What is a Bluebell?

Bluebells are in the Asparagus family, their Latin name is Hyacinthoides non-scripta.  It’s no surprise that they’re relatives of the garden hyacinth, they share the same heady scent.

They are monocots; a division of plant that includes all the grasses, lilies, orchids, and tulips.  Shared characteristics include leaves with parallel veins, the distinct growth pattern of a seedling from a one-grained seed, fibrous roots, and flowers without differentiated sepals and petals.  These in-between structures are known as tepals.

Monocot plant variety with seedling in centre

Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta

The native Bluebell can grow up to 30cm tall.

It has glossy green strap-like leaves which are 7 – 15mm wide, with a pointed tip.  They can be 45cm long and there tend to be 3 to 6 leaves per plant. These start erect, but may flop and twist as the plant grows.

Illustrating a Bluebell leaf

The flowers are all on one side of the stalk, which often curves and droops at the top.  When mature, individual flowers dangle; as buds they can be more erect, often flushed with green.

Sketchbook study of Bluebell flowers

The flower shape is bell-like, but with parallel sides, and only opening at the mouth of the flower.  Each flower has 6 tepals, and tepal tips are strongly recurved which gives the plants that distinct frilly appearance.  They tend to be a deeper, darker blue than other Bluebell species.

Bluebell flower Hyancinthoides non-scripta

Anthers and the pollen they produce is a pale cream.

This matters because there are other species of Bluebell which can be confusingly similar.

Spanish Bluebell Hyacinthoides hispanica

The Spanish bluebell has flowers that grow all around the stem, and which point upwards.  They are often a far paler blue than H. non-scripta.  At maturity they gape with a much wider mouth than the native species.  Anthers are dark blue.  Leaves are significantly wider, up to 35mm across.

Spanish bluebell Hyacinthoides hispanica

Hybrid Bluebell Hyacinthoides x massartiana

Recently botanists have come to the conclusion that most flowers sold, and grown in gardens, are not Spanish Bluebell at all, but various hybrids.  This is because there is so much H. non-scripta pollen in the air that cross-fertilization, and back cross-breeding is almost inevitable. (Cumbria Botany – Telling Bluebells apart)

Hybrid Bluebells have erect stems with flowers growing all around them.  The mature flowers may droop, but don’t dangle vertically down as with H. non-scripta.  

Flowering spikes of native Bluebell H. non-scripta vs  the Hybrid Bluebell H. x massartiana

The mouth opens wider than the native species, but less wide than H. hispanica.  Tepal tips don’t curve back on themselves as much as with H. non-scripta, and anthers and pollen vary in colour from blue to dark grey, to a dirty pale yellow.  The flowers have a far weaker scent than the native Bluebell.

Hybrid bluebell Hyacinthoides x massartiana

For more on this, check out these useful guides to telling Bluebell species apart: Webidguides, and Cumbria Botany.  My Telling bluebell species apart blog, may be useful, although readers should substitute “Hybrid Bluebell” for “Spanish Bluebell”.

Flowers of H. non-scripta and H. x massartiana

Other names for Bluebells

Bluebells and Bluebell woods have been a part of the landscape in Britain for hundreds, or thousands of years.  They have a vast array of alternative names including English harebell, Wild hyacinth, Cuckoo’s boots, Granfer griggles, Witches’ thimbles, Lady’s nightcap, Fairy flower, and Cra’tae (Crow’s toe).  In Welsh, it’s Clychau’r Gog which translates as “Cuckoo’s bells” and references the fact that Bluebell flower around the same time that the first cuckoos come in from over-wintering in Africa.  (It’s important to note that the true Harebell Campanula rotundiflora is in a totally different family, it’s not even a monocot!)

Ancient oak woodland with Bluebells

Folklore of Bluebells

These flowers have long been associated with fairies and folk lore.  It’s said that if you pick a Bluebell flower the fairies will lead you astray, and you will be lost forever.  If you hear a bluebell ring, a bad fairy will visit you and you’ll die soon after.

Native Bluebell H. non-scripta

On a happier note, in the language of flowers they represent humility, gratitude, and constant love.  If you can turn a Bluebell flower inside out without it tearing, you will capture the heart of your one true love.

Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta in pencil

Finally, if you wear a wreath made of bluebells, you will be unable to lie.  Worth remembering.  (All these folklore facts come from the Woodland Trust’s website.)

Uses of Bluebell

Bluebells have been put to some unusual uses over the years.  In the Bronze age, arrow flights made of feather were glued on with Bluebell paste. Bookbinders used glue made from Bluebell stems.

Starch-rich Bluebell bulb

Elizabethan times saw enormous ruffs and collars which had to be starched.  Bluebell bulbs did the job perfectly.

Although Bluebells contain poisonous glycosides and can cause contact dermatitis, they have been used medicinally in the past.  They are diuretics, causing an increase in urination; and styptics too.  Styptics stop bleeding.

Pencil illustration of native Bluebell with specimen

The perfume industry sells perfumes claiming to be Bluebell scented, but the fragrance has proved too delicate and complex to reproduce commercially.  Bluebell perfumes are derived from their cousin, the hyacinth. (Premierpeu).

Bluebells and the law

When you walk through a woodland in April or May, it seems extraordinary that Bluebells need our protection.  But they do.

Bluebell wood with Redstart

Since the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside act, it has been illegal to dig up any bluebell bulbs in the UK.  It is also illegal to trade in H. non-scripta seeds and bulbs.  Although not against the law, it’s unnecessary and destructive to pick hand-fulls of the flowers.  Not only does this deprive insects like butterflies, bees and hoverflies from early spring sources of nectar, it also damages the leaves.  Once trampled, leaves struggle to recover and can no longer photosynthesize.  So tread with care!

Bluebells as indicators

The Bluebell is an indicator species, growing in areas which were once ancient woodland.  If you see native Bluebells growing in a field or by the side of a road, it’s proof that the area was once wooded with broadleaf species like Ash, Oak, Beech, and Birch.  They thrive in woodland over 400 years old, and are invaluable for ecologists trying to map habitats, and habitat loss.

Illustrating a Bluebell (bulb illustrated from 18th C engraving)

Kew gardens has been tracking the first opening of a Bluebell flower for 50 years, and use this data to help understand climate change.  Bluebells are opening 2 weeks earlier than they did 30 years ago.

Conclusion

Despite threats of habitat loss, climate change, and hybridization; Bluebells remain a firm fixture of the British countryside.  With over 50% of all native Bluebells growing in the UK, Bluebell woods are a visual treat to savour, and be proud of.

Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta

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Family

Nasturtium are members of the Tropaeolaceae.  Members are succulent with alternate leaves and flowers borne singly on stems.  They’re climbing vines, originating in South America.  Other species seen in gardens include the clambering Flame nasturtium Tropaeolum speciosum, and the yellow flowered Canary creeper Tropaeolum peregrinum.  Both have lobed leaves, unlike T. majus.

Nasturtium flowers

Flowers are zygomorphic (bilaterally symmetrical) and have five petals.  They are between 2.5 and 6 cm across.  The upper two petals are similar, and differ in shape and size from the lower three.  These have distinctive fringes in the mouth of the corolla, possibly relating to pollinating and nectar guides.  They tend to be orange and yellow, although some are red or a dark crimson.

There is an immediately recognizable spur at the back of the flower which is where the nectar is stored.

Pollen is produced by 8 stamens.  There is one style with three stigma, and a three-celled ovary.

The calyx is made of five sepals which vary in size and shape like the petals.

Nasturtium seeds

Seeds are a three-celled schizocarp (for more on seed anatomy take a look at my blog).  These break into three succulent segments, each of which contains a seed.

Nasturtium seeds are really large, and germinate readily.  This makes them ideal for planting with young kids.

Leaves of the nasturtium

Instantly recognizable, nasturtium leaves are alternate, and round with a centrally attached stalk and radiating veins.  They are thin with smooth margins, and are waterproof, shining a beautiful silver when submerged in water.

