This one of the Cow parsley,  Anthriscus sylvatica, was recently done for FOR in Sweden.  It accompanied a large sheet of sketches of the same plant.  To learn more about Cow parsley, and how to identify it, check out my blog.

There’s also a Youtube film that accompanies this blog; please find a link at the end of this blog, or click here to access it.

You’ll notice that this habit sketch is less accurate than many of my illustrations.  This goes with the territory.  There’s only so much detail you can cram into a 20cm tall illustration of an entire plant, and individual petals and leaf veins don’t get a look in.  However, if you want to show a whole plant, rather than one portion of it, then a habit sketch is the best way to do this.  Alternatively, you can use a much larger format and work on a plant portrait which will be more accurate and less impressionistic.

Completed habit sketch of the Cow parsley

Habit sketch:  Pencil rough

The first thing to do when confronted with a habit sketch is to learn as much as you can about the plant.  I gather lots of specimens, and consult various botany books.  these include A Flora of the British Isles by Clapham Tutin and Moore, The Wildflowers of the British Isles by Garrard and Streeter, the pen and ink drawings of Stella Ross-Craig, Collins Flower guide by David Streeter, and (in this case) the BSBI Handbook: Umbellifers of the British Isles.

Once the plant and botanical information is collated, I draw up a pencil rough that shows each important element to its best advantage.  I use mechanical Pentel P205 pencils with an H or HB 0.5mm lead.  I draw directly onto my watercolour paper, in this case hotpress Fluid 100 by Global Arts.

One of the reasons why I use Fluid 100 is because it’s quite good at allowing you to erase your pencil lines after you’ve painted on top of them.  Various papers will, or won’t be good for this.  The way I paint means that it’s important that a paper will give up the graphite but not the paint pigments once I’ve completed an illustration.

Cow parsley pencil rough (with basal rosette and stem details)

Are leaves alternate or opposite?  Are upper leaves noticeably different from lower ones?  is there a basal rosette of leaves?  How are the flowers carried on the stems?  What does the root do?  All this information needs to be given by the illustration.

Habit sketch: Leaves

Once the client has approved the roughs, you can start adding colour.  I begin with the leaves, outlining them in green.  Winsor and Newton are my favourite watercolours, and I use pans topped up with tube colours.  I mix sap green, some cobalt blue, and a bit of cadmium yellow light together.  I keep the paint quite thick and dry at this point.  Carefully, using my trusty Series 7 sable brush (size 1), I follow the pencil lines of the leaf edges.  This approach is the same as I use when painting ferns and bracken.

Outlining the leaves

I observe my plant carefully, and add some variation to the green hue.  The central leaf is a little paler and brighter green than the others – I add yellow to the mix and outline it with this new colour.

Different greens are used to outline the leaves

Habit sketch: Top washes on leaves

Once these initial lines are dry, I add water to the greens to make them lighter and more dilute.  Then, using the same brush, I pop blobs of this watery green onto the leaves.  I love the crisp edges watercolour gives if you allow very wet paint to dry, and this is the effect I’m after here.

Watery green top wash is applied very wet

Because of the midrib veins and the way the leaves are structured, you’ll often see one side of a leaflet is darker than the other.  This needs to be included in the habit sketch.  You can either do this by going over the darker, shaded side with two layers of top-wash; or you can use a different and brighter colour for the top-wash on the lighter side of the leaflet.

Putting the first wash onto only one side of each leaflet

In this case I’ve done both.  I added some yellow to the top-wash, and covered the entire leaflet with this mix.  (I’d made sure the first and darker wash was completely dry first.)  Allow the paint to dry completely.

Two different colours of top-wash used on the leaflets

Habit sketch: Painting the stems

I actively enjoy painting stems because it’s so easy.  Mix up the right colour (as always, check with the plants in front of you.  It’s so important to keep referring to the plants you’re illustrating if you want to get details such as form and colour right).  This is a sap green plus a little yellow ochre, perhaps a touch of blue, and plenty of a clear bright yellow such as Cadmium light.

Then just outline the stems, following the pencil lines.  You can apply a little more pressure to one side of the stem than to the other.  This helps suggest a light source, and shadow.  Traditionally in botanical illustration, the light source comes from the top left, so the heavier lines are to the right of each stem.

You can also add ridges, furrows, or textures with simple lines if that’s appropriate for the species you’re working with.  With Cow parsley, the stems are ridged, prominently so towards the base of the plant.

Outlining the stems

Once the illustration is completely dry, dilute the colour you used for the stems with plenty of water.  Then simply put this watery wash over your stems and allow it to dry.

Putting a watery top-wash onto the main stem

Habit sketch: Painting the flowers

With habit sketches, the precision and detail of each flower is compromised in an effort to represent the entire plant.  So there are no individual petals to portray, just the frothy mass of flowers that constitute each umbel (or flowering head).

