Synopses & Reviews
This comprehensive and authoritative handbook by an experienced botanical artist is intended for the people who ask those questions—who want to portray plants and flowers with botanical accuracy: artists seeking to extent subjects, or amateurs with an interest in botany and natural history who want to record flowers that have given them pleasure.
The author gives detailed advice on working in pencil, pen, scraper board, water-colour and gouache, and acrylics; on building up a drawing or painting by stages; on taking measurements and understanding plant structure; on collecting, handling and preserving plant material; and on the use of the hand lens and dissecting microscope. The accurate observation and the techniques that he advocates are equally applicable to the disciplined requirements of providing plates for the scientific press and to illustrations for more popular work or to drawing for pleasure. Essential botanical terms and information are fully explained and illustrated, and there is a glossary.
Approximately 130 illustrations( 10 in colour) include examples of work of well-known artists of the past and a large number of diagrams and line drawings.
Review
"The wealth of technical information will provide the artist with a greater understanding of and proficiency in botanical work."
—Angel Lee, Choice, June 1999 Choice
Review
"Botanical artist Keith West's thorough guide to drawing plants is so beautifully produced that even nonartists who love nature and art will want to own it."
—Lori D. Kranz, Bloomsbury Review, February 1997 Bloomsbury Review
Review
"The techniques of botanical illustration are clearly set out ... The reader will end up with a greater understanding and appreciation of plant structure."
—Virgil Rupp, East Oregonian, May 19, 2002 East Oregonian
Review
"To the best of my knowledge there has never until now been a thorough book supplying the answers to all those technical questions that I am still constantly being asked by people wishing to take up botanical illustration."
—Wilfrid Blunt
Review
"Recommended without reserve to those who wish to draw plants, whether professionally or as a pastime."
—Francis Hibbard, Journal of Biological Illustration
Synopsis
The best introductory book on the subject examines plant structures and the problems they present to illustrators, then discusses the artist's tools and how to use them: pencils, erasers, papers, brushes, watercolors, gouache, and acrylics.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 149) and index.
About the Author
Keith West was formerly Art Lecturer for the Department of Extension Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch and, for 20 years, Botanical Artist for the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in New Zealand. He currently lives in Wales.