Pollination

In their native South America, nasturtium are pollinated by hummingbirds as well as by insects.  This may explain the red (as well as yellow and orange) flowers, which are easier for birds to find than insects (for more on this fascinating topic, check out Miguel Rodriguez-Girones’ article in PLoS.

Here in the UK they’re pollinated by long-tongued bees such as the Common carder Bombus pascuorum and the Garden bumblebee Bombus hortensus.

Garden Bumblebee Bombus hortorum

Etymology

The Latin name was coined by Linneaus, amazing taxonomist and naturalist, when he introduced the plant to European gardens in the 18^th century.

He thought the helmet-shaped flowers and flat, shield-like leaves resembled trophies from Roman times. These were known as “Tropoeum”.  After a victory, legionaries would put these shields and helmets on poles for all to see.

The English name, nasturtium, derives from the Latin “nasus tortus” or “nose twister”.  The peppery flavour of the plant explains this.  It’s no coincidence that the Latin name for the equally fiery watercress is Nasturtium officinale.

The unrelated Watercress Nasturtium officinale

Other European countries, such as Spain, Italy, Germany and France, have common names based on “cappuccio”, the Latin for hood.  These relate to the flower shape.

Edibility

All parts of the plant are edible, with a fiery mustardy flavour.

In her book The Garden Forager (which I was lucky enough to illustrate), Adele Nozedar suggests adding the flowers to salads.  Or stuffing them with cream cheese and mint.  Or even with vanilla ice cream!  She also includes a recipe for Nasturtium-leaf soup from President Eisenhower, and tells how to pickle the seeds in white-wine vinegar.

Medicinal nasturtiums?

All of the nasturtium is rich in vitamin C, so the plant was used to prevent scurvy.  It was also used to prevent hair loss, as a paste of the fiery follicles was thought to stimulate the hair follicles.

Pests

Despite being easy to grow and hardy up ’til the first frost, nasturtium are beset with pests.

Aphid congregate at the apex of stalk and leaf.

Aphid (with rose leaves)

Cabbage white butterfly caterpillars (also known as Large white Pieris brassicae) devour the leaves, leading some gardeners to suggest planting nasturtium as a “trap crop” to deter pests from vegetables like kale and cabbage (Horticulture magazine) , while others argue that companion planting may actually attract more pests (The Spruce).

Compost bin with nasturtium growing in and over it

Conclusion

It’s common to have favourite plants and flowers, and no surprise that the nasturtium is one of mine.  With its’ grow-ability, draw-abilty, and edibility…what’s not to love?

https://youtu.be/XGeSNvRmhBM

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Water-violet Hottonia palustris

The Water-violet is a native UK aquatic plant, also known as Featherfoil.  It features in the FSC’s Guide to Waterside Flowers, along with about 38 other botanical illustrations.  As with lots of aquatic species, the challenge is representing water and showing the differences between submerged leaves, and those above the water level (if any are).

This species has whorls of fine pinnisect leaves below the surface.  It bears a flowering spike of pretty mauve flowers and some of the leaves and stems are evergreen through the winter.

Drawing up the Water-violet

This sounds easier than it is.  Finding reference to show the way the leaves behave below water is tough.  I rely heavily on past illustrations and engravings, along with photos.  Unfortunately, the plant was not growing near me, and the seasons were against us.  In general, it’s easier to work from life.

I combine several sources to create a pencil drawing which shows the plant and its’ relation to the water level.  I always show emergence from water the same way, with concentric rings of blue paint, faded on the outer edge.  I include information on roots and stem as this is important.

Rough Water violet Hottonia palustris

Materials

This illustration is done on  Fluid 100 by Global Arts using Winsor and Newton watercolours and a Winsor and Newton Series 7 sable brush (size 1).  Paint colours used are Cobalt Blue and Cobalt Blue, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Lemon, Sap Green, Opera Rose, Intense Blue, Vandyke Brown and Winsor Violet.

Painting Water

The first step is to illustrate the water and the ripples around the emergent stem.  Using Intense blue, I paint in some concentric circles, swiftly softening their edges with clean water.

Using tissue or toilet paper, I blot the edges of the blue rings.  This is as much to dry the paint so that I can get on with the painting as for any artistic reason!

Next, I use a dilute blue to show the “horizon line” of the water.  I use the same colour to further soften the edges of the ripples.  Leave some white paper to show highlights on the water or the ripple effect won’t work.

Diluting the blue further, I put a very pale very wet wash over the edges of the horizon.  This softens the blues and makes the water look more natural.  I repeat the process for the ripples, and manage to leave some white there too.

Once the pale blues are dry, I add some very thin darker blue lines.  These sharpen the ripples and throw the white highlights into a more intense contrast.

Illustrating the plant: Stems and buds

I mix a pale green from Lemon Yellow, Sap Green, and a touch of Yellow Ochre.  If it looks too bright, add a tiny bit of Winsor Violet to knock the intensity back a little.  Using a dry brush technique, I outline the stem, buds, and calyxes.  The lines are thicker and heavier on the right hand side of the plant.  This tricks the eye into seeing that side as in the shadow, and correlates to the botanical illustration convention of having a light source coming from the top left hand corner.

Where the leaves overlap the stem I paint around them.  They are a bluer colour, and will be painted in later on.

Below is a close-up of the flowering spike showing how the outline on the right of the plant is heavier than that on the left.  You can also add colour below the attachment nodes of the flowers and calyx.

I carefully pick out the line of the stem below the ripples.  The aim is to suggest the stem is there behind the ripples, under the water.  Too strong of a line stops the illusion of ripples sitting on top of, or above the stem.  I dilute the green with clean water and add a wet top wash which gives body to the stem of the plant.

Adding the leaves of the Water-violet

Once the stem is fully dry, I mix a green for the leaves.  This is Cobalt Blue, Cerulean Blue, Winsor Violet, Cadmium Yellow Pale, and a little Vandyke Brown.  Carefully outlining each filament of each leaf, I plot in the whorls and fronds.  Hopefully our earlier work with the water will create the illusion of these being underwater.

As before, there is more weight on the right hand side of each leaf midrib.  Where the sections overlap I add a little more paint, suggesting a shadow cast by one leaf overlapping another.

Below is a close up that shows how simple this approach is.  The leaf is literally just outlined in green paint, slightly heavier on the right than on the left hand side.  Thin leaves are a welcome relief, they are much easier to illustrate than those with large, flat surfaces.

Once dry, I dilute the leaf green with water and paint this wash over the whole leaf.  I finish each brush stroke at a point that is a little darker in nature, in this case it’s at the tip of each filamentous leaf lobe.

Next I mix the diluted leaf green with the diluted stem green and when everything is dry, paint this over all the leaves.  This gives the suggestion of the mid ribs being slightly paler than the leaf blades.

Illustrating the Calyx and adding shadow to the stem

I use this same green mix on the calyx, the green whorl at the base of each flower.  First I plot in the central line of each calyx lobe.  Once dry I paint the far side, on the right, with a layer of the same colour.  Allowing this to dry before adding a second more dilute coat of the same green gives the impression of the right hand side of the plant being more shaded than the left hand side.  There’s a pattern emerging here!

At this point, finding myself dissatisfied with the saturation and hue of the leaves, I add a dilute bluer top wash.  This is Sap Green plus Cobalt Blue and plenty of clean water.

I use the same dilute blue-green to plot in the shadows cast on the stem by the pale pink flowers.  You can see this clearly in the next image down.

Illustrating the Water-violet flowers

Before starting work on the flowers it’s vital to have a clean brush and clean water.  It’s also a good excuse to make a cup of tea as I have to go to the kitchen anyway, to change the water, wash the palette of my paint box, and rinse my brush under the tap.

The first step is to mix the perfect delicate pink-violet.  This is Opera Rose plus a touch of Cerulean Blue.  And plenty of clean water,  Initially, I outline each petal and add a central vein.  Using a very light touch and the tip of the brush, I use parallel paint marks to add colour and depth to the flowers.  These are anchored on the outside edge of the petal.  This species has flowers with paler yellow centres, so weighting the petal colour outwards echoes the colouration found in nature.

