Event information
In this one day course, we’ll learn a bit about what composition is, why it matters in botanical illustration, and cover useful hints on how to make a composition work. After a look around the gardens considering what makes the shape of a plant appeal visually, we’ll complete a few exercises and learn how to use thumbnails (or re-arrange parts of your illustration) until you’re satisfied with the way the piece looks. There’ll be a demo showing how quick and easy thumbnails can be to produce, and we’ll touch on negative space. You’ll get to piece together your own illustration, (in whatever medium you prefer) bearing in mind all that we’ve learnt. By the end of the day you probably won’t have a finished piece of artwork, but hopefully you’ll have lots of hints and pointers that will help you create a well composed illustration in the future. Throughout the workshop Lizzie will be on hand doing demonstrations, teaching, and giving one-to-one advice and tips.
This course is suitable for all abilities.
Lizzie Harper is a free-lance natural history and botanical illustrator working in watercolour, pencil, and pen. She’s the illustrator of “The Hedgerow Handbook” and “Foraging with Kids, and her work is in “The Bumper Book of Nature “ and HarperCollins Flower Guide. She has also worked on flower identification charts for Field Studies Council, and illustrations for the Welsh Botanic Gardens. She works in her garden studio in Hay on Wye where she lives happily with a long-suffering husband and two lively children.
