Wednesday 21 December 2016

Season's Greetings

The Pantone Color Institute revealed its colour Greenery as one of 10 design colours of the year for 2017. As botanical artists we are very familiar with the calming nature of the colour green (not so calming when trying to get the right green though! 😅).


According to Forbes.com, "Ultimately, Greenery calls to mind the 're-' words: refresh, revive, restore, renew, replenish, regenerate, rejuvenate, reinvigorate, re-oxygenate....... And the yellow pigment in Greenery references the sun, the symbolic light that people need in these times."

Wishing all our followers a happy and safe holiday season.
We look forward to fresh beginnings in 2017.

Tuesday 20 December 2016

ASBA's 19th Annual International ends Friday

Best in Show Award
Chaenomeles sp
Watercolour on Paper
by Lizzie Sanders
ASBA's 19th Annual International is ending this Friday. Click here to view some of the beautiful artwork before the website comes down.

Wednesday 14 December 2016

Sydney Florilegium

Beverly Allen - Project management, Colleen Morris and Louisa Murray – Authors

Vicki Thomas, BAASA Western Cape, and Gillian Condy, BAASA Gauteng, were invited to contribute paintings for The Florilegium, a major collection of 87 works of contemporary botanical illustration that demonstrates the botanical and horticultural development of the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, Australia, and its links with domestic gardens and the public landscapes of New South Wales over 200 years from 1816 to 2016.

Forty-one Australian and twenty-three overseas artists contributed one or more works of significant plants in the three Sydney botanic gardens by invitation. This collection is published as The Florilegium to celebrate the bicentenary of the gardens this year.

The illustrations were exhibited in the exhibition Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden at the Museum of Sydney during July to October 2016, and will be at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, during the first half of 2018.

Erica verticillata by Vicki Thomas

Spathodea campanulata by Gillian Condy

Well done Gill and Vicki!

Friday 9 December 2016

How wet is the paper?

For those of us who battle with the wetness of the paper below is a very useful summary from the Handprint website that explains the stages of wetness and how to achieve the different stages. I'm not sure I agree with drying the paper with a hot-air gun, but nevertheless........


The details page mentioned in the graphic above "six stages of paper wetness" elaborates on the effect of the degree of wetness on paint behaviour.

Thursday 8 December 2016

Rosie Sanders’s new book: "Flowers: A Celebration of Botanical Art"

Red Parrot Tulip by Rosie Sanders

Flowers: A Celebration of Botanical Art by Rosie Sanders is a large-format book that showcases over 80 of her finest flower paintings in exquisite detail.

Often compared to the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, Rosie Sanders's botanical paintings lie at the extreme end of botanical art - they exude dynamism and sensuality in every brushstroke and their richness of colour sets her apart from her contemporaries. In this beautifully illustrated book, Rosie exhibits a selection of flowers, from tulips to orchids, roses to irises, anemones to amaryllis, and illuminates them with fascinating and skillful uses of perspective and light.

This large-format book showcases her finest paintings in exquisite detail and they are accompanied by excellent and accessible scientific commentary. Also included is an introduction by renowned Swiss botanist Dr. Andreas Honegger. This book is perfect for artists who want to get a closer look at a master's brushstrokes, textures and colour in paintings, or readers who are interested in contemporary botanical art.

Chapters include: 1. Diversity in the Garden 2. Dark Flowers: the Magic of Night 3. A Fascination of Orchids 4. Lilies in Spring 5. Varieties of Belladonna 6. In Search of the Black Iris.

This book is available in South Africa from Loot.co.za.

Read this interesting article in The Telegraph, which showcases Rosie's new book, talks about her style of painting and how she reached this point in her artistic life.