The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2024.

Learning the art of botanical illustration

Alice Tangerini presented a lecture and led a botanical illustration class at the Denver Botanic Gardens from October 10-16, 2023. Her lecture, "Botanical Illustration at the Museum," was presented to members of the Garden in person and virtually on Zoom. Along with the lecture, Tangerini displayed several of her botanical drawings showing the techniques used in both traditional and digital media and explained the reasons for choosing the different media.

Tangerini then taught a three-day class, Botanical Portraits in Layered Media, to 14 students at the Gardens using the Gardens' collections of Helianthus annuus, including living cut flowers and herbarium specimens, as subjects. She spent a day selecting flowering material from the Gardens that was also available as herbarium specimens that could be photocopied for the class.

The class media included a combination of graphite pencils designed for use on translucent drafting film where the class traced the photocopies to achieve a quicker rendition of the Helianthus. An underlying layer on film using opaque watercolor and colored pencil supplied the color to achieve a lifelike depiction of the subject. The class produced successful illustrations and the students discovered media that could be applied to other plant subjects. The Denver Botanic Gardens was an especially interesting place to visit at that time of year. It was decorated for Halloween and a fall festival held at the end of October.