Illustrating white flowers is really hard – you need to show their form without making them look like they’re another colour.  For more on this subject, check out my blog or my Youtube film.  In this case, the shadows cast by each umbel are going to be key, and will be what we use to represent some tonal depth.  As with the leaves and stems, out light source is from the top left; so the shadows will fall from the right hand side of each umbel.

To ensure the flowers look clean and white, I mix a light blue.  Cerulean blue is light and bright enough.  Dilute it to a very pale tone, then pick out the shadows with the tip of your brush.

Adding shadow to the flowers

I work from the top of the plant downwards.  this helps me avoid resting my hand in wet paint and smearing the illustration.  Series 7 brushes are expensive, but they justify their cost by holding their tips.  When you’re applying tiny amounts of pale paint to the nooks and crannies of an illustration, the accuracy you can get from your tools is really important.  For more on my choice of paintbrushes, click here.

Applying blue to show shadow in the central flowers

Habit sketch: The root

The root tends to be included in a habit sketch, specially if it’s an important diagnostic feature of the species.  Please note that it’s illegal to uproot flowers in the wild – I happen to have cow parsley growing in my Aunt’s garden, and she was happy for me to unearth a few plants to get at the roots.

Illustrating these tap roots couldn’t be easier. In exactly the same way as you tackled the stems, outline the root.  I mixed some Vandyke brown with yellow ochre.  Remember to pick out the texture and root hairs, too.  Once dry, dilute the mixed colour and pop the watery top wash over the whole root.  Done.

Putting a top-wash on the Cow parsley taproot

Habit sketch: Adding shadows

Now the illustration is more or less complete, it needs shadows to bring it to life.  I favour a mix of purple and cobalt blue, sometimes with a dash of Vandyke brown.  Using this, and being really careful not to go too dark too fast, I pick out the darkest shadows.

This is an important stage.  Judicious application of shadows can help clarify muddy or messy areas of a sketch.

Adding shadows to clarify a leaf’s structure

I always put shadows below each flowering head, and frequently pick out the tips of leaves to help the eye find the edges of the illustration.

Again, because the scale of the illustration shows an entire plant, you’ll find it hard to accurately represent the shadow details on each portion of each leaf.  This is one of the drawbacks of a habit sketch.  I often find myself trying to pull in more detail than is possible.  there has to be an element of “giving the impression” of a plant when it comes to habit sketches.  I’ll admit to struggling with this looseness at times.

Fixing mistakes

Inevitably, sometimes when we paint we make mistakes.  Quite often I’ll think that a stem I painted is too wide, or perhaps a top-wash has overflowed an edge.  There’s no need to despair.

Using white gouache to fix mistakes

I use Winsor and Newton white gouache, permanent white, to fix my mistakes.  I use it really thick, straight from the tube or mixed with a tiny amount of water.  It helps sharpen up messy edges, or will hide a mistake.  It should be noted that using this is fine for your own work and for work that’s going to be reproduced (it doesn’t show up on scans); however, if you plan on selling your original artwork then the use of white gouache is frowned on.

Conclusion

And that’s it!  The illustration is finished.

Last step is to erase the underlying pencil lines.  If you’ve got a good hot press paper, you should be able to do this without damaging any of the paint (no, I don’t understand why this works either).  I’d suggest going easy on the rubbing out around the flowers as the only marks suggesting them are the pale blue shadows and the pencil.  A tougher approach can be used on the stems and leaves and root.

Hopefully, this illustration immediately suggests an entire Cow parsley plant growing in the wild.  Habit sketches tend to accompany much more detailed botanical illustrations which help clarify exact structures of stem, root, leaf, fruits, and flowers.  I find them pretty hard to illustrate, but exceptionally useful when it comes to identifying wild flowers in the field.

And now, I hope, you’ll have some idea of how to go about creating your own illustration of an entire plant; your very own habit sketch.

Completed habit sketch of Cow parsley with paint box

To see a real-time film of me completing this illustration and discussing the process, please check out the film below.  Thanks.

The post Habit sketch of Cow parsley: step by step appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

Sketchbook studies

All the botanical illustrations I do for FOR are in a sketchbook format.  I love working this way; it gives me the opportunity to include tons of details alongside a larger illustration of the whole plant.  Over the years I’ve figured out what elements I need to include for each plant, so can figure out the composition before getting started.  In general, details of flowers, fruits seeds, roots, and a cross section of the stem is needed.  These elements need to be accompanied by a habit sketch, a full colour image that shows the entire plant growing, and close ups of any unusual characteristics that the plant may have.  I always include written notes, as much to jog my own memory as to help the viewer.