The next picture gives an idea of the scale we are working at.  Each flower is smaller than a 1p coin, so a reliable watercolour brush with a sharp tip that isn’t about to spit paint all over the paper is paramount.

Adding detail to the Water-violet flowers

Once the pink petals are dry I add the yellow centre and the stamens. This is a mix of Lemon Yellow and Cadmium Yellow Pale.  Each flower has five stamens emerging from the corolla tube.  The Water-violet is a member of the Primulaceae family, and now the similarities between the flowering form of the Water violet and the Primrose are clear.

Adding Shadow

As all the elements of the illustration are complete, I add shadows.  I often use the same colour mix for these, Cobalt Blue and Winsor Violet.  Anywhere there is overlap, just add a touch of the shadow mix.  This helps disentangle the different parts of the illustration and it also makes it more visually satisfying.  I think a big part of how we see is differentiating between lights and darks, which explains why sharp shadows are so welcome.

Shadows are added to the flowers, too.  It’s the same mix, a blue-purple, but very much diluted.

Finshing

The last stage is to take a close look at the illustration and add any final darks to the areas in deepest shadow.  If there are mistakes and areas that need to be highlighted, I use white gouache and a careful brush point (the same Winsor and Newton brush as I use for the watercolour work).  Sometimes I erase the pencil lines, but this can damage the paper.  Increasingly I find leaving pencil lines in place helps keep an illustration clear, especially if there are very pale or white flowers.  (For more on painting white flowers check out my blog and Youtube film).

Conclusion

This plant is comparatively easy to illustrate, thanks to the thin segments of the leaves.  But my approach to painting all botanical subjects is similar. Outline, add a wash, pick out the shadows.  The toughest part is definitely representing ripples and an aquatic habit, and showing that the plant is emerging from the water.

One of the treats of my job is seeing my illustrations in context, and this one looks great alongside the other 41 species featured on the FSC’s Waterside flowers guide.  Unfortunately you’ll have to take my word for it as it doesn’t appear on the two pages of the guide featured on the FSC’s website!

Completed Water violet Hottonia palustris 

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Reference

I took a decent photo of a young Red deer stag a long time ago, and based the illustration on this.  The advantage of using your own photos is that you don’t infringe anyone’s copyright.

My own photo of a young male Red deer buck

However, there are various aspects that make this photo far from perfect.  The “mane” at the throat is not pronounced.  The colour is very washed out.  I can’t see the hooves in detail.  So I got some other reference from the internet that solved these problems.

Painting: Under layer

Once I’d drawn up the Stag (on Stonehenge aqua hotpress watercolour paper) I mixed Sepia with Winsor violet and Light red (all Winsor & Newton watercolour paints) and plotted in the areas of shadow, using brush marks to echo the growth pattern of the fur.  These days I tend to use a Princeton Velvetouch brush (size 2), which is a synthetic.  (For much more on my quest for a good synthetic paintbrush, check out my blog series.)

Initial mid tones added

My nest step was very different to what I usually do.  I mixed up three watery colours, and used these to plot in the tonal differences of the deer.  I normally reserve this wash for the every end of an illustration, but was curious to see what happened if I switched the timing of this wash.

The Colours were a diluted dark brown (as in the mix above), a dilute reddish brown (Sepia plus plenty of Light red), and a brown-orange (Light red with a touch of Cadmium orange.)

Undercoat wash added

Adding Detail

Usually, I add detail to the body first and leave the head until the end.  But in the spirit of experimentation, I completed the head first.  I made the eye too large, so had to come in with some white gouache.  I also forgot that the pupils of deer’s eyes are lateral slits rather than round, so this had to be altered later on.  The face is a darker brown than the body, so the mix was Sepia plus Winsor violet plus Winsor green (yellow hue).

Adding detail to the neck and face of the deer

The next step takes a long time and requires plenty of patience (and something good to listen to on the radio!).  Using the same three colour mixes, in a less diluted form, I build up the body colour of the stag using lots and lots of tiny brush strokes.  These strokes follow the line of fur growth and give texture as well as colour.

I started with the Reddish brown mix, more or less across the entire animal.  Then I added dark browns to the legs, more to the neck, to the belly and rear end.  The third layer was the Brown-orange, covering up the highlights but adding a lighter brown tone to show where the light hits the animal.

Finally, I mixed a very dark brown by altering the ratios of Sepia, Winsor violet, and Winsor green.  This was used to pick out and add real depth to the shadows on the neck and legs.  Adding the hooves and detail to the antlers were the last steps.

Completed illustration with paint-box and brushes

Conclusion

Switching the timing of when the loose colour wash was added was useful.  it helped provide information on tone which always helps when you add the detailing.  I’m quite happy with the finished illustration, although the use of white gouache on the face and rump is a bit of a shame.  However, it needed to be done because I’d not got the tonal balance correct.  It could have looked worse.

Completed Red deer

The main aim was to improve on the (rather poor) last Red deer I’d illustrated.  And I’m glad to say this has been achieved.

Previous illustration of Red deer

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I love geraniums, and am especially fond of the variegated leaves some types have with their circles of cream, green, and red. I think a geranium like this one is my favourite house plants which shows leaf variegation.

Ninety percent of all wild geraniums come from South Africa, and they’re hardy plants (although frost can kill them). There are loads of different types available from garden centres, and those whose leaves are striped with white and red areas are called Zonal geraniums (or Pelargoniums).  However, it’s tricky to tell geraniums and pelargoniums apart, as this blog from NZ Stuff explains.

This step by step blog follows on from my blogs on pattern.

Geranium and pelaronium sketchbook study

When I was researching why some plants have warning colouration, I found that flower petals of these Zonal geraniums paralyze the Japanese beetle Popillia japonica, a common garden pest in the US.  They do this by by mimicking insect neurotransmitters.  Thinking back to my blog on stripes, perhaps our striped leaf is a form of warning colouration?

On with the illustration.  The plant used in this step by step is Geranium “Mrs. Pollock”.

Choosing and Drawing a leaf

When you choose your plant, make sure it’s one with plenty of leaves, and with distinct markings that you can illustrate.  It might help to take the leaf off the plant so you can examine it better.

First step is to draw up the leaf in pencil.  Begin by drawing a rough suggestion of the leaf shape, and use the leaf veins as guides.

Rough outline of Pelargonium leaf

Work into the line drawing, looking for the shapes of each leaf lobe, and for the wide teeth on the leaf edge.  Plot in the lines where the red anthocyanin pigment first appears, and where the green pigment area ends.  A quick sketch so you don’t lose track of what colours go where can be helpful, and can be rubbed out later.

Look closer at the veins and draw the side veins.  You’ll be leaving these as white for a while, so feel free to give them a touch of thickness by using two pencil lines instead of one if it helps.

Detailed pencil drawing of Pelargonium leaf

Variegation: Adding greens

Now mix up a soft green. Daniel Smith Spring green, Cobalt blue, and a touch of Naples yellow works well.  Using little brush marks and looking at the leaf, start painting in the darker areas of green.  Look for patterns in the way the shadows fall.  Having a good strong light helps with this, a daylight lamp behind the left shoulder works wonders.  There are deeper greens down where the radial veins meet, and on the right hand of the central vein.  It’s a bit darker on the underside of the branching veins.  Let the paint dry.

Deep greens are added to the leaf

Make a tint of your green by diluting it with clean water.  Lay this on top of the painting, making sure to leave the veins as thin unpainted areas.  Leave paler areas in the middle of each leaf section, but try to blend the green in with the little brush marks. Ideally, it’s an easy visual transition between the pale and darker green.  Don’t worry about your pencil lines, you can rub them out later.

Main greens are completed

Variegation: Adding Cream

Mix a pale yellow. Naples yellow plus a dash of Pale cadmium yellow is the right sort of thing.  Keeping it dilute, pick out the edges of the leaf and the same shadows cast by the veins as before.  This area of leaf isn’t white, despite having no green cholorphyll.  Background pigments like carotenoids and flavonoids give that creamy colour.  Again, be sure to leave the white of the paper for your highlights.

