I am very conscious of the fact that all of my drawings take a very long time to complete, due to the highly detailed nature of them, and that my output of work does need to increase somewhat, if I am to stay on track with my project. I have therefore decided that my first drawing from my ‘official’ list, will be the Catacol Whitbeam or Sorbus Pseudomeinichii. I am drawing the Whitebeam from this photo of a herbarium specimen from the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, which was a bit of a compromise, as I had really wanted to illustrate it with watercolour rather than pen and ink, as I know there is a live specimen in Edinburgh that I could go and see and take photos to illustrate from. Sadly, travelling up to Edinburgh to take photos of one tree wasn’t at all practical for me, and I have had to settle for pen and ink (which I am more confident in anyway) for speed and convenience.
I have chosen to draw the Whitebeam first as a bit of a tactical move – drawing the Whitebeam allows me to then start the activism side of the project – reaching out to environmental campaigners, organisations etc to start a rewinding campaign – beginning in the UK and hopefully expanding outwards. The Catacol Whitebeam is the UK‘s most endangered plant, and brings the focus of my project (for the people I will be contacting) onto UK rewilding.
The above image shows my pencil drawing of the Whitebeam specimen. This was a real learning process, as for this drawing, I decided to try tracing my drawing from a sketchbook page, onto the watercolour paper. However, it didn’t work out at all – the tracings were far too faint to even see, and were just creating imprints on the paper, which I was concerned would ruin the accuracy of the end illustration, as the ink might just fill the imprints. I therefore decided to just use my initial pencil drawing for the basis of my drawing, which does mean that the paper is inconsistent, unfortunately, but the drawing took so long to complete, I knew I wouldn’t have time (or frankly the patience) to re-draw it, and so I have settled to continue with it for the time being.
As I want to share my project with a large audience and for it to go towards building public awareness of the plight of plants globally (but for the rewilding campaign, UK especially), I have stated to create some posts on social media – including this Timelapse video of me outlining the drawing, with a section of the speech that Sir David Attenborough made at COP26 last week (link: https://youtube.com/shorts/A3QRAm560mc?feature=share ).
I really enjoy the format of the Timelapse, as it is engaging (especially in short bursts, as this is), and allows the viewer to feel connected to the process of creating the illustration – as they are able to see it happening in front of them. The only reservation I have, is whether it places too much focus on the process of the drawing and the drawing itself, rather than on the plant – which is, after all, the main focus of my project. This is something I will investigate further, but for the moment, I am happy with it.
Reference Image Source: RBGE. (2018) Royal botanic Gardens Edinburgh Herbarium Catalogue. Available at: https://data.rbge.org.uk/search/herbarium/?cfg=fulldetails.cfg&specimen_num=637456 (accessed: 11 November 2021)
