they look inside.

Apologies, as ever, for the rubbishy photographs but I can't find a way of taking pictures of pencil work that looks decent. Here is a close up of the flower dissection:

In other news, I got an email this week to say I had been offered a place on the RBGE blended learning Diploma in Botanical Illustration. I'm more than a little bit terrified but also very very excited! We start with a two week intensive block of teaching at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh in June. I've been ordering paints from the materials list, booking trains and finding somewhere to stay in Edinburgh and I can't wait to get started.

Hopefully this will be my motivation to blog more regularly - I'll try and post about how the course is going, and what I'm working on. Exciting times! Stay tuned!

Tomato study

 

This is the picture I've been working on. The plant is done in graphite, the tomato dissections and flowers in watercolour, and there is also a cross section of the flower.

 

Hope you like it!

 

 

Where I work

I thought you might like to have a little peek at my drawing desk, and also a little preview of what I have been working on this week. I'll share that work with you in more detail later on.

My desk is in a lovely little cubby hole and my wonderful daylight lamp makes working in the evening and during winter much easier. What you can't see in this photo is the postcards which I have along the left hand side, showing inspiring pieces of botanical art. The most recent ones I have there are Rachel Peddder-Smith's Herbarium Specimen Painting.

Kenyan legume pod

Here is a quick sketch I did while travelling in Kenya over New Year. Its a pod from a tree that was growing in the grounds of the place we stayed near Mombasa.

It also had these lovely red and yellow flowers: 

A milestone in my botanical illustration journey

When a botanist discovers a new species of plant, they must publish a description in scientific literature.

Earlier this year I was asked by Alex Monro at the Natural History Museum to illustrate three new species of Pilea for a paper he was publishing describing these new species.

This paper has just been published in the journal Phytokeys and you can see my illustrations for the very first time in a real scientific journal! The full article can be found here.

I learned a huge amount doing these illustrations. I worked from dry herbarium specimens and used a dissecting microscope to see the smallest details. The flowers of these species are tiny - just a few mm across, and I had to boil the dried flowers in water so that they would open up so that I could see their structures.

These aren't the most obviously pretty plants, but seeing the microscopic features of a plant is always fascinating.

I'm looking forward to doing more illustrations in 2013, and will try and post as often as I can to share what I am working on.

Happy New Year!