Cream margins are added

Blend these areas of cream into the rest of the leaf margin with a tint of your yellow mix.  Once that’s dry, mix up more of your pale yellow and paint it over the entire leaf, including the veins.  Let it dry.  Using light pencil, you can draw in outside edges of the red, if you’ve not already done so.  It’s easier to see what’s going on now there’s some colour down.

Geranium leaf plus pencil guide to red areas

Variegation: Adding reds

Time for the red anthocyanin pigments.  This is a tricky colour to mix; it’s somehow crimson and bright orange-red at the same time.

We also have to be incredibly careful not to allow the addition of the red on top of the green to make a muddy mess, so go carefully.  Try mixing Alizarin crimson, Opera rose, and Cadmium orange.  Keep experimenting with your mix til it matches the reds on the leaf.

Starting on the inside edge of the red pigments, use tiny outward-pointing brush strokes.  Before these fully dry, go over them with a slightly paler, wetter red.  Be super careful not to let the red get muddy. Pull this scarlet out over the variegated pale margin, making sure it’s paler than the crimson you first applied. Let this dry and very carefully outline the vein edges in red.  Your leaf may well look a bit rubbish at this stage, but don’t panic.

Geranium leaf plus reds

Variegation: Adding shadow

Mix up a darker green, perhaps by adding purple to your existing green mix.  Pop a watery tint on this on top of the whole green area, including over the red areas.  Be careful not to mix the red and the green.  Let it dry fully.

Using a green darkened with blue or purple, pick out your darkest areas of green leaf.  The base of the leaf and right hand side of the central vein are darker, and there are tiny darker areas by the other veins.

Look for darker regions at the creamy edge.  With a delicate touch, pick these out with a mix of your pale yellow and a dash of green.  Using this to clarify the leaf edges helps pull the illustration into focus.

Once it’s dry, use a soft eraser to rub out the pencil lines.  Some watercolour papers handle this better than others, you can be quite vigorous with Fluid 100 HP and not harm the painting.

Geranium leaf with shadows added

Conclusion

Illustrating different colours on one leaf is not impossible, and feels far more frightening than it turns out to be.  Variegated leaves are beautiful, and well worth further examination.  Once you’ve given this leaf a whirl, a whole load of new subjects become available, and many are houseplants that can be painted year round.  For more on leaf variegation, check out my blog.

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Materials

I always use the same materials.  Draw up the flower in pencil, using a Pentel P205 mechanical pencil.  My current favourite paper is Fluid 100 hot press watercolour paper, using Winsor and Newton watercolour paints, and a Winsor and Newton series 7 sable brush (size 1).  In this particular illustration, the colours I’ve used are:  Cadmium yellow, Winsor blue, Cadmium yellow light, Purple, Pthalo green, Ywellow ochre, Cobalt blue, Burnt sienna, Burnt umber, Cadmium orange, Opera pink, Purple lake, and Alizarin crimson.  However, I’m a bit chaotic with my paints; filling up the pans from tubes etc, and am never 100% what the names of the colours I’m using are!

Pencil drawing

I draw up the Great burnet, along with a close up of one flower.  For this, I use excellent online websites such as Wildlfower finder, Nature spot, and Kew’s Plants of the World site; along with my reference books.  These tend to include the New Flora of the British Isles by Stace, HarperCollins Guide to Wild flowers by David Streeter, the collected illustrations of Stella Ross-Craig, and Wild flowers of the British Isles by Streeter and Gerrard.

These resources are vital, especially when the flower I’m drawing isn’t in bloom.

The pencil illustration is done direct onto the watercolour paper and sent to the client for feedback.  Once alterations have been made and approved, I start painting.

Pencil drawing of the Great burnet plant

Step 1: Laying down detail onto the leaves – painting the first side of each leaflet

I start with the leaves, and this first layer gives a lot of information.  I look closely at all my reference, and search for patterns in the way the light falls on the foliage.  Traditionally in botanical illustration, your light comes from top left, so shadows follow this plan.  Once you’ve figured out how the shadows will fall, you can apply this to all the leaves.  Obviously, when I have the plant in front of me it’s far simpler, I just paint what I see.

The mix of colours for the Great burnet is Cadmium yellow, Winsor blue, Cadmium yellow light,  a touch of purple, and a dash of a blue-green, like Pthalo green.  the paint is mixed to the consistency of cream, so looks pretty solid when applied to the paper.

Colour mix for the details of the leaves

In general, if there are lots of dark mid-tones on the left of the central vein of a leaf, you can reproduce this across the plant, flipping sides if you have leaves on both sides of a central axis.  In truth, these are leaflets, paired and opposite on a central stem.  To make the pattern clearer, I initially added the leaf veins, mid-tones, and details to only one side of each leaflet.

Working into the darks on one side of the mid-rib

In the photo below, you can see how one side of every leaflet has been treated in the same way.  The unpaired terminal leaflets need care as they’re not quite the same.  Looking at a similar terminal leaflet for inspiration (I referred to a fallen Rowan leaf) can help untangle your lights and darks.

One side of each leaflet is painted

Step 2: Paint the other side of each leaflet

Using exactly the same paint mix, I plot in the detail on the other side of each leaflet.

If the darks are heavy toward the central vein of a leaf, there’s likely to be less shadow on the other side, with darks seen more towards the leaf edge.  This relates to the physical structure of a leaf.  The reason for a shadow is because something (in this case some of the leaf blade) is casting a shadow.  It’s unusual for both sides of a leaf to bulge up toward the central vein, normally one will hit the light whilst the other sits in its shadow.

You can reduce this to a repeatable pattern.  Again, it’s always better to work from live material if you can, because these regular patterns, even when closely based on reference phtos, aren’t true to nature’s individuality.

Detail with both sides of the leaflets painted in

Once you’ve completed this step, you can see the skeleton of your leaves on the page.  There’s even a visual suggestion of whether or not the final illustration will look realistic, in terms of the balance of lights and darks.

Completed plant with the details of all leaflets plotted in

Detail of Completed leaflet details

Below is a detail showing how the pattern of darks flips on either side of the central leaf-stem.  To see it more clearly, look for where the darks cling to the mid-rib or ventral vein, and then note how that’s flipped in the other leaflet. This also shows the slightly different approach to the shadows falling on the terminal leaflet, basing darks down towards where the stem joins the leaf blade.

In all cases, I keep the central vein white.

In watercolour, your highlights and palest areas are the white of the paper, so you really need to keep these clear of paint in they;re going to be paler than the surrounding areas.  They’ll be knoced back under a colour wash at a later stage.

Detail of two leaflets and a terminal leaflet, plotted in

Sep 3: First top wash on the darker side of each leaflet

Once all the detailing is dry, I put the first wash on top of the painting.  This will only be applied to one side of the leaflets, the darker side.

The paint is the same mix as above, but with some more light yellow, and diluted with clean water.  With watercolour painting, you make a colour paler by diluting it with water, not be adding white.

Using the paint wetter than before, I paint over the whole of one side of the leaf, taking the paitn into the tips of the margin teeth, and allowing it to sit quite wet on the page.

Top wash number 1 – same green mix as before with water and more yellow added

Allowing the paint to dry from a wet puddle means the edges of the paint can give a crisp line which can be very beautiful.  It’s vital to allow the paint to fry fully though, before moving onto the next layer of colour wash.

Applying the top wash to one side of each leaflet

In the photo below you can see how wet the paint is on the page, and how the pigment is concentrated towards the edge of the leaf.  This effect remains once the paint is dry.

Close up of two leaves with wet top wash drying

Below, you can see the whole illustration as that first wash dries on the page.

Whole plant with first wash drying

Step 4: Second wash on leaves

Mix up a paler version of the colour above, using it as your base.  Add water, more yellow, a touch of yellow ochre.  This mix looks really quite watery as it’s quite pale and dilute.

