Botanical Illustration

I spent this past weekend immersed in a botanical illustration class at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) with instructor Lynn Kitagawa. Lynn has worked for the VA Medical Center as a medical and biological illustrator for 30 years. She has an undergraduate degree in biology in addition to an MFA. And she is a wonderful instructor!

I haven’t been regularly sketching for some time now and my goal in taking this 2-day class was to gain some confidence and kick-start my habit. My confidence is back and I’m thrilled with what I learned from Lynn.

The first day focused on sketching with pencil using H, HB, B and BB graphic pencils. The HB scale indicates the degree of hardness for these pencils. Using plant clippings from Lynn’s garden, each of us selected a botanical specimen and set to work on our sketch. I was drawn to the rose clipping because the flower had been replaced by a rosehip. I trimmed excess foliage to create a focus on the two elements of the plant in front of me. Simple and so graceful. I used tracing paper and an H pencil to create this sketch.

The ultimate goal for this sketch was to produce it on 100-pound Bristol board. Once I was satisfied with the scale and detail of the sketch on tracing paper – I used an eraser at least as much as I used the pencil to create this sketch! —  I was ready for step two in the process. I covered the sketch with another sheet of tracing paper and, using a softer pencil (BB) I traced an outline of the sketch.

The softer graphite in the BB pencil would allow me to transfer the outline sketch onto a second piece of tracing paper by rubbing firmly with the side of my fingernail.  Once the rubbing was done I laid the tracing paper over the Bristol board and repeated the rubbing, transferring the light image to the paper. This transferring process meant that I could complete the sketch on the fine paper knowing that the scale and initial detail had been set. It was quite freeing and made the completion of the sketch a real joy.

I used the hardest pencil (H) and the softest pencil (BB) I had to complete this sketch.

The next day’s focus was on sketching with pen. Our final surface for the pen sketch would be Canson Vidalon Vellum, a 100% rag translucent vellum. A beautiful surface to work on.

For this sketch I chose a beautiful snowberry cutting. Lynn noted that each leaf on the snowberry is completely unique. Talk about the Devil being in the detail! I loved the challenge and, yes, all those different leaf shapes. There is nothing boring about this plant. We started with a pencil sketch again. I made a few notes to myself on this sketch to help me remember that the stem of the plant becomes smaller as you reach the top with the berries.

The stems reduced by half two times on that single stem. As with the pencils, we had pens that produce several sizes of line: 005, 01 and 02 pigma pens. I covered my pencil sketch with a sheet of tracing paper and practiced used the different size pens for the illustration.

Once satisfied I was comfortable using the pens I covered the initial sketch with the translucent vellum and completed the illustration.

Note the leaf on the right side, second from bottom: One of the vein lines has broken pen work. Actually, I learned about removing ink from this vellum surface using an Exacto knife with a #16 blade. Very slick! I will be going back to this final sketch to remove more of the solid line, particularly at the top edge of the leaves, to better illustrate the fineness of the vein.

It was a grand two days of learning and sketching. I’m not ready to use this type of high-detail, exacting illustration all the time, but the skills I gained by doing it for just two days will definitely carry forward to all my future less-formal sketches.