RBGE Botanical Illustration Certificate: Unit 4 Reflection

This unit was a crash course in colour theory. I explored colour matching to live subjects, colour wheels and deepened my knowledge of pigment properties.

It started at the basics of colour theory with colour wheels to deepen my understanding of colour mixes. I had to restart a few times and made a few wrong ones before getting the concept. I usually make colour grids so this was a new way to interact with colour! I liked the wheels and they make for excellent references.

The most challenging portion of the unit came down to my pear composition. I decided on two pears with unusual curves that look like two friends about to embrace. I couldn’t paint just one, I had to paint both!

This made for a delightful composition, but also pushed me past my comfort zone to get the shapes right. I noticed my small pear painting ended up having a different inner curve than the real one despite measuring it. Overall, I like the composition and feel they have character, which is what I wanted to convey!

The area I found the most difficult was definitely colour matching, it was a tough go and I ended up overworking some of the areas of the pears. For example, the small one on the right side looks a bit dull. I am allowing myself some time to get used to the process of practicing and not being too judgemental of my work. 

I noticed a big area I need to work on is not overworking the paper, this goes hand in hand with colour matching. I notice if I make a good decisions with colours early on, there is less need for corrective washes at the finish line. With my pears as I kept adding washes and didn’t know when to let it be. The paper can only take so many layers of paint (lets say about three washes, not including drybrush details) this means I have to be so careful with initial washes and getting them dark enough to depict the shadows and light enough for contrast needed without losing the highlights. This is a delicate balance like a waltz in botanical painting. Overworking means the subject becomes dull, loses its highlight ‘glow’ and doesn’t have the effect of popping off the page. My resolve is to keep practicing to get more comfortable with my limited palette and colour mixing decisions. Its a long game, I know practice in this area will make for better results!