This time, I put the wash on top of both sides of every leaflet; both the side which already has a layer of colour on it, and the other side.  yet again we’re leaving the mid rib veins as white paper.

Top wash mix two: Add water, yellow, and yellow ochre to the first wash

The effect here is that the side of the leaves which already have a dried layer of colour on now appear darker than the ones which have only just had their first layer.  The benefit is that because the colour has covered the entire leaflet, this difference looks natural rather than clunky.

Detail of one leaf with second colour wash drying

When you see this applied to all the leaves on the plant, it doesn’t look too dramatic at all, quite naturalistic.  But that distinction between lighter and darker sided of the leaf remains.

Whole plant with second colour wash drying

As before, it’s crucial to allow the wash to dry completely before continuing to work into the painting.  You can hurry things along if you like, by using a fan heater or a hairdryer.

Step 5: Picking out the darks

I pick out the darkest bits of each leaf with the tip pf my brush, and some judicious decision making.  Don’t add too much dark, or the plant changes colour.  Too little dark, and the leaves look flat.  You want something in between, where the deepest shadows are picked out, but the leaves remain that same hue of green.

The colour we mix here is the same consistency as our first colour, something close to cream.  Colours for this mix are Cobalt blue, purple, and a Pthalo green. It looks less stark when laid on top of the green of the leaves, but I’ll use the same shade to pic out the darkest areas of the flowers and the stem, too.

Mix for the darks: Cobalt blue, Pthalo green (or a blueish green) and purple.

The darkest areas tend to be at the tips of the leaflet teeth, and close to the central margin.  You also need to pop darks where one leaf casts a shadow on top of the one below, and where a leaf curls back on itself.

Working into the darks near the centre of the leaf rosette

In the photo below you can see that the marks made with the dark paint are the same as those initial ones made with the first green.  They’re tiny individual brush marks, following the line of growth.  And they’re certainly not covering the whole of the leaf blade.  Be juducious with these darks or everything gets muddy.

Detail of leaves once the darkest darks have been picked out

Step 6: Stems

Let the leaves dry so you don’t end up resting a hand on wet paint and smudging it.

Now I mix up the colour for the stems.  This is still based on that initial green, but by now it’s become much paler and much more watery. Add lots of yellow to the second top wash, until you get a very yellowish bright green.

Using a steady hand and the tip of the brush, I follow the lines of the stem.  I press slightly harder on the right hand side of the stem, this leaves a marginally thicker line, which registers as a slightly darker edge.

Stem colour mix: All those greens from before (Cadmium yellow, Winsor blue, Cadmium yellow light, Yellow ochre, purple, Pthalo green, extra yellow and LOTS of water)

Let these two lines sit for about 60 seconds; long enough to stain the page but not so long that they’re totally immobile on the paper.  Then I use a more watery version of the stem colour, and with one brush stroke, paint on top.  An extra blob of stem colour at the base and below leaves gives the suggestion of shadow.  Allow to dry

If the stem is ridged, as it is here, be sure to put in an extra line to show the angle.  Once the top layer is dry, you cna add a second layer of colour to show that the stem has a facet which is turned away form us, and which is marginally darker as a result.

Painting the stems and handling the angled, cut stem

Step 7: Outlining the flowers

This mix was a challenge.  The flowers are a really unusual dark brownish red, and I would have loved to have a few actual specimens to look at.  However, I was limited to the colours on engravings and in photos.

This mix, created in a different part of the paint-box to your greens, has that same cream-like consistency.  It’s a mix of Purple, Cadmium orange dark, a pink red like Alizarin crimson, and a warm purple (like purple lake).

Colour of the flowers: Purple, orange, pinkish reds

Outline each flower with this colour, trying not to let the paint to get messy or run.  Once dry, add a bit of blue to your flower colour and paint in the square spaces between the individual florets.

I also put a suggestion of detail at the centre of each floret; just four little lines.  This is to help point the eye to the flower’s middle.

Having outlined each flower, plot in the spaces between them

As always, allow the paint to dry fully and completely.

Entire illustration with the flowering heads plotted in

Step 8: Add colour to the flowers

Each of these florets is tiny, so the challenge is to get some colour onto the flowers without losing detail and definition.  I admit I didn’t entirely succeed in this, I got tied up ith leaving white paper for the bright yellow anthers, and this compromised the colour of each flower.

The mix for the body of each petal is as before; purples, oranges, pinky-reds.  But with an added dash of red, and a touch of a bright pink like Opera rose.

Colour mix for the flower body: As for the outlines of the flowers, but with more red and some bright pink like Opera rose

I focus this colour towards the centre of each floret, and where one overlaps another.  Keep the colour fairly light.  The whites of the page here help the eye distinguish between the different florets, so we need to be sure it doesn’t all get swallowed up in reds.

Working into the petal colour

Let the paint dry fully.

Step 9: Add a Pink top wash to the flowers

Dilute your reddish colour with water and add a dash of a bright pink.  Keeping the paint very dilute and watery, lay it over the best part of the flowers youve painted, leaving the occassional bit of white, and the spaces where the golden anthers are going to sit white.

Great burnet flowering head with top wash of pink applied

Let this pale wash dry before the next step, adding the golden anthers.

Top colour for the flowers: That same pink body colour, but diluted with lots of water and with a bit of pink added

Step 10: Finish the flowers, then finish the painting

Using a golden colour from your paint-box, unmixed, like a Cadmium yellow dark, just paint a little circle where each anther should be.  Once dry, use a slightly dilute brighter and paler yellow, and pop a dot on top.  Allow to dry.

I left the pencil lines to suggest the stamen filaments; you could go over these with a pale grey or a pale blue if you prefer.

Adding the anthers

The next step is to plot in the woody stem and roots with a reddish brown mixed from Burnt Sienna, reds, and Burnt umber.

Final touches are knocking back those leaf midribs with a watery yellow green, and looking for more darks.  Anywhere that needs crisping up, giving dark edges, adding depth of shadow…pop some of that blue and purple mix on.

Completed illustration with paints and references

I colour up the individual flower details, using the same mixes as were used for the main illustration.

And there you have it…finished!

This approach can be used for illustrating most wild flowers, so long as you have decent reference materials.  The outline, adding darks, adding layers of top wash, then picking out the deepest darks.  But, like I always say, if you can get your hands on living specimens, you’ll be making life a whole lot easier for yourself!

Completed Great Burnet illustration

The post Great Burnet Step by Step appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

If you’ve come from the youtube film and just want a printable PDF to work with, please scroll to the bottom of the page)

Learning about Orchids

I decided this was the perfect time to try and learn a bit about orchid flowers, so I could stop being scared of them.  Consulting Common Families of Flowering Plants by Hickey & King, Understanding the Flowering Plants by Bebbington, and The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms by Hickey & King I pieced together a diagram.  I drew it up and labelled it, and will use it anytime I’m asked to illustrate and orchid.

The take home message is that the whole orchid flower is twisted upside down.  Yes, I know.  But if you look at its’ pedicel (where the inferior ovary is) you can even see the twisted striations.  Why?  So that the large, flat Labellum petal can act as a broad landing mat for pollinators.  Different types twist in different ways.   Our Marsh orchid has managed a Resupinate twist, basically a 180 degree flip.

The Labellum, or base petal, often has a spur growing back from it.  There are two wing petals, in the case of my Early Marsh orchid these are help up above the flower, like hands flung up in an act of surrender.  Then there’s the Outer perianth and inner perianth(also referred to as the Median and lateral sepal).  Inside these are the paired Polliniums.

Diagram of a Pollinia and within an orchid flower

Orchid Reproduction

Orchids don’t always need insect pollinators and some can self-fertilize, but when they do want pollinating they are incredibly clever.  Some mimic female insects to lure lust-filled males to them, then glue the pollinium to them.  Others, like the Fragrant orchid, will glue the pollinium to the tongue of a feeding butterfly, perfectly positioning it to fertilize the sticky stigmatic area on the next orchid it visits. Pollinium get attached to legs, eyes, backs…and carried onto the next orchid where fertilization occurs.

