Class Reflection: RBGE Introduction to Botanical Painting
After taking the drawing class at RBGE, I enrolled in their botanical painting short course. This introductory course was taught over two days by award winning botanical artist, Sharon Tingey. The course followed a similar format to the drawing course with a focus on apples, shallots and mushrooms as subjects.
Day one focused on mastering watercolour techniques and shading shapes like spheres, pyramids and tubes. We experimented by creating depth with shadows and layering techniques. Next, we all made colour wheels to learn about various mixes! I messed mine up a bit. I found the format confusing and prefer working in grids for exercises like this. We also covered mixing tertiary colours, mainly browns and greys. I found this portion of the class informative. I learned when mixing browns, it's easiest to start with yellow and red, to get orange and then to slowly add blue to get brown. I’ve always struggled with browns and use this tip often.
Once we were comfortable creating depth using layers of washes we moved on to paint our subjects. On the first day, I painted a mushroom and half a shallot. The course didn’t allow too much time for drawing our subjects. We sketched them quickly after a crash course on measurements, which wasn’t nearly as detailed as the previous course. We also drew directly onto the watercolour paper which I normally wouldn’t do. I was thankful for all my practice drawings from the previous course as they really helped here. I thankfully drew my apple, mushroom and shallot within the allotted time. I was happy with my initial sketches and felt they represented the subjects well.
Next, we moved onto the best bit of the course painting! Using watercolours is simply the best! I still remember how closely I inspected my mushroom trying to get all the details just right! I even brought my trusty jeweller’s loupe, it's like a secret weapon at looking into those fine details! I had so much fun and felt a real sense of joy while painting. I do have to say this class was exciting and captivated my heart, I found it hard to stop myself from painting right through lunch!
Day two was all about shadow and highlights! I noticed my washes have been improving while I was painting. That's an area of my work I’m always keen to develop and improve. I did lose a bit of highlight on my apple, but I still adore it. I am especially happy with how I lifted off some paint at the end to get the right texture and represent little white spots on my apple. I did this with my eradicator brush by Billy Showell. This brush is a real lifesaver and always helps in a pinch, however this was the first time using it for textured marks right at the end.
Overall, I was overjoyed being on this course, I felt incredibly blessed by the experience. My apple, shallot and mushroom are still among my favourite paintings I’ve done to date. I feel a real sense of accomplishment when I look at them. I can’t wait to feel this way as I progress onto harder subjects!
