It was always my plan to learn watercolour botanical illustration in addition to pen and ink illustration – as it has the advantage of conveying the living majesty and details of a plant – for example, it’s colours and small anatomical details that get lost in a herbarium specimen.
In order to do this, I am using the Beginner’s Guide to Botanical Flower Painting by Michael Lakin, as a starting point for how to build up the colours (rather than launching in with vibrant ones), how to draw flowers from sight accurately etc. I have also ordered a range of other books via Interlibrary Loans, but as of yet, none have come in.
As a reference image for my learning watercolour botanical illustration, I have chosen this image of a cactus flower that I took when I visited Kew in September. Unfortunately, as with my first pen and ink drawing, I forgot to capture the name of the cactus in particular – however, it is a good plant to practice on – particularly due to the variety of textures and colours (particularly the whites) visible.
For this drawing, I haven’t attempted to draw to scale – as I have no way of measuring the original size of the flower – therefore I focussed purely on the accuracy of my drawing instead – attempting to capture every detail of importance (of the flower only) – no matter how small. I have since learnt (from watching the start of this video by Lucy Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=3No8SaxkxL8 ), that drawing the outline directly onto the paper is not the best idea – as this means that you will be left the pencil outline once paint is applied. It is instead a much better idea to do your drawing on a different piece of paper, trace that onto the watercolour paper, and then carefully outline your drawing with a very small amount of dilute paint oil a very fine brush, removing the pencil outlines as you do so, so that no pencil lines remain.
I then (following the guidance of the book) started to mix the colours that I would need – starting with the outer petals. This meant finding a base colour (which, fortunately for me was the same shade of Crimson Hue that I had in my watercolour palette), and then diluting it several times over, to provide the dilute paint from which to build the layers of colour up from.
Finally I was able to start painting – which first involved glazing each individual section and petal with clean water – thus creating a kind of barrier for the paint (when applied) to sit within, and hopefully to prevent bleeding of colours from one area to another, which would obviously ruin the accuracy of the image. The following images show the process of my adding and building the colour:
The final image shows the stage of the painting which I am currently at – trying to build shadow, texture and structure through the application of steadily darker hues. This is also now where I am finding the short-comings of the brushes that I have currently – they are not nearly fine enough to allow me to create the level of detail needed in the illustration, and really, to continue, I will need to purchase some more, much smaller ones. In spite of this, however, I am pleased with the progress that I have made so far – although it is far from perfect, it is much more detailed than anything I have painted before and much more accurate too.