Orchid bee Euglossa cybelia with Cycnoches guttulatum orchid

Pencil roughs and alterations

The first pencil rough needed tweaking as the plant was too tall.  This involved ditching a pair of leaves and re-drawing the bottom of the stem and the orchid bulb (pseudo bulb).  Getting feedback from botanists is very welcome, it means I feel confident in the accuracy of my illustrations.

Pencil rough with feedback

Materials

I’m using Stonehenge Aqua hotpress watercolour paper, Winsor & Newton pans (topped up from tubes), and (incredibly for me) use the synthetic Princeton Neptune Round brush throughout.  (For more on this, please check out my blogs on Synthetic alternatives to the Winsor & Newton series 7 sable brushes)

Leaves

The leaves of this plant are described as a light, spring green, although they seem to vary a lot in the photos.  However, unlike the Spotted orchids (close relatives), they are entirely green.

Common spotted orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii

Mixing Sap green, Cobalt blue, and Cadmium lemon, I start by outlining wach leaf then plotting in the longditudinal parallel veins. Once dry, I make a lighter tint of this green by adding lots of water, and a touch of Cerulean blue.  I paint this over all the leaves, then leave it to dry.

Another paler wash goes on top of this, and the difference between the underside and top of the leaf blade is suggested with a slight difference in colour (a little milkier and bluer below)

Once dry, I pick out the darks by mixing Sepia with Cobalt blue and a touch of Winsor Green (yellow hue).  Go easy, you really just want these dark areas to show definition, not to darken the leaves.

Roots

Each root is outlined in a brown made from Sepia, the green mixed for the leaf, and Yellow ochre.  The pseudobulbs and plotted in with a pale brown made from Yellow ochre and Naples yellow.

Whilst wet, I use tiny blobs of the darker root brown to add texture.  When the paint is dry, I suggest shadows with a mix of Sepia and Cobalt blue.

Stem

Using a dilute and yellowish tint of the greens, I paint in the stem, being sure to suggest the parallel veins and a slight shadow on the right hand side.  traditionally, the light source in botanical illustration comes from the top left, so shadows behave accordingly.

Flowers

There are between 10 and 70 flowers per inflorescence on this species of Orchid, so it’s worth pulling out one flower and paitning it in more detail.  I do this, and emphasize the twist in the column,  The colour is vital in this sub-species, being described as “bright red”, “brick red”, “scarlet”, “orange-infused red”, and “markedly redder than other orchids”.  Close and repeated consultation of all my reference gives it as something of a reddish maroon.  I make this hue from Alizarin crimson, Cadmium red, and Opera rose.

The other vital diagnostic in the Early Marsh Orchid is that the sides of the Labellum are inflexed, curled back on themselves.  This means the flower looks narrower than many similar orchids, and that the central keel of the labellum is raised, almost like the keel of a boat.  This proved excrutiatingly tricky to illustrate, although I tried my best.

Flowers vs Bracts

I feel a bit weak looking at that big inflorescence, it’s s hard to figure out what’s orchid and what’s bract, or flower column. First thing to do is separate them out.  So I paint in the bracts, thinking carefully all the time about what is and isn’t the flowering part.  I use the same yellowish green as on the stem – sap green, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow and a whole lot of water.  I add a touch of Daniel Smith Spring green watercolour.  Once outlined, I paint over the tips of the top bracts in Alizarin crimson, aware that the flowering heads look red all over and no areas of clear green are visible.

Then I in fill with a dilute version of the initial green hue.

Once dry, I add more red to the bracts.

Flowers: The Labellum

The literature suggests that the labellum is a deeper red than the upper petals and sepals. This means I add a tiny bit more Cadmium red and a touch of Permanent carmine to the red mix.  Although it doesn’t really succeed, I try to suggest the reflexing of the labellum edges as I paint.  I’m worried that the flowers all look too orchid-typical, and not oblong enough.

Flowers in their entirety

The other sepals and petals are outlined with a pinker colour.  This means adding more Opera pink, and water to the mix.

As always, colours are allowed to completely dry.

Now use tints of the red and of the pink to fill in the orchid flowers, leaving a white area at the centre of each flower.  A dab of yellow green at the top of these central areas is enough to suggest the complexities of the pollinium, and a pale area is left below this.

Next come the distinctive markings on the labellum, easily added sing Permanent magenta straight form the pan.

Now I need to knock the whole thing back, and make the inflorescence red and purple instead of green.  Everything gets covered with a tint of Alizarin crimson and Opera rose.  Once dry, there follows a very long period of adding darker shades of Alizarin crimson.   Then I pick out shadows with a mix of Cobalt blue and the magenta.  I also added a touch of the reds to the sheath area down by the pseudo-bulb.  This helps unite the image.

A few drop shadows made from Cobalt blue and Permanent magenta, and we’re done.

Conclusion

Knowing a little about the structure of orchids proved really helpful in this job.  Right after finishing, I spilled most of a jar of water on the illustration. I was amazed and delighted to find that, after very loud swearing and judicious application of clean loo roll, no damage had been done.

Early Marsh Orchid Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp coccinea

I’m glad to have completed this illustration.  I don’t think it’s my best orchid to date, but it passes muster.  Fingers crossed that the client thinks so too!

To see a film of me illustrating this orchid in real time, please see below.

Below is a pdf of the finished orchid illustration.  Feel free to print it off and trace (it’s for use as an art template only).

Early Marsh Orchid Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp coccinea

The post Orchid Botanical Illustration Step by step appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

When I illustrate an animal, I like to learn about it as well as about the way it looks.  I always spend a little time online getting to know my subject before I begin, and when I make my films, this allows me to talk about what I’m illustrating as well as how I’m illustrating it.

Researching your subject

Before putting pencil top page, you need to have some knowledge of the species you’re illustrating.  I tend to take a look at the RSPB and Woodland trust page when it comes to birds, along with reference books such as Birds of Britain and Europe by Peterson & Mountford.  I check out illustrations, and photos on iNaturalist.  I’m also lucky enough to have been given permission from Pete Walkden, incredible wildlife photographer, to work with his photos.

Bullfinch illustration with reference materials

In some cases, I’m lucky enough to have a specimen of the bird available to draw (as with this Bullfinch).  This always makes colour-matching a doddle.  This time no-one had bought me a flycatcher, killed by a cat or found on the road verge, for the freezer.  Alas.

Drawing up the Flycatcher

Referring to the reference, and bearing in mind that I need to make the identifying features obvious, I combine my visual and written reference and draw up the bird in pencil, direct onto hot press watercolour paper.

Pencil rough of the Spotted Flycatcher

Equipment

It’s worth name-checking the equipment I use.  Pencils are Pentel P205 mechanical pencils. Watercolour paper is Fluid 100 by Global arts (for more on hot press paper choice please look at my series of blogs and films).

My favourite pencil – the Pentel P205

My paints tend to be Winsor and Newton watercolours, although other brands are good too.  In this step by step, the colours we’ll use are Purple, Naples yellow, Burnt umber, Cobalt blue, Cadmium yellow, Cadmium orange, Alizarin crimson, and a dark blue such as Phthalo or Winsor blue.

My Winsor and Newton paintbox (which I wash clean before each new species)

Brushes are invariably Winsor and Newton Series & sable, size 1.  I’m still on the lookout for good synthetic alternatives; feel free to check out my blog and films to see how far I’ve got with my quest!)  Factis Tri-24 erasers are my go-to, and they remove pencil line from painted surfaces without damaging the paper too much.

Painting the Spotted Flycatcher: Wing outlines

The first step is outlining the edges of the wing feathers.  Some of the flight feathers have pale margins, so this needs to be respected.  Leave the white of the page for pale areas, in watercolour it’s always easy to make an area darker but very hard to make it lighter.  Use the white page for highlights and pale colours.

