Botany Illustrations and Design

Over the past week, I have decided to paint and draw flowers around Norwich. As I have never really drawn flowers to this extent before, I found it quite hard initially to have to pick and choose which part of the bouquets/bucket to draw due to limited time and how busy the florists got. As I wanted to get more comfortable with the shapes and how I can record the petals and stems without adding and cluttering, I have decided to practice with flowers I have growing in my back garden.

I have chosen to use watercolour as watercolour holds a very delicate feel to it- similar to that of a flower. I am very glad I decided to practice first before going out to drawing in public as I would be familiar with my method of working therefore less stressed. Unfortunately , when I went out the next day to draw flowers at the florists, my hay fever was triggered therefore I had to take pictures and draw them from home instead of at location. However, prior to that , I have gone to the plantation and therefore was able to paint flowers and leaves from life there.

Going and observing the flowers was something that I thoroughly enjoyed despite being quite reluctant at first as it gave me to chance to pick and choose my composition and even though I may not be as close to it as if I were to look at a picture, I was able to see its dimensions and its textures and therefore try and relay them onto paper. I wanted to paint leaves and stems even though my editorial focuses mainly on flowers as I think that it is quite important for me to not only get to know the flowers, but the environment in which they grow and be able to accurately place them in a way that represents their way of life. I have also decided to paint the flowers in a more dreamlike and flowy composition as flowers in my editorial were often used to express love and therefore I want the piece to hold a sense of delicacy to it.

When I came home and looked at the illustrations, I had the idea of wanting to add stitch to the flowers to further bring across the handmade aspect of the illustration. It was really hard at first due to the paper not being as flexible as fabric but in the end, I go it to work and I really like how this experiment turned out. I really liked how the experiment turned out as the thread added dimension and depth to my illustration and brought the point that I wanted to make across that these flowers represented people sincere feelings and therefore they are homemade.

Whilst I was adding stitches to my paintings, I thought that outlining my paintings will be able to give my paintings a more defined look therefore I decided to outline some of my observational paintings from the plantation. I really do like how outlining my paintings seem to have given my work more of a body however, the lines were too prominent and therefore the painting looses it delicate feel therefore, I won't be using this technique in my editorial. However, this technique may lend itself quite well in my reportage.