Cow Parsley Sketchbook study Anthriscus sylvestris

Another appealing thing about the sketchbook studies is that you can leave parts of the illustration unfinished.  This gives me the opportunity to get into really intense detail on things like an individual leaf, or one bract.  The pressure to have the entire drawing completed in full colour is gone, which makes the process more relaxing.

Cow Parsley in the spring

For those of you who have been in the British countryside in early June, you’ll already know all about the Cow parsley.  If frothes up along hedgerows, spilling tiny white flowers out into rarely-used roads and paths.  At the same time, the May blossom is out, so you often have the wonderful sight of lots of white blossom curving down from the shrubs and trees, being met by the Cow parsley flowers growing upward from margins of fields and lanes.  It’s very beautiful.

Drawing the Cow Parsley

Umbellifers, like Cow parsley, are a real challenge to draw.  I’m sure I’ve moaned about the challenges before in blogs on Hogweeds.  The problem is that the plant is often really tall and leaves spread widely from the stem.  However, each element of the plant is tiny.  The flowering heads are made from hundreds of tiny individual flowers.  the outermost ones are zygomorphic, meaning their outermost petals are a different shape to those of the internal flowers.  The leaves are divided, or pinnate.  Sometimes divided several times over, as with the Cow parsley.  This results in very beautiful and feathery leaves.  But combining the size with the detail is very difficult, hence my aversion to all members of the Apiaceae (or Umbelliferae) family.  I love the way they look.  I live in fear of being asked to illustrate them!

This commission came in at the height of Cow parsley season.  I spent a morning gathering perfect plants, taking photos, and considering the best approach to the illustration.  Once home, I pinned an entire plant up against the trampoline in the garden, with a sheet behind.  I always take photos at the same time, sadly plants don’t live forever and some wither within hours of being picked.

Cow parsley set up to draw in the garden

Cow Parsley: Flowering times and leaves

Identifying Cow parsley is easy, mainly because of when it flowers.  It’s the earliest of these white-flowered umbellifers to bloom, especially in the southern UK.  And it’s certainly the most common.  Look for it from early April through June; by July all you’ll see is some basal leaf rosettes and seed-heads.

Cow parsley sketchbook study done back in 2015

The leaves set the plant apart from other common and similar species, such as Hogweeds.  They are 2-3 pinnate, which means they’re divided into leaflets, then each of these leaflets is sub divided.  It gives them a feathery, fern-like appearance. They tend to be a muted spring green, although can be tinged red or yellow when stressed by drought.

Cow parsley leaf variety and plant overview to show difference between small upper and large lower leaves

Leaves either grow from a basal rosette at the bottom of the plant, or alternately up the stem.  Lower leaves are borne on long, broad stalks, higher up the plant the leaves have far shorter and thinner petioles.  The big basal leaves can be up to 30cm, with individual divided lobes measuring 10 – 30mm

Cow parsley: Stems

Stems are gently ridged, and hollow.  They don’t have blotches of colour like some other Apiaceae species.  The stems can grow from 50 – 150cm, making this quite a tall plant.  Stems tend to be slightly downy at the top, and hairless down by the base of the plant.

Cow parsley stems

Cow parsley: Flowers

The frothy flowering heads of this plant family are umbels; these are lots of little groups of flowers carried on stalks or rays.  Each umbel has 6 – 12 of these rays which are about 2cm long.  The arrangement of flowers has males in the centre and hermaphrodite flowers around the margins.  Unless you’re inclined to get your hand lens out, this won’t be immediately obvious, although you’ll certainly see a difference in size between the inside and margin flowers.

Cow parsley flowers and detail of a small umbel seen from above

Each flower has 5 white petals and is 3 – 5 mm across. A whole umbel measures 10 – 60cm, but there’s plenty of variety.

There are no bracts right below the flowers, but some appear lower down.  Sepals are there but are so tiny as to be inconspicuous.  There are 5 stamen and 2 thin stigma.

The outermost flowers are zygomorphic which means their petals are of different sizes.

Cow parsley: Fruit

Fruit are 6-9mm long and carried in pairs.  They start green and become brown at maturity.  Each one has a short beak-like tip.

Cow parsley seeds

Conclusion

Why do I love Cow parsley so much?  Well, it’s a combination of factors.  The delicacy of the frond-like leaves is visually very pleasing.  The mass of scented flowers smell of the countryside.  And the way Cow parsley lines lanes and hedges is a harbinger of warmer days, and long golden hours spent revelling in an English summertime.  So, for all of these reasons, and despite the issues with detail and scale, I’m happy to go on learning and drawing this gorgeous plant.

Illustration completed for FSC guide to Flowers of Walks & Waysides

Please see my step by step Youtube film below

The post Cow Parsley: All about an Umbellifer appeared first on Lizzie Harper.