Outlining feathers and barbs

The wing colour is a brownish grey.  This is a mix of Purple, Naples yellow, and Burnt umber.  I simply outline the edge of each wing, then add the barbs of the feather in the same colour, putting thin lines parallel to one another.  I keep the barbs on one side of the rachis closer together (and therefore darker) than on the opposite side.  Swiftly painted, pale drop shadows help show the difference between feathers.

Further down, the lower flight feathers and the tail have no pale margins and are a darker colour.  Alter the ratio of the colours in your mix to reflect this.  Take your paint marks up to the edge of each feather, but leave a hairline of white paper so you can see where one feather ends and the next beings.

Lower flight feathers

As these are closely aligned, in some cases you may simply want to show one feather with a thick, dark line instead of with the network of feather barbs.  This works well, but remember to leave space between feathers.

Plotting in the Body colour and texture

It’s important to keep the colour consistent across the bird, so there are no stark colour changes (unless the bird has these).  This means the back is plotted in using the exact same colour as the wings.  Brush strokes vary a little, fanning out to show feathers, and make it clear the texture on this part of the Flycatcher differs from the smoother flight feathers.

Laying down colour and texture on the back

Painting the Flycatcher head

When you’ve worked up the body, you reach the head.  It’s important to concentrate here as too many dark lines, or lines which are too thick can really compromise an illustration.  Follow the edges of patterns you’ll have included in pencil when you drew up the bird.  Check your reference.  Even though you’re “colouring-in”, you need to be drawing with the brush the whole time, and transferring your observations to the page.

Head of the flycatcher

For areas which are noticeably darker (around the eye, at the nape) put your brush marks closer together, or layer them.  Always follow the line of growth, in this case the way the feathers lie on the head of the bird.

Tail feathers

As discussed above, the tail feathers are a little darker than the wings and have no distinct margin.  We continue with the same colours in the mix though, and the darker tones build up more  when we add washes on top of this initial layer.

You can see how the brush marks are carried right to the tail feather edges as there are no pale margins.

Tail feathers plotted in

Painting the flanks, rump, and throat

Finally, we get to use new colours!  This mix is going on the belly of the bird, under the wings, and up the throat.  An initial glance might suggest these areas are white.  However, there is some cream in there, and a stark white against the browns and greys would be much too fierce of a contrast.

Mix up Naples yellow with plenty of water (to dilute it and make a paler tint of the colour).  Add the tiniest smidgen of Cadmium orange.

With a very delicate touch, paint the colour onto the bird. You may not be able to see the brush strokes clearly – this is a good sign and suggests you’re keeping the paint nice and pale.

Laying down the cream colour

Observe your reference again.  Where are the darkest areas on the pale parts of the Flycatcher’s body?  More strokes and colour in these regions helps give shape to the bird, and depth to the colour.  Be sure not to swallow up your white areas, remember, the page is your white colour.

In amongst doing this, I also painted in the gravestone.  Lots of blues, greens, and browns.  And a lot of waiting for colours to dry.  I won’t bore you with the details, in all likelihood the last place you’d be illustrating your Flycatcher would be on a lichen-encrusted gravestone!

The bird with cream flanks, rump, and throat.

As before, we don’t want any jarring colour transitions, so carry the cream on up into the head area, and across the back.  Use tiny light brush strokes.  Focus more of these in the darker areas, like the circle round the eye and the back of the neck.

Lots of tiny cream brush strokes in amongst the darker browns of the head

First top wash on the feathers

Now we begin to work on adding depth and colour.  Mix up a watery colour made from Cobalt blue, Burnt umber, and Naples yellow.  Lay this on the feathers, but only on one side, on the darker side, where you placed your parallel feather barb lines closer together.

Allow the paint to dry completely.  (If you get bored waiting for paint to dry, you might want to try using a fan heater or a hair dryer. It can speed things up!)

Flycatcher with wash drying on one half on wing feathers

Add the same mix to the other side of the feathers, making sure to put a second layer on top of the (dry) areas you’ve just worked on.  This layering means one side of the flight feathers looks marginally darker than the other which gives the bird texture and depth.

Use that same watery colour mix, and paint it over the back and body of the bird.  In fact, put it everywhere except for the pale belly, rump, flanks, and head markings.  Suddenly the bird is starting to look more lifelike.

Flycatcher with second colour wash on body and wings

Tackling the edges of the feathers

Remember those pale feather margins?  Well, these are now coming back to haunt us.  I put several layers of different colour on these areas, knocking them back but keeping them paler than the rest of the wings.  Yellow ochre in an extremely pale concentric circle (also applied to the rachis), a very very dilute version of the top wash, and a separate extremely dilute wash of Naples yellow were all involved.  In all cases, washes were allowed to dry fully between stages.

Detail of the feather edges

I know suggesting that you keep working on these until they feel right is unhelpful, it’s the best I can do.  I returned to them so many times I forgot what I did at what point!  Just remember they have to blend in with the main body of each feather, and also be distinctly paler.  Don’t try to add a white or pale top colour, this would just muddy the bird.

Adding colour to the body of the bird

Apply a second wash of the exact same colour mix, and let it dry.  The colour is now building up, but is transparent enough to prevent the details from disappearing.

Spotted flycatcher after the second all-over top wash is applied

Adding definition and shade

Once dry, you can work into the feathers a little more.  Judicious use of a mix of Burnt umber and Cobalt blue, used carefully, can crisp up edges between feathers.  Mix a colour for shadows, I like to use Cobalt blue and Purple.  Using this quite watery (dilute), I drop in a shadow below each feather,  and another onto the flank.  This always makes me feel very nervous, but usually works out ok.

Adding shadows

At this point we’re really nearly finished with the main part of our Spotted flycatcher.  There are details to complete – so far the bird has no eye, beak, or insect to eat!  But the bulk of the work is done.

Painting the details: Beak

The first detail I focus on is that beak.  It’s black, but I avoid using black paint.  I prefer to mix purple and burnt umber.  Not only does this make for a more interesting colour, it also echoes the browns in the flycatcher’s plumage. We’re forever trying to unite colours across the subject so the eye doesn’t feel jarred, or stuck, in one area of the illustration.

Detail of the Flycatcher beak

Keep the paint darker at the tip, and leave a margin at the edge of the beak.  Remember the highlight along the length of the beak.  The open mouth is a mix of purple, brown, and Alizarin crimson.  Keep this light, reds attract the eye, so we have to balance it across the painting by adding touches in the legs, the bird’s eye, tiny areas in the flight feathers.

The insect is painted in Yellow Ochre, Burnt umber, and Purple.  I was thinking of a fat beetle, wing cases already removed by this feisty arial hunter.  As an aside, di you know that flycatchers not only capture their prey in flight, but will deal with wasp and bee stings by rubbing the insect against a stone or branch to disarm it.  How cool?

Painting the Details: Eye

The eye is, for me, the scariest part of any illustration.  Some illustrators do them first so they don’t risk messing them up and having to start over.  I don’t like the vindictive stare I get from my subjects as I paint them into being, so only add their “soul” and accusing eyes at the very end.

For this one, I used Cadmium yellow, browns, and a mix of Alizarin crimson and purple in the dark areas.  The pupil is painted in black, overlaid on the iris.  It’s vital to leave the white page as a highlight, and to try and have bright areas within the iris, so the eye seems to glow.

Working into the iris of the eye

Getting this balance right is always difficult, as is painting near perfect circles in the centre of the eye, on such a tiny scale.  If the worst comes to the worst, you can add to the highlight on the pupil with a dab of white gouache, but it’s best to try and avoid this as it slightly dulls the highlight.

Finished eye

Finishing up: Last shadows

The very last step is to go around sharpening up those shadows one more time.  Use a careful touch and a really dark mix of Burnt umber and purple, or Purple and Cobalt blue.  For me, this last step is when the bird springs to life.  It’s high risk though, as if you overdo the shadows you can lose detail, so please be careful.

Completed illustration showing the colour mixes used

In the photo above, you can see the dark colour I used for the final shadows in the paintbox, along with the greys for the feathers, and a dark maroon which we used for the open mouth, areas of the legs, and to add vibrancy to the eye.

