Enjoying Susan’s workshop June 17th
June 2018
On 14th June a group of eleven society members met in London to see two exhibitions of art by Cedric Morris. Starting at the Philip Mould Gallery, on Pall Mall, to see the exhibition ‘Beyond the Garden Wall’ this featured paintings of his travels mainly around the Mediterranean, Mexico and England, we also met Philip Mould. Following lunch we travelled by taxi to The Garden Museum, to see the exhibition ‘Artist Plantsman’ which featured his plant portraits. Into taxis again to our restaurant before making our different ways home. Many thanks to Jane Edwards who organised the day.
Susan Christopher-Coulson came to our meeting on 17th June and gave us a fantastic workshop. For all and particularly those not familiar with working with coloured pencil the information that she passed on about the types of pencils and paper she uses and the practical help she gave was first class.
Exhibitions this summer
- Cedric Morris – two complementary exhibitions. Philip Mould Gallery, Pall Mall and The Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road. Both exhibitions are on until 22nd July.
- SBA Exhibition – Woburn Abbey, 23rd & 24th June
- RHS Plant and Botanical Art Fair – RHS Horticultural Halls 11th July 11am – 8pm and 12th July 11am – 6pm
- Kew Gardens, Shirley Sherwood Gallery until 16th September. The Florilegium – An exhibition of works illustrating the beauty and diversity of plants grown by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. Also Works from the Shirley Sherwood Collection of native Australian and New Zealand plants.
Worldwide Day of Botanical Art 2018
Our society exhibition in Solihull was a success. We had many favourable comments especially on the high standard of work, congratulations to all who participated.
May 18th is Worldwide Day of Botanical Art. The Association of British Botanical Artists has organised an exhibition at The Peter Scott Gallery, University of Lancaster which is from 18th May to 8th June. More details on their website but if you cannot get to the exhibition you can obtain the catalogue through the web site it has images of all the paintings.
Other events supporting the day: SBA – ‘Linking People to Plants through Botanical Art’ at Artworkers Guild, London (ticket only). Kew – Shirley Sherwood Gallery, meet some of Kew’s botanical artists (?ticket only). Chelsea Physic Garden – Works on view by members of the Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society
A Celebration of Botanical Art – 18th April – 5th May 2018
After many years of struggling to find venue the society has an exhibition “A Celebration of Botanical Art” at The Courtyard Gallery, The Core, Solihull Library at Solihull in the West Midlands. (Accessed through Touchwood Centre)
The exhibition is open every day from 18th April until 5th May. There are 60 paintings by 22 members of the society (some are ASBA members), 43% are works in coloured pencil, 36% watercolour and the rest mixed including graphite. All the works are for sale and there are demonstrations on some days. Images of the exhibition are on our Facebook page and in ‘Former Exhibitions’
Thank you to Julia Trickey for the workshop on 15th April about ‘Composition’. as well as those attending the workshop other members were working on their own projects in another room.
Martin Allen Workshop – 18th March 2018
‘Using photographic notes’ was the title of Martin’s workshop. We are very grateful to Martin for travelling down from Middlesbrough in snowy conditions, eleven members managed the dreadful road conditions in the West Midlands to attend.
Points from the workshop
- Take a lot of photographs of your subject.
- When photographing indoors use natural light from a window if possible, from the left to give shadows, use a white board behind the subject and use a tripod. Outdoors use a white board and tripod, it may not be possible to pick wild flowers.
- You need to see how all the structures fit and refer to a flora for the size of leaves, number of stamens etc. Your painting needs to be botanically correct.
- Measure all parts, including the size of leaves.
- Also record the the reverse of the flower, petals and leaf structures
- Do not paint/record distorted petals or leaves, you may have to merge two images to get a good painting.
- Beware of painting flowers or leaves that are drooping.
- Make colour notes from the plant, colour will not be accurate from printed photographs. sometimes you may need to use ‘Photoshop’ to whiten the background of the photo to get a more correct colour.
Members were then challenged to colour match and paint part of a red bromeliad.
Finally Martin took us through how he used photographs in his painting, in particular showing a painting of Rampion enlarged to many times its size but still in proportion. A thoroughly enjoyable and informative workshop.