Botanical Illustration in Pen and Ink – Kew Online Course

Draw a stargazer lily with a professional botanical illustrator from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew

What you’ll learn
How to prepare: brief lessons in botany and dissection
How to sketch: drawing outlines, internal structures, adding marks and shading
Transferring your sketch
Inking: warm up exercises, lines and stippling
Building confidence in observation and creative skills
Discover how to create a botanical illustration in pen and ink, guided by a Kew expert

Requirements
No previous experience is necessary: this introductory course will teach you the core techniques of pen-and-ink botanical drawing
Please note that the materials required are no longer available to purchase as a kit. You will need to source the following items before you begin: Stargazer lily, water spray bottle, A4 sketch paper, A4 Winsor & Newton smooth Bristol board, tracing paper, H pencil, sharpener and eraser, technical compass, fineline pens – sizes 01, 03 and 05, sticky tape

Description
Welcome to this online course from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, brought to you in partnership with David and Charles. You are about to embark on a journey into botanical illustration – a very enjoyable art form that requires attention to detail, focussing your attention on the astounding variation found in nature. Pen and ink is often the medium chosen for documenting new species of flowering plants – everything is drawn to scale to show the characteristics of the plant. In this course, we’ll use a stargazer lily as it’s a large flower with robust structures that are visible to the naked eye. These captivating flowers are loved and admired for their wonderfully large and colourful blooms with prominent spots and a distinctly heady fragrance. You will be led step-by-step through the process of drawing the lily, starting with basic botany and careful observation of the flower. We’ll use precise measurements to guide our drawing to create an accurate representation.As an online course, this learning experience allows you to follow at your own pace – enjoy the process and you will enjoy the results! You can watch each section as many times as you need, and you can pause at any point to focus on your work before moving on.

Who this course is for
Anyone who wants to develop their knowledge of botany from an artistic perspective
Beginners who are keen to learn how to sketch accurately from nature
Artists with existing skills in sketching or pen and ink who want to develop their botanical knowledge
Anyone who loves plants and flowers and wants to learn how to record them visually
Creative nature lovers