May Half Term – Botanical Art: Painting Spring flowers and/or Leaves at a “Monumental” Scale – 3D Campus
Ideal for current PSAD students in botanical Illustration and those whom had some initiation in the art of illustrating plants and/or the natural world and want to explore this further.
This two-day workshop is about the challenge of working at a larger scale and still make it look interesting as a final work of art. It is also a challenge in time management and workflow planning.
What The Course is About:
This is a two-day workshop painting in watercolours a single flower or a leaf or a portion of either/both at an oversized scale. This is about the minutia of fine detail. The idea is to choose a subject to explore specific element or view/s of the subject at a large enough scale that takes the subject off the picture frame. It offers a great opportunity for very close scrutiny of the subject and to study this, draw it and paint it. It is not only intended as an art work in itself, it also is intended as an exercise in getting to know the subject and an opportunity to acquire and hone observational skills towards future botanical work. It is also about workflow planning towards fast and accurate execution.
This is a two-day workshop in Botanical Illustration/Botanical art and is for students of intermediate level beginners with experience in graphite drawing and shading as well as monotone painting and/or full colour watercolour painting. Students will work in Graphite (outline drawing for Painting) and complete the work in Watercolours on Hot Pressed Watercolour paper.
Actual subject matter depends on seasonal available material and will be firmed up nearer the time of the course
Graphite pencil/s to draw the basic outline of the work and to make observational sketches in your notebook / sketchbook. You will need minimum an H, F or HB grade graphite pencil for the line drawing on 300gsm smooth Hot Pressed Watercolour Paper. You are welcome to use more grades of pencils for sketchbook studies.
Paper:
• Sketchbook for quick studies and notes as well as Thumbnail layout studies and rough layout drawing for the final piece.
• Smooth or ultra-smooth high-white Hot pressed (HP) watercolour paper, 300gsm. Minimum 1 sheet, preferably 2 sheets. A4 to max A3 size. Offcuts of the same as a tester piece for colour swatches / testing.
• A few sheets of kitchen paper towels for use during painting.
• Optional: Two + sheets Tracing paper A4 or A3 in size. Used in the process of figuring out your layout & Composition as well as resolving optical illusions and difficult shadow patterns on your work.
Brushes: Watercolour brushes i.e. Size 4, Size 2, Size 1. All other size brushes are of course welcome. Larger areas of painting will benefit from larger brushes i.e. Nr 6 at the very least. Maybe even a Nr 7 or 8 round (with a pointed tip) watercolour brush.
Watercolour paint: You will need at least one Red, one Blue and one Yellow OR a single monotone paint such as a Neutral tint or a Cool Grey. But a tray of colours will be great – bring what you have in your paint box. Do not buy unless necessary. Monotone painting for the less experienced will be not only OK, but will in fact be encouraged.
Good quality magnifiers (min x 5, preferably x 10 magnification) will be most handy if not essential in looking at and drawing detail at an enlarged scale. Please bring what you have with you.
Intermediate to Advanced
Students with some experience to intermediate skills in observation, drawing and painting botanical subjects in watercolour. As the student will work on their own drawing/painting, they will set the level of engagement.
What will I achieve?
• Botanical illustration through line, form and shading .
• Working to a large scale, zooming in very close to a portion of the subject.
• Surface textures and leaf and or petal thickness and surface sculpting and leaf venation will be in sharp focus for this project.
• We will also look at layout and composition in the making of an illustration
