Guinea grass Megathyrsus maximus

As many who read this blog regularly will know, I love illustrating grasses, so this day was a real treat for me.  (For more on grasses, see my blogs on Shortcuts to identifying some common grass species, Grasses of Montserrat, telling Sedges, Grasses and Rushes apart, An introduction to grass, the C4 Rice project, A class on Grass, and Glorious Grasses. Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations in this blog are by yours truly.)

A day of grasses

This one day event was organised by Kimberly Glassman, who is a postdoctoral research associate for the botanical collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Landscape of rocks & Grasses, William Pyce 1806

Not only did she organise botanical drawings for us to see, and get us access to specimens from the Cambridge University Herbarium collections, but she pulled together an extraordinarily diverse group of students and experts to spend the day talking about why grasses don’t get the attention they deserve.  And what we can do about it.

Grass blindness

We are surrounded by grass.  Most of our food crops are grasses.  Fields of oats, barley, rice, sorghum, corn, and wheat are common across the globe.  Parks and hillsides are swathed in grass.  Our gardens are full of the stuff.  But how often do we stop and look at these diverse and amazing plants below our feet?

Bread Wheat Triticum aestivum

As Howard Thomas says in Grass Blindness (2019), “Some plants are born invisible, some achieve invisibility, and some have invisibility thrust upon them.  Grasses are a case in point”.

The conversations during the day focused on how the collections could be used to engage future museum and herbarium visitors (and researchers), and help shine a spotlight on the long-forgotten grasses.

Soft brome Bromus hordeaceus

Botanical drawings of grasses at the Fitzwilliam: Grasses as secondary subjects

After assembling and introducing ourselves, we got to see a selection of botanical illustrations, selected by Kimberly.

Everyone came with different areas of expertise, seeing the images in contrasting ways.  Conversations flowed, on topics ranging from women naturalists in the 19th century, to how grass is used as a material for making baskets and textiles in Vanuatu, field botany in the 17th C, and the manufacture of artificial flowers in 18th C France.  Members of the group are researching herbalism in book history and plant dyes, Victorian women in paleontology, gene editing in potatoes, North European paintings, and the genetics of crops and grasses.

Interestingly, I felt that only two of the beautiful illustrations laid out for us came close to respecting grasses as subjects in their own right.  The majority used grass as compositional elements, or to add heft to another, more blousy species.

Glass vase of pink & White roses, Antoine Chazal 1893

For example in the painting above, an exquisite miniature, there are grasses in the foreground that might be barley, or wheat.  But they are simply adjuncts to the roses and other flowers.

Bermuda grass is shown alongside another rose, in a 19th C illustration produced in Canton.  But there’s no focus on the grass, it’s all about the roses.

Spray of old roses & Bermuda grass, Canton workshop 19th C

Botanical drawings of grasses at the Fitzwilliam: Grasses as equal subjects

However, it’s clear in the painting by Harriet Cockerell that the grasses in her composition are true to life, probably a brome.

Posy containing Iris, Moss rose, Speedwell, Lilly; Harriet Cockerell 19th C

My favourite piece was a Pre-Raphelite-esque study.  Even though it’s not flowering, I reckon the grass painted alongside the snowdrops could only be Cocksfoot, Dactylis glomerata.  Grass being seen as worthy of illustrating, not only as an accessory.

Snowdrops in Undergrowth, Unknown artist 19th C

We wondered if the term “grass” helps reduce this group of plants to a catch-all.  Is it, in fact, a derogatory term?  Are grasses more visible in other cultures?  Braiding sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer was name-checked.  Are grasses mostly classed as “good” (crops) or “bad” (weeds, in itself another very problematic term)?  Are we blind to them because they are so familiar?  And they are not alone.  Moss and even fungi tend to go un-noticed too.

Grasses & Me: A love story by Madelaine Bartlett

Next stop was a fascinating talk by Madelaine.  She heads the Bartlett group which studies the evolution of grass and flower morphology at Cambridge University Sainsbury’s lab.

She pointed out that many flowers are morphologically conservative.  They get stuck because of their relationship with pollinators.  If you evolve and change, your pollinators may not keep up, and you run the risk of not reproducing.  Grasses, pollinated by the wind, have no such inhibiting factors.  Their morphological diversity is astounding, and perhaps this helps explain their variety?

Bamboo grass Lasiacis divaricata

She touched on the importance of corn, both in research and as a crop.

