I think you could say that, with this really rather surprising addition, this imaginative series has come of age. Botanical illustration isn’t normally regarded as something for the beginner, and yet these books, with their pre-printed tracings, are surely firmly in that camp. Aren’t they? And yet this works, completely. The answer, I think is that there’s a degree of flexibility in the format and here it bridges the gap between the beginner and the intermediate painter and makes accessible something that can be tricky to get started with.
Once again, by freeing you from the problem of getting the draughtsmanship right in the first place, Michael Lakin is able to concentrate on demonstrating the use of brushwork, colour and shading for producing detailed flower portraits. There’s still a lot to learn, of course, and six demonstrations, detailed as they are, won’t teach you everything you need to know, but by the end you’ll be able to decide whether it’s worth progressing and buying one of the many larger books on the subject.
Author: Michael Lakin, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Search Press, Series: Ready To Paint, Subject: Botanical Illustration, Subject: Flowers
The bulk of this book is devoted to that peculiarly American phenomenon, the floral. This is a formalised still life of flowers, almost always with a cut-glass vase and often also a lace table cloth. It’s a style of painting I suspect you either love or loathe, although I also suspect that, in the right market, they’d be highly saleable. As a bit of variety, this also includes some fruit, which does tend to push it into the category of still life, rather than the purely floral.
It’s not really possible to recommend this as a flower painting book because it’s so specialised, but the demonstrations are well done and contain much useful and practical advice, particularly on glazing. If this is a style you think you might like to explore, then it’s a must. Otherwise, there is useful information to be gleaned, but you might find the pickings rather lean for the price.
North Light
Author: Arleta Peach, Medium: Oil, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Flowers, Subject: Fruit & Vegetables
My goodness, this is a bit specialised, isn’t it? I think I can honestly say this is the first book I’ve seen on painting butterflies, so in this respect, it is at least unique. A word of caution though: this is an American book and these are American butterflies, so don’t be looking for a Purple Emperor or a Camberwell Beauty (though there is a token European Peacock).
The truth is that this isn’t a book aimed in any way at the general painter but is rather a specific style. If you like the idea, it’s well done and the results are attractive so it’s at least worth a look. The surprising thing is that, although they look like watercolours, the paintings are in fact oils.
North Light
Author: Sherry C Nelson, Medium: Oil, Publisher: David & Charles, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Butterflies, Subject: Flowers
This is clearly a book the publisher expects you to keep by your side and probably get dirty in use. How do I know this? Well, they give you a plastic sleeve for the paperback cover and that’s an additional production expense and publishers HATE those.
OK, so we’ve deduced that it’s something you’ll be referring to as you paint, but does it live up to the implied claim of its title? Well, the subtitle limits its coverage to Landscapes, Flowers and Animals, but that’s still a wide scope. The basic layout is: problem on the left-hand page, solution on the right, so it does follow the by now conventional pattern of the made-up problem, a painting done deliberately badly to illustrate a particular point. I’ve always had reservations about those because I can’t help wondering whether anyone finds them recognisable. That said, if you’re going to say, “most beginners do it like this”, there’s no other way round it really. A score draw on that one, I think.
In terms of coverage, there’s a good balance of both detail and more general work, especially in the landscape section. When we get to flowers and animals, things are a bit more specific and get down to species quite quickly so that you might find your particular bugbear [not a species, ed] doesn’t get covered. If the book has a weakness, this is it. Nevertheless, Trudy is an old hand at the problem/solution approach and she does it well. On balance, I’d say you’ll get much more from this than you’ll miss, which is perhaps faint praise, but it’s very much one you’ll need to make up your own mind about.
David & Charles
Author: Trudy Friend, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Animals, Subject: Flowers, Subject: Landscape
This is an intriguing guide to painting flowers and plants from the perspective of someone who is following a defined course (the Society of Botanical Artists’ Distance Learning Course). On the face of it, you’d be inclined to be sceptical: can you really learn anything by watching someone else learn; isn’t that idea the very definition of an oxymoron?
Without the capable hands of Margaret Stevens and the SBA, I’d say it probably was. The other thing that has to be said is that Mary Ann Scott, the learner, is a capable artist who, at the beginning, is clearly not short of ability and so we’re not subjected to 80-odd pages of not-very-good exercises while she gets her hand in. It’s possible to see the progression, but every illustration is something you’d be pretty pleased to have done yourself and that’s the book’s secret, the reason why you learn along with Mary Ann. The sketchbook of the title is the record of her work towards the Society’s Diploma.
