”I encourage people to take the time to see, to really look at what you are drawing and to really see the plant you are studying,“ said Nancy Seiler Anderson, a Missoula graphic artist who is teaching the centuries-old art at the Montana Natural History Center. ”Look at it from all different angles.“
The advice applies to everyone - artist or novice - who walks the woods, who admires garden flowers, who appreciates the textures and colors of the natural world around them, she said.
”Plants are so fascinating and so complex,“ she said, ”and that's what I love about botanical illustrations - they try to capture the very essence of a plant.“
Only a handful of learning centers in the world certify artists as botanical illustrators, and one them is the Denver Botanical Gardens, where Anderson received her training and certification. After completing the rigorous 16-course program, Anderson said she was so energized by her learning experience, she wanted to share the knowledge.
The Missoula course she launched this fall focuses on classic botanical illustration in graphite and explores perspective, light, form, surface contour and detail.
It is an exacting art steeped in tradition and history.
”People needed a way to identify plants in the wild for medicinal purposes, and this is how they did it,“ Anderson said Sunday. It is why the illustrations are so thorough, faithfully depicting the exact composition of plants, even down to the bug bites found on a speciman's leaves.
The earliest known illustrations are traced back to an ancient Greek stone relief and earthen jars. Woodcuts - blocks of wood carved in the exact likeness of plants - became a later medium. Hand drawings became vogue, as did the artform in the 18th and 19th centuries, largely considered the heyday of botanical illustration.
Although the art is not widely taught, it is widely appealing and appreciated, and many illustrators are commissioned for home and office display, Anderson said. Not only is there an enduring, timeless beauty to the illustrations, but amazingly, the artform is still needed in the 21st century to identify new and rare plants.
Scientists have yet to truly catalogue and identify all the plant life in some regions of the world, such as the Amazon rainforest, Anderson said.
”Photography can't accurately capture a plant because it is so flat and plants are three dimensional,“ she said. ”That's what is so powerful about botanical illustrations. They can capture the layers and the complexity.“
Besides, drawing is fun, Anderson said, looking through a study of thorns and acorns by master illustrators.
”How to reproduce textures, lights and darks, shiny things, pointy things and fuzzy things is a huge challenge,“ she said. ”It's inspiring to spend time looking at these things.“
As she looked out her kitchen window Sunday, Anderson pointed out the heavy head of a giant sunflower bending on its stout stalk like reading lamp.
”It's so amazing,“ she said. ”There's a lot of beauty in just the structure and form.“
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