Then we learnt how we can use the genetic codes of diverse living grasses to figure out what the molecules of ancestor grasses may have looked like.  Thus empowered, you can switch around and project forward, by-passing the temporal constraints of evolution, and figure out ways to modify crops and imagine new as-yet unevolved species.

Common oat grass Avena fatua

But you can’t do any of this without really dense sampling.  This is where collections come in.

Herbariums have sheets and sheets of grasses.  These are not only a visual resource, but a genetic one too.  We can sequence DNA and proteins from tiny fragments of preserved materials.  Recently, RNA has been sampled as well.  Who knows how future scientists will be able to use such collections?  Already, herbarium specimens are being used to study changes in specimens due to climate change. We must future-proof, and conserve them, as physical specimens, not just digital records.

Herbarium visit

Next was our chance to see a selection of grasses from the herbarium, chosen by Juliet Anderson.  These were exquisite.

I often work from online images of herbarium specimens, and was amazed at how much richer and more beautiful they are in real life.  Although flattened, that slight three-dimensionality changed the way I saw them.

Specimens at Cambridge Herbarium

There was a table of specimens that we’d be drawing later, another of grasses as crops, and a third of historically interesting specimens.

Annual meadow grass Poa annua variety

I’ve had a lot to do with Annual meadow grass recently, and to see this sheet showcasing its extraordinary morphological diversity was lovely.

Juliet had also pulled out some pen and ink studies of grass flowers, and some 19th C teaching aids which I was very jealous of.

Bromus erectus flower illustration by Hounslow

On one table there were lots of crop species.  Looking at the Sugar cane, I felt entirely justified in having found the illustrating of its’ flowers last year something of a nightmare.

Sugar cane Saccharum officiarum

Sugar cane Saccharum officiarum

There were also samples showing Ergot in grains of crop species.  I knew about the suggestion that Ergotism was the cause of the hallucinations that sparked the Salem with trials (still hotly debated, see Debunking the Moldy bread theory), but was delighted to hear the suggestions that some of Hieronymous Bosch‘s visions may have been prompted by the same cause.

Ergot

Cambridge Herbarium and The Voyage of the Beagle

Entirely unexpectedly, there on a table were three of four grasses which, it transpired, had been collected by Charles Darwin on the Voyage of the Beagle in 1831 -1836  (For more on this remarkable adventure, listen to In out Time: The Voyage of the Beagle).

Voyage of the beagle Eragrostic pilosa

For someone who has always been in thrall to Darwin and the enormous changes his research caused, this was incredible.  Whether or not he also completed the excellent line drawing of the flowering spikelet, I do not know,  But imagining him gathering these specimens of the Galapagos, and seeing them on a table right in front of me, felt surreal.

Voyage of the Beagle Eragrostis ciliarius

Leaving the herbarium, it was inspirational to realise that all these collections are open to the public (by prior arrangement.)  What a way to combat grass blindness.

Reimagining grasses: A place for art collections & Herbaria

The last talk of the day was the keynote lecture, by Dawn Saunders of Gothenburg University.

This was a whistle stop tour of grasses in art, and an exploration of how artists have tried to build a doorway into the life of plants.

Grasses Harper Collins plate

Dawn was part of the “Beyond Plant Blindness” project, alongside Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Mark Wilson, Eva Nyberg, and Bente Eriksen. This focussed on the grass Stipa pennata.

One Stipa seed was enlarged to a gigantic 14m long SEM image, hung in a barn.  The same image was made into a wool tapestry hung the height of the atrium in Gothenburg University. Dawn talked about how visitors were confused and fascinated by the image.

The image turned our normal view of plants on its’ head.  The seed was at the front, an image of the plant become secondary, behind it.  Our role as human curators was a mere foot note.

Grasses: False Oat, Crested Dogs-tail, Cocks-foot, and Yorkshire Fog

The aim was to make people consider what being a plant means, what “plant-ness” is.

As Dawn said, “How do we build relational encounters for people to build narratives around their experience with the curated objects?”  How do you use art and herbarium objects to invite new people to think about plants in new ways?

The following discussion touched on the conceptualization of wonder, comparisons of preserved herbarium vs taxidermied specimens, the importance of naming things and the delight of recognition.  Rich grounds indeed.

Crab grass Digitaria ciliaris

Grass drawing workshop

The final activity of the day was an hour long workshop, illustrating grasses.  I’d been so interested I’d almost forgotten I was leading the session, and setting up was something of a rush.

I’d collected loads of little Poa annua plants, the only grass that flowers in late March in the UK, and some Dactylis, complete with in-your-face ligules to discover.  Alas, the Sainsbury’s lab couldn’t allow live material into the building (which is fair enough).

