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New blog out, about grasses and grass blindness, & my day spent The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge & University of Cambridge Museums Herbarium, alongside lots of fascinating academics and researchers, exploring why we ignore the Poaceae:

https://lizzieharper.co.uk/2026/04/grasses-in-cambridge-collections-combating-grass-blindness/

I do lots of botanical illustrations of grasses and really love their beauty and diversity, but why are they overlooked by so many, and how can we change that?

So have a read to find out how Darwin`s Voyage of the Beagle, and a 14 metre long photo of a grass seed added to the excitement of the day.

#naturalscienceillustration #Poaceae #graminaceae #botanicalillustration #grass ...

Two more natural history illustrations completed for Montserrat National Trust and UK Overseas territories Conservation forum.

This time it`s frogs. The smaller one is a common amphibian, very pretty, with lots of little bumps. It`s the Montserrat whistling frog, or Antilles coqui, Eleutherodactylus johnstonei.

The second is the Montserrat mountain chicken frog Leptodactylus fallax. This frog was as good as extinct across the Eastern Caribbean, thanks to Chytrid, but has been successfully re-introduced. Amazing efforts have been undertaken in Montserrat to get this endemic amphibian back, and it`s paying off. It`s wonderful to see conservation in action.

(For more: (see https://www.mountainchicken.org/conservation/montserrat/).

Painting frogs is tricky, nuances of browns and greens and often a lot of smooth skin, which is tricky to build up to make stronger colours. But I enjoyed these two.

#leptodactylus
#frog #mountainchicken #naturalscienceillustration #noai ...

This week`s blog talks about the illustrations I`ve done for colouring-in books over the years:

https://lizzieharper.co.uk/.../illustrating-colouring-in.../

I love producing line drawings in pen, and on reflection it seems there are lots of projects that have needed them.

From humming birds to snowflakes, butterflies to puffballs, any plant or animal can be a good subject for colouring-in.

#penandink #linedrawing #botanicalillustration #sciart #coloring ...

This is the Great green bush cricket Tettigonia viridissima, in watercolour.

I`ve seen these insects in the wild, but although large they`re amazingly well camouflaged.

I loved painting the the network of wing veins, and the sweep of the antennae. I only realised they had a thin scarlet line on their thorax and wing when I came to illustrate them.

Drawing up something like a bush cricket requires a lot of reference, they`re built like robots and you need to have plenty of angles so you can understand how the plates and parts interlock and work together.

#greatgreenbushcricket #tettigoniidae #insectart #sciart #naturalscienceillustration ...