This is a well thought-out and well structured book that doesn’t just explain the process of botanical painting, but also the process of learning it.
Author: Margaret Stevens, Author: Mary Ann Scott, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Batsford, Subject: Botanical Illustration, Subject: Flowers
This is a useful guide to flowers as an element within a larger painting rather than as a subject in themselves. Given that flowers feature in many landscapes this is timely, although there are a couple of demonstrations where the surrounding landscape rather seems to have disappeared and the flowers are, perhaps, more prominent than you might at first think. This isn’t necessarily a let-down, but if you were expecting less defined shapes and blocks of colour in place of quite a lot of botanical details, let’s say you might be surprised. If it’s the former you’re looking for, then you might find that Terry Harrison’s Watercolour Flowers fits the bill rather better.
Author: Ann Mortimer, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Search Press, Series: Tips & Techniques, Subject: Flowers
This is a really rather charming book of the type which doesn’t get published often enough. The danger, I suppose, is that of appearing to fall between two stools, of being neither enough of an instructional course nor of being a work of botanical record. However, if you want a basic introduction to botanical illustration that goes somewhere beyond the flower portrait but doesn’t get bogged down in a lot of technicality, then this is it.
Already I’m hitting the book’s problem head on, because I have to tell you a lot of what it isn’t, rather than what it is. At 96 pages, it’s never going to be exhaustive, for a start, especially for its quite liberal coverage – not just flowers but bark, vegetables, fruit and succulents. You also have the problem that botanical illustration is a very technical discipline, one of which it isn’t really possible just to scratch the surface, so that we’re already falling back into the realm of the flower/plant portrait, an area of a reasonable amount of detail and realism but where artistic considerations are allowed to take the place of the rigid recording of a specific specimen.
The thing is, I like the book. It’s attractive to look at and well presented so that it doesn’t look intimidating to the more general student and, if what you want to do is get into more detailed flower painting, you’re going to feel encouraged as well as instructed by it. It’s more than just drawing because all of the illustrations are in colour and it makes no pretence of being more than it is: a starting point for the artistically and botanically curious.
Author: Agathe Ravet-Haevermans, Medium: Watercolour, Subject: Flowers
After a bit of a wobble over Venice, Wendy is back to form and well within what I think we all regard as her comfort zone.
The book follows the by now well-established Ready to Paint format, with a series of six pre-drawn tracings that combine with detailed demonstrations of how to paint them. As with previous volumes, however, the result is very much more than a beginner’s painting-by-numbers exercise and turns itself into one of the best introductions there is to painting flowers in the increasingly popular medium of acrylics.
Author: Wendy Jelbert, Medium: Acrylic, Publisher: Search Press, Series: Ready To Paint, Subject: Flowers
This is not, you might have guessed, an in-depth guide to flower painting. Rather, Trevor Waugh uses the limitations of this rather excellent series to good effect, producing instead a book that concentrates on the look and shape of flowers rather than their every detail. As an introduction, it’s effective because it doesn’t get bogged down and the reader will find a lot of useful information that will help to put flowers in a painting rather than making them the main subject in themselves. If you then want to go on to greater, or at least more intricate, things, there are plenty of books which will take you all the way to botanical illustration.
Author: Trevor Waugh, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Collins, Series: 30 Minute, Subject: Flowers
This is Lian Zhen’s third book on Chinese painting and follows his excellent and successful introductory guide and a volume on animals. In both of these, he demonstrated a fluid style that combines Oriental painting techniques with more Western ideas of composition that gives his work an instant appeal and combines a simplicity of approach with more extensive use of colour and the inclusion of more detail than you would get in traditional Chinese painting.
Having told you what went before, it probably won’t come as a surprise that this latest title provides more of the same. However it is, if anything, even better than its predecessors. Flower painting lends itself to a simplified approach and the use of colour, rather than line, to produce the finished result. The flowers throughout are things you’re likely to recognise and there are some very full step by step demonstrations that explain clearly the methods used. This isn’t botanical illustration by any means and the first impression in almost all cases is of a riot of colour. However, this impressionism isn’t extreme and the book stands well as a general guide to flower painting and not just a specialised Oriental one. It’s a visual feast that follows up with some excellent instruction and one which won’t, I think, disappoint anyone.
Publisher link
Author: Lian Quan Zhen, Medium: Chinese Painting, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Flowers