Annual meadow grass Poa annua

Juliet saved the day by selecting and photographing a wide array of common UK grasses held in the herbarium.  People worked from these print outs, first on gesture drawings and then on more detailed illustrations.

Quaking grass, Barley, Oats and Rye grass all proved popular.  By this point in the day, we were all really comfortable with each other, so people chatted happily as they sketched.

Quaking grass Briza media

An hour was not long enough, and it felt like we needed to finish up much too early.

Conclusion

And with that, the day of grasses was over.  It was, as I said to Kimberly, an inter-disciplinary fever-dream.  Historians, biologists, sociologists, curators and botanists.  All drawn together to be awed, excited, and inspired by grasses.  To fight Grass blindness, as individuals and as a group.  To work towards finding ways to use the collections at Cambridge University to encourage the whole world to embrace grasses for their beauty, importance, and diversity.

Enormous thanks are due to everyone who was involved in organising this event.  It was wonderful.

BBC Wildlife Magazine: Common British meadow grasses

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Table of autumn leaves collected from the Botanic gardens

Pencil drawings of leaves

We looked at colour as well as shape, veins, margins, and how the light falls on the surfaces of the leaf blades.  The students did some wonderful pencil tonal studies.

Pencil illustration of two leaves looking at shape and shade

Student drawing of an autumn leaf

Colour theory

We did some work on colour theory too, and I got the students to experiment with watercolours by filling in a colour wheel.  It’s interesting to note that no matter how hard you try, mixing paint from a paint box never makes the clean colours suggested by a colour wheel.  In fact, one of the students lent me a fascinating book discussing this, “Blue and Yellow don’t make green” by Michael Wilcox which explains why this might be, and gives an alternative approach to mixing colours.

The colour wheel gave the students a chance to learn how to darken a hue and to lighten it (by using water to dilute it, not by adding white paint) so they were ready to experiment with painting by the afternoon.

Loose watercolour illustration of fruit and leaves by a student, with working notes on colour mixes

Step by step autumn berries

The second day we looked at fruits and berries, and I’d prepared a couple of handouts which broke down the process of painting hawthorn and blackberries into step by step processes.

Handout of the step by step process involved in painting a hawthorn berry

For more of these handouts please visit my Pinterest board, and for a detailed blog on painting a blackberry click here; for the hawthorn explanation click on this link.

Handout of the step by step process involved in painting a blackberry

I’d gathered in lots of blackberries and hawthorn, and we had a wonderful time gleaning fruits and berries in the garden, coming back with armfuls of inspiring specimens to draw and paint.  Some of the students followed the blackberry handout with really encouraging results:

Student painting of a blackberry, referring to the steps in the handout

Others worked on hawthorn, again referring to the handout for a bit of guidance:

Student painting of a hawthorn berry, referring to the steps laid out in the handout

Other autumn subjects painted

Many painted entirely different subjects; from conkers to dogwood berries.

Conker watercolour botanical illustration

One student took on a squash.  This is a tricky subject thanks to the pale oranges and internal stringy area that clings onto the seeds.  She tackled this well.  Wee used some of the colour theory we’d talked about earlier to sort out how to deal with shadows.

Watercolour of a squach by a beginner student

Another student brought in a bunch of grapes from home.  Although she’d not had a great deal of prior experience she did a brilliant job of getting the shine and the colours right.

Student study of grapes and shine

It was a brilliant chance to spend two days painting and drawing.  I often maintain most of what I do when I teach is enable people to stop doing day to day stuff, and to prioritise making space and time to look and draw for a while.  Inevitably, their work exceeds their expectations, which is lovely.  It’s a priviledge to be on hand with the odd pointer or tip.  But in truth most of what they do is just allow themselves to look and enjoy the creative processes.

I’ve got a few more courses coming up in 2018 at the University of Cambridge.  One focuses on drawing in winter, and the others are looking at illustrating pollinators and the plants they visit.  Courses are suitable for all abilities, for more details and to book please follow the link here.

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Preparing for the class

I was so impressed by the classroom preparation and friendly welcome from the staff.  There was a spotless room, daylight lighting, neat desks with drawing boards and pots for water neatly laid out for the students, and a gorgeous view onto the lawns and borders and trees in the botanic garden.

The classroom at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens

Before the students arrived, Felicity (Head of Education at the Gardens ) and I wandered round in the bright spring sunshine. We were gathering flowers to draw. There were stunning hellebores in greenish white and dark magenta.  Forget me nots glowing with a dark blue.  Plenty of daffodils, sweet-scented mahonia, fragile fruit blossom, and large snowdrops with their blue-green leaves were in bloom.  There is plenty to inspire in the botanic gardens.  What a wonderful way to start a day.

Gathering reference and learning about flower form

First I talked through a bit of basic flower anatomy with the students.  We covered stuff they all knew (familiar terms like petal, bud, leaf and root) and less obvious ones (anther, filament, style and stigma).  Then we went for a sunny wander in the garden, looking at the enormous variety of forms that the flowering plants and leaves show.  We looked inside daffodils and cut hellebores in half to see the ovary.  We removed outer petals from snowdrops, and were blown away by a gorgeous cyclamen leaf.

Flowers from the botanic gardens for the students to look at, draw, and pull apart in our quest to see how they’re “built”

Line drawings

Back in the classroom we talked about atonal line drawings.  These avoid using lights and darks, and just involve drawing the shapes and relationship between different parts of the plants.  I did a demo showing how to “map” a plant on a page, then how you can return to it to add detail.

Drawing with plant

The whole class spent the rest of the morning doing some beautiful observational line drawings.  Hellebores and daffodils were popular subjects, and the students did an excellent job of taking on their complicated flowering structures.

Line drawing of hellebore

Sketchbook study page of Snowdrops

Student line drawings

Tonal studies

After lunch, spent wandering the botanic gardens, we moved onto talking about shadow.  We discussed how to see areas of dark, and why those areas looked darker.  Another tutor demo, then they all got to work.  They really got their eye in.   Correctly pinpointing tiny gradations in tonal value, and carefully recording them in their drawings is tough.  The students nailed it.  I was particularly impressed by how they managed to avoid making their drawings a flat uniform grey.  This often happens with tonal studies if you don’t keep your whites clear of pencil.  Unfortunately, I failed to take many photos of their work as I was too busy peering over their shoulders and interfering….

Student tonal drawing of Hellebore flower

Learning to use watercolour

Next there were some watercolour excersizes.  Firstly making a colour paler by diluting it with water (not mixing it with white).  One of the students noted that by diluting it you were allowing more of the white of the page to show through.  This is a perfect and new way to explain the process.

Series dilution of Crimson by a student

Darkening a colour is less prescriptive, and I suggested they play about to see what mixes they could come up with.  Some gorgeous dark rich reds and green yellows ensued.  These colours are so much deeper and fuller than if your base colour was simply mixed with black.  Finally, we experimented with mixing greens as watercolour tube/pan greens tend to have very little to do with the colours of nature.  They excelled at this.

Watercolour illustration of a flower

Next was a watercolour of a plant.  I did a quick demo of painting a leaf.  Explaining that my way of blocking in darks then working to light before returning to pick out the darkest detail is unconventional in botanical illustration circles is a neccessity.  I always stress this in case they get told off on other courses!).

Tutor leaf painting demo (and bits of a hellebore flower)

I was deeply impressed by their work, many of the students claimed not to be able to draw, or to have very limited experience.  Their paintings belied this fact.  There were some very delicate stems, daffodil trumpets, and green-whites of hellebore leaves.  Some students tackled the prickly problem of painting white flowers.  Others managed to accurately make a stem look flushed with crimson.  A few managed to make the blue of their flowers glow against the page.  Unfortunately I was too busy rushing about looking at their work to take many photos of their lovely paintings, but here is a study of a snowdrop.

Student watercolour of a snowdrop

At the end of the day I think they were exhausted.  The idea that drawing is “relaxing” is the biggest fib out there!   They seemed pleased with their work.  I was really inspired by their fortitude and patience, and very impressed with their drawings and paintings.

Learning from the students

As with all teaching sessions the students taught me an enormous amount.  We had excellent discussions about trying to tell the difference between tonal difference due to shadow vs to a dark colour.  I learnt masses about the internal structure of hellebores (and their individual variations).  The group figured out how daffodils were built, and discussed how tricky it was to darken a yellow without making it green or orange.   Everyone agreed that the state of intense concentration one enters when looking and drawing incredibly hard could definitely be seen as “mindfulness”.  The main lesson seemed to be that to be able to draw, you need to be able to look.  The skill is to record what is actually there rather than what your brain suggests might be there.

It was a highly enjoyable day in a stunning place, and I’m really looking forward to my autumn session at the Botanic Gardens.  Two days of drawing and painting autumn leaves and fruits, and of really looking at them and seeing how they are put together.  Feel free to click on the link and book if you’d like to join us!

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