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Botanical Weekend: Drawing & Painting Flowers
Saturday & Sunday 10am–4pm
Lunch: 12.30–1.30pm All materials provided
Maximum 8 students
Join Botanical Artist Sophie Newnham for a creative and inspiring weekend exploring the beauty of flowers through drawing and painting. Across two days, we’ll look at different ways of capturing the character, form and colours of botanical subjects, developing fundamental drawing and painting skills while creating beautiful finished work of your own.
Saturday: Botanical Drawing: Graphite, Colour & Ink
We’ll begin with graphite drawing, learning how to really look at flowers and translate their delicate forms onto paper. Working from real flowers, we’ll explore a range of pencils and learn how to build tone, light and shadow to create a convincing sense of form and three-dimensionality.
We’ll look at how subtle changes in tone can bring petals, leaves and stems to life, developing detailed botanical drawings with accuracy, sensitivity and a strong sense of form. We’ll also explore how to enlarge our drawings, allowing us to look more closely at the structure and detail of our flowers and create striking botanical studies.
After lunch, we’ll introduce coloured pencils, exploring how to build rich, luminous colour through layering and mixing. We’ll look at how to choose and combine colours to capture the particular character of the flower we are drawing, creating vibrant botanical studies with depth and detail.
There may also be time to explore fine liners and ink, introducing line and mark-making as another way of describing botanical forms.
Sunday — Botanical Watercolour
On Sunday we’ll move onto watercolour, exploring how transparent washes vs opaque detailing, colour application and brushwork can be used to create rich, beautiful botanical paintings.
We’ll start by looking at how to mix and build a watercolour palette, exploring the difference between warm and cool colours and how they can work together within a painting. We’ll also look at the qualities of transparent and more opaque mixes, and how varying the strength and density of the paint can create luminosity, depth and atmosphere, while allowing us to retain clearer, more defined edges in certain areas of our paintings.
Working with flowers and botanical subjects, we’ll explore how to create a simple and considered composition, thinking about shape, balance, colour and the spaces between the flowers. Through washes, layering and more defined brushwork, we’ll learn how to bring life and atmosphere to our botanical still lifes.
Course objectives
The emphasis throughout the weekend will be on looking, observing and discovering, with demonstrations and guidance to help you develop your own approach. You’ll learn fundamental skills while having plenty of opportunity to experiment and enjoy the different qualities of each medium.
Whether you are new to botanical art or already enjoy drawing and painting flowers, this weekend will be an opportunity to slow down, really observe your subject and explore the magic of botanