Illustrating Lilac Syringa vulgaris

First using watercolours

When I first used watercolour, I used my Mum’s paint-box.  She was a fine artist, so had lots of posh art equipment which she always encouraged us children to use.  Her paints (a selection of browns, greys, and ochres as her subject matter tended to be broken industrial landscapes and cemeteries) were Winsor and Newton.

My first paint-box, was bought by my parents for my 10th birthday.  It was a lovely tin full of Winsor and Newton pans and half pans.  I used this until 2015, topping it up and switching in new pans.

My current watercolour paint-box

Finally the white enamel cracked from the palette.  The tiny paint flakes kept getting mixed in with my colours.  I had to replace the box itself, and I really struggled.  The mixing palettes are lovely, deep, and what I was used to!  Eventually I found a stockist of the empty tins, Green and Stone.  My quest was over.

My current paint-box (not in any way cleaned for its photo-op, I’m afraid)

As you can tell from the photo, it’s very much a working tool and is quite often shamefully grubby.  This is important, and should be avoided.  Having dirty pans of colour will effect the colours you paint with.  It’s an ongoing fight to try and keep my yellows clean.  I mostly lose.

Illustrating a Bryony leaf Bryonia dioica for Jersey Post

Watercolour pans

Watercolour comes in tubes or in pans.  I like the pans; it’s so quick to open the box and start painting. Pans come in  full, or half sizes.  When the pans become empty, I fill them up with paint from tubes.  This is frowned on, someone told me the paint is a different composition and the two shouldn’t be mixed.  It’s never been a problem for me, but I am willing to listen to reasons why it’s inadvisable.

Paints in pans from my back-up watercolours box.  Most are Winsor and Newton, many used.

The paint in the pans is dry, and this is a clear difference between the tubes and the pans.  However, the colours seem to be identical.

The main trick with paint mixing is to make notes of the colour mixes that you use, so you can re-create them later.  You can do this as a swatch (as on the side of the painting on the illustration below) or in written form.

Illustrating a rose

Watercolour tubes

I have lots of these tubes.  I tend to buy them up when I’m in an art shop and see them on sale, so have lots of duplicates and different sizes.

Equipment: paints: My watercolour tubes, which nominally fit into an old cigar box (they don’t fit).

Sometimes I’ll use a blob of pure watercolour and paint from it, this is mostly if I’m tackling the sky of a big landscape (Cobalt blue is good for skies).  In general, though, I simply use the tubes to top up the pans in my paint-box.

The brand I favour is Winsor and Newton.  I tend to use their professional watercolours, but their Cotman range is good too.  They’re clean, strong colours, and don’t go grainy.  Some of my W&N tubes date back 30 years or more, and the colours seem as true as the newly purchased tubes.

Some of my Winsor and Netwon tube watercolours

Sometimes I’ll put a spot of tube paint on one of the paint-box dishes, I’ve recently started doing this with Daniel Smith’s Spring Green which is a good base for mixing up realistic green hues.

The ones I use most of are the yellows.  Cadmium yellows, Naples yellow, and Yellow ochre.  This is because these get mixed up into every single green I use, and as they’re weaker colours than the blues and greens in the mix, I need to use proportionally more of them.

Illustrating Mongolian stonecrop Phedimus hybridus . You can see the heavy use of yellows, and that blob of Spring Green in the top right of the palette.

Learning your paints and your paint-box

Sometimes I make the error of filling up a half empty pan with a rather different hue, and this isn’t a great idea.  Topping up a yellowish Sap green with a very blue Phthalo green was a memorable error.  Saying that, it actually made for rather a handy colour, the two worked well together.

I tend to mix, and go on mixing until it looks right.

You learn your way around your paint box.  As the years go by you end up knowing what different colours look like, both in your paint-box and fresh from the pan or tube.

Why I can be vague on my colour mixes…

This somewhat slap-dash approach to my paints is why I sometimes find it difficult to give precise answers if asked what colours I use for a specific illustration.  Often the labels on the pans have rubbed off or are illegible.  Remembering what colour I topped up with a few months ago is often beyond me.  Sometimes (especially if I don’t to take notes) I simply forget.

Long tailed tits in progress.

I am aware this lackadaisical approach might horrify some professional and amateur botanical illustrators, and that’s totally understandable.  But I do think that sometimes people get tangled up in the details of brands and colours when they’re starting out.  Knowing more or less what each colour looks like, and how it mixes is great.  But if choosing the correct exact named hues becomes an obsession, or a barrier to just getting out some paints and experimenting, then I’m not sure how useful it is.  Perhaps I’m speaking from the luxurious position of someone whose been lucky enough to have the time to learn her paint-box and colours inside out; with less time available knowing names and brands could be more important?

Other Brands of Watercolour paint

Alongside Winsor and Newton, I use other brands of paint.  After hearing lots of recommendations, I purchased some Daniel Smith “dot cards”.  I figured they’d be a good way to test the different colours without committing to a whole (pricey) tube of paint.  I ended up painting from them, until I wore through the paper the dots were on, alongside my normal paint-box.  I wish I’d taken a photo of the used cards, they were rather pretty.

Eventually, I decided to buy a few tubes, which I use a lot. My most used is the Spring green.  It’s a brutal colour fresh from the tube, but mixed with purples, ochres, blues and yellows; it makes for a beautiful and adaptable hue.

Daniel Smith tubes

I also use Daler Rowney on occasion, and have become extremely attached to Doctor Martin’s Hydrus inks.  these transparent colours are almost violent in their vividness, and are incredibly useful.  I mix them in with my watercolours and they give an extra punch that helps emulate the bright colours of nature.  The colour I use most is their Quniacridone magenta, perfect for mixing up to capture pink flowers.

Doctor Martin’s inks – perfect for the pink of a cyclamen

Other brands of watercolour paint I’ve heard about from other botanical illustrators include: Sennelier, St. Petersburg White nights, Talens: Rembrandt, Shinhan, Holbein, Schminke, and Old Holland.  I’d love it if anyone who uses and adores these ranges felt like giving a bit of a review in the comments section.

Pink flowers and Opera pink watercolour

When it comes to pink flowers,  along with the Dr. Martin’s magenta, I use plenty of Opera rose.  Now, although this is a fabulous colour, it is notoriously awkward as it’s known to fade.  Artists have tested it’s lightfastness, with varying results (Jane Blundell, and an interesting post on whether or not watercolour paints DO fade from Lee Angold.)

Lots of pigments fade with time, and watercolours are prone to become paler.  Some pigments fade more than others.  The pinks and purples and reds are most fugitive (prone to fading).  You can avoid this by having framed work behind conservation glass (or museum glass), and by keeping original watercolours away from direct sunlight.  It can be a problem though.  I once painted a Purple emperor butterfly, and put it in the window of a gallery.  Within 6 weeks the butterfly had faded to a tawdry (and entirely un-saleable) brown colour.

Greater willowherb Epibolium hirsutum

This is less problematic is you’re creating work for reproduction rather than for exhibition, but it’s worth remembering.  I bought up a batch of Opera rose from different companies recently;  I’m interested to know which brand I end up liking most.  I’m not alone in this. There’s a lot of online chat about opera rose, including rather a nice comparison of different brands video on Youtube.

Opera rose paints from Jackson’s, Winsor and Newton, Holbein, and the W&N in pan form.

One more paint…and it’s Gouache!

This last paint is for fixing mistakes.  I avoid using it on work I plan to sell, but for work that’s going to be reproduced, it can be a life saver.  Permanent white gouache.  You mix it to a thick consistency, then paint over smudges and mistakes.  It’s easy to blend in with the white of the paper.  Avoid touching it until it’s dry, it’ll clump and lift the colour from underneath.  Actually, don’t touch it when it IS dry either, the grease on your hands may dull the white.  It’s also really useful for adding delicate white hairs against a dark leaf, and it’s an important part of my tool kit.

In the plate below, done for HarperCollins Flower Guide, you can see how white gouache was used to remove the upper leaves of the Dune gentian.  This adapted plate went to repro with no quibbles.  (For more on mixing mistakes in watercolour, check out my earlier blog).

Gentian plate with alterations circled in red

I use this paint quite thick, and it’s important to thoroughly rinse the paint-box and brush when you’re finished with it or it’ll make all your watercolours paler and chalky.

Common comfrey Symphytum officinale with hairs on the stem picked out with white gouache

Conclusion

If you’re looking for comparisons of different brands of watercolour paint, there’s a whole lot of really interesting blogs and youtube videos online.  For me, my lifelong relationship with Winsor and Newton continues unabated.  They’re easy to come by, good strong colours, not prohibitively expensive, comparatively lightfast, and I love them.

…and you can easily take a paint-box into a bluebell wood!

Most of the materials and paints mentioned in this blog are readily available from art stores.  I try to shop local, but if that’s not possible, then I buy from UK suppliers such as Jackson’s, Cass Art, London Graphics Centre, and Ken Bromley.  I try to avoid the big online sellers even though they’re sometimes cheaper; it’s my (tiny) way of supporting the art stores that support me.  In the US, I believe Dick Blick is a good shop, and sells online.

The post Equipment: Paints appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

Here is an explanation of the steps involved in creating a botanically accurate illustration which is also visually appealing.  It needs to allow a novice to identify that flower in the field.  The approach is similar to my other step by step botanical illustrations.  The species and colours change, but my approach remains more or less consistent!

Getting reference

First, I gather my reference.  The illustration rough was done in January, so no Willowherbs were around.  This means I rely on stalwart books like Collins Guide to Wild Flowers of Britain by David Streeter and Wildflowers of the Bristish Isles by Garrard and Streeter.  For accurate anatomical information I use my volumes of line drawings by Stella Ross-Craig.  These are a must have for any botanical illustrator working with the British flora.

I use a mechanical pencil (I love the Pentel P205) and draw direct onto hot press watercolour paper.  In this case I worked on Botanical Ultra Smooth HP produced by St Cuthberts Mill as my trusty Fabriano paper has changed and is no longer good for botanical work (here’s a link to a recent blog on this topic, it’s quite an issue in the botanical illustration community!)

Pencil rough of the Greater willow herb

The pencil rough needs to be clear, and to include all the traits that clearly identify this plant as Epilobium hirstutum rather than any of the other Willowherbs.  As the name suggests, these include an all over hairiness.  Traits also include information on how it grows with basal side shoots, leaf shape, and presentation of the flowers and seed pods.  A cut stem shows height, this is a tall plant.

Once I get the go-ahead from the client, I can start “colouring-in”.  She  and three other botanists pore over my roughs to make sure they’re are no inadvertant errors.

Adding watercolour to the leaves: Structure and darks

I use Winsor and Newton watercolour pans (which I top up with watercolour tube paints, I know you’re not supposed to mix pan and tube, but it works for me!)  The best brush in the businesss is a Winsor and Newton series 7 sable brush (size 1 and size 000); I love them.

I always start out by plotting in the darkest areas of the leaves.  These show form, and explain to the viewer the shape of the leaf as it’s described by the light falling on it.  In this case, I used a mix of Hooker green dark, Cadmium yellow (pale hue), Yellow ochre, Cobalt blue, and Winsor blue.  I sometimes test to be sure my green is mixed right by applying a tiny spot of the paint to a leaf of the plant I’m painting.  Obvisouly, when I don’t have the actual plant itself to hand I can’t check my mixing this way.

The leaves cling to the stem (they’re amplexicaul, curling around and up the stem they arise from).  Using shadow helps underline this feature.

The underside of the leaves  are a paler green.  I only plot in one line to suggest where each vein casts a shadow.

Plotting in the darkest greens on the Greater willowherb illustration

Midtones on the leaves

Next, I dilute the green paint with water, and work into the areas around the darkest parts of each leaf.  It’s vital to keep the palest areas of each leaf clear white paper at this point, with watercolour you can always make a colour darker but it’s tricky to make it paler again without muddying the painting.  Again, the structure of the leaf, dictated by the veins, is the map for laying these paler green regions down.

I leave the midribs white, painting either side of them but being sure to leave them clear of colour.  The lateral or side veins may get a layer of this green, it depends on their position in terms of where the shadows fall onto the leaves.

Second paler layer of green applied to the leaves

Painting the stems

A third green is now mixed, this is much paler and yellower than before.  Sap green mixed with cadmium yellow pale, and a touch of turquise and yellow ochre.  It’s quite a wet mix, which helps keep it pale.  I paint the margins of the stems, the calyx, and the underside of the leaves with this colour.  Then I dilute it to a paler shade and put a wash ontop of the calyx, tops of stems, pale regions of the leaves, and underside of the leaves.  The midribs get painted with some of this pale green.

The stem is flushed crimson, but I’ll add this a little later, for now this pale green gives the definition required to show its form.

Adding a paler and yellower green to pick out the stems and calyx

Seed pods and calyx

With a bluer pale green (Cobalt blue added to the mix) I pick out the seed pods and elongate areas below the flowers, then cover them with a more dilute version of the same green.  It’s important to allow the paint to dry between layers – luckily I use the paint quite dry so this doesn’t take long.

A yellow green (sap green and plenty of cadmium yellow) is used to pick out more detail in the calyx and buds.

I also use a windsor blue, hooker green dark, and purple mix to work into the darker areas of the leaves.  This requires a bit of patience, it takes a while to build up the darkest areas of shadow without swamping the entire illustration.

Working into the greens

A purplish crimson gets mixed up and popped onto the seed pods and distinctive lower bits of the flowers.  This is Crimson lake, Violet, and a bit of Vandyke brown.  I draw the edges of these structures with the paint, then once dry use an incredibly dilute verison of it as a pinkish top wash, carrying this onto the stem at the base of the Willowherb.

More work is put into darkening the darkest regions of the leaves with windsor blue, purple, and vandyke brown.  Shadows aren’t black, so a mix of richer colours is always better than using a black paint direct from the pan or tube.

Adding purplish crimsons and working into the shadows

Colouring the flowers

Now for the fun bit, getting the colour onto the flowers.  Willowherb have very distinctive pink flowers, it’s a dark magenta but slightly blueish, and very delicate.  I mix up this colour using Opera pink, a tiny bit of Cobalt blue, and Doctor Martin’s inks (Quinacridone magenta 5H).  This one bottle of ink is a key ingredient anytime I’m painting a plant with pink or purple flowers – radiant and clear without being overwhelming.

I use lots of small lines to build up both colour and flower detail, heavier toward the petal perimeters and much paler toward the centre of each flower.  The underside of the petals is paler (as with the leaves) so requires a lighter touch.

Leaving areas of white paper within the flowers is vital, too much colour and they look dull and clumsy.  This applies to the buds as well as the open flowers.

Plotting in the magenta of the flowers

As I reach the end of my illustrations I become increasingly absorbed by them, so fail to take enough “in progress” scans – apologies.  Next I put a very dilute mix of the magenta over the top of the petals and buds, again, ensuring that the entre of each flower remains almost uncoloured.

The internal structure of this Willowherb isn’t too challenging; egg yolk yellow anthers held at the top of pale green stamens, and a white stigma.  I used purple to delineate the details of this structure.

Finishing up: Flower details and shadows

Final touches are put to emphasise the darkest shadows, making sure any leaves which overlap others cast a drop shadow.

Next is the addition of the hairs.  I used a mix of Yellow ochre and Hookers green to make a greenish yellow.  Using my 000 briush I plot in the hairs over the entire plant (barring the petals, buds, and lowest stem), adding some hairs to the central regions of the stem as well as to the stem edges.

Next, I use Permanent white gouache, mixed quite thick, and the same tiny brush to pop in the hairs on the areas where structure overlaps a dark background.  Also, to suggest hariy leaves, I put a few tiny white markings on the leaf blades.

Finished!  Time for a cup of tea and to get out the next pencil rough that needs to be “coloured in”.

Final illustration of the Greater willowherb (hairs, body colour of flowers, stamens and stigma details added)

The post Step by step Great Willowherb appeared first on Lizzie Harper.