Conclusion

So there you have it.  Lots of tiny brush strokes followed by lots of layers of top washes, and completed with shadows to add crispness.

The original watercolour worked on here is available for sale for £75, email lizzie on info@lizzieharper.co.uk for more.

To see this all happening in more detail, and at a more leisurely pace, please feel free to watch the film below:

Any bird can be illustrated using this approach.  For more of my step-by-step bird illustrations please see my blogs on illustrating a Robin, a Pied Wagtail, a Swallow, a Goshawk, and a Puffin (amongst others).

Completed Spotted Flycatcher Muscicapa striata

The post Spotted Flycatcher step by step appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

Completed Robin

Step by step: Getting reference

To get your drawing done, look for royalty free photos online, take a camera into a nearby garden or park, or (if like me you happen to have a friendly wildlife photographer on hand) ask permission to borrow their photos for reference.

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.  This works especially well if you have a really light touch when drawing up your robin.

Unfortunately, I never took a photo of the pencil drawing of this animal, so we’ll have to imagine it.  Apologies!

Step by step: Chest feathers

I start with the chest feathers because this is the palest part of the bird.  We need to make sure it stays pale, but still shows texture.  I use lots of tiny brush marks to show the texture of feathers, focussing on areas of shadow.  In this case they are below the wing, and at the bottom of the robin’s body.

Winsor and Newton are my favourite watercolours, and I use pans topped up with tube colours.  I mix Yellow ochre, Vandyke brown, and a touch of Cadmium orange light together.  I make sure the colour is extremely pale by diluting it with water .  Carefully, using my trusty Series 7 sable brush (size 1), I build up the shadow below the wing.

Building shadow and texture below the wing

Next, I mix up a grey.  This is Cerulean blue with a little purple and a tiny dash of a dark brown, like Vandyke.  Again, dilute this colour to a very pale tone with clean water.  Referring to your reference at all times, build up the areas of grey on the robin’s body with lots of tiny brush marks.  Overlap the first area of colour you put down, without swallowing it up.  This blending on the page tricks the eye into making a smooth transition between different areas of colour.

Think about shadows and make sure your brush marks are a little heavier and closer together where the shadows are darker.  These are around the legs and towards the back of the wings

Adding grey to the Robin chest

Step by step: Wing detail

Robin wings are brown, but it’s not a colour that comes straight from the box.  There’s a softness to the colour.  I mixed up two browns.  The first is darker and used to put detail onto the wing feathers.  It’s Vandyke brown plus a little Yellow ochre, and a tiny bit of purple.

Outline the edge of each wing feather, then with a lighter touch, add texture to each one.  Try to leave a white margin between the individual fathers, this will be knocked back by successive layers of browns in due course, but is important in supplying detail and tonal difference.

The second brown is yellower and lighter.  Yellow ochre with a touch of Vandyke, applied quite dry to the upper feathers on the wings.  Again, pick out the edges of each feather and add texture with lots of tiny brush strokes.

Wing feathers are outlined and given texture

Step by step: Wing colour

Next, add a lot of clean water to your darker brown, to make a light shade.  Once your feathers are totally dry, pop this top wash across the entire wing (except for the areas which are lightest of all.  With watercolour painting, highlights are represented by the white paper that the drawing sits on.  Allowing this to remain unpainted gives luminosity to an illustration.  And if it looks too stark, don’t worry – you can always make it darker by adding paint.)

Wing with top-wash of pale brown paint

Seen in context, the wing is the right colour, but looks pretty flat.  Add a little more colour and tonality to help clarify the structure and the detail.

Robin wing with colour but no shadows

Step by step: Wing Shadow and texture

The photo below is a little confusing as it’s more exposed and thus paler than the one above.  However, it shows the next step.  This is to add a dash of extra vibrancy to the front area of each wing feather.  This is an orange mixed with yellow ochre, and is used quite dilute and pale.

A darker brown (Vandyke plus purple) can be carefully applied to the dry feathers to add a tiny bit of extra texture, and to show shadow and definition between individual feathers.

Detail of wing with orange and darker brown detailing

Hopefully the illustration below shows how adding these details have made the wing look crisper and more realistic.

Robin with completed wing

Step by step: Robin’s orange chest

Now that the wing is done, move onto the chest.

People always say that the European robin has a red chest.  this is blatantly untrue, the chest feathers in both sexes are a vibrant orange.  This is a tough colour to work with as it instantly draws the eye.  To make sure you look at the entire illustration, not just the chest, you can add touches of this orange across the rest of the robin.  Do this in places where it’s not obtrusive (such as the wing feathers).

This orange is a mix of Cadmium orange light, a bright yellow, and a touch of yellow ochre.  You want the paint to be quite dry, somewhat like the texture of cream.  This allows each brush mark to carry plenty of colour.

Again, using the tip of your paintbrush, build up the colour with lots of tiny little brush strokes.  This gives the impression of textured feathers.  Where the orange is darker (reflecting the underlying anatomy of the bird) put the brush marks closer together and apply a little more pressure.

Once this initial layer of orange has dried, mix up a more watery and yellower colour.  I did this by adding Cadmium yellow dark to my orange, and diluting it a little with water.

Repeat the building up of little strokes, but as the colour is lighter you can afford to be a bit less precise.  this layer adds a golden glow to the chest and fills in the worst of the white spaces on the orange bib.

Working into the robin’s orange bib

Leave a small areas of white in the centre of the chest, this makes the feathers look brighter and allows the white of the paper to glow through.

Robin with chest completed

At this point, the Robin should look pretty detailed.  Still missing legs, beak and an eye; but the colour and texture and shadows of the feathered areas have all been completed.

Robin with feathers done

Step by step: Add the beak and legs

Robin beaks are almost black, so mix a dark brown by adding some blue to a crown.  Define the edges of the beak and let this dry.  Then put a top wash of a paler brown over the beak.  This will knock back the white areas.  I added some of the chest orange to the beak too; the logic being that this colour would naturally reflect upwards onto the shiny surface of the beak.

Robin with beak added

Next up is the legs.  these are a darkish brown with plenty of pink in the mix.  I used Vandyke brown plus Alizarin crimson.  Draw along the outside edges of the legs with your brush, then paint each scale along the legs.  It’s when I’m painting the legs of birds that I remember that these creatures are, in fact, feathered dinosaurs!

Dilute the pinkish brown colour to a very pale shade, and pop this over the legs.

Robin legs completed

The last thing I paint is the eye.  It’s a risk; if you mess up the eye then the whole painting is hard to fix.  But I don’t like the creatures I paint watching me as I work on them, so I only add the eye at the very end.

Robin eyes are a reddish brown.  I used a little artistic licence by making the eye pinker than in real like.  This was to trick the eye into including the pinkish legs into the picture when you look at it.  Echoing a colour across an illustration makes it easier to see the whole picture, and not to get stuck in one corner.

Likewise, I used the same eye colour to pick out some details of the darkest areas on the orange feathers.

Do the iris first, leaving an area of white paper at the base of the circle.  Then knock this back a bit with a yellower or more dilute colour.  Once dry, add the pupil.  Try to leave an obvious white circle on the pupil.  Make the transition between pupil and highlight a little less stark by softening its edge with a pale, pale grey.

Robin with completed eye

Step by step: Final details

Normally, I add the really dark darks and shadows at the end of an illustration,  In this case I didn’t, I brought in the darks as I went along.  This meant all that needed doing once the eye was completed was the grass around the robin’s feet.

Represent grass by outlining each blade of grass with green, and (once dry) putting a diluted and slightly yellower green over the top of the area.

Completed Robin with paint-box

The last step is to use a good eraser and rub out the pencil lines.  This should lift the pencil line without compromising the watercolour paint.  Use a light touch if this feels scary, and be aware that some papers don’t allow this to happen as readily as others.

And there you have it.  For more of my step by step blogs on painting birds, please check out my posts on the Pied wagtail, Barn swallow, Goshawk, Parrot, Waxwing, Golden plover, and Puffin.

The post Step by step illustration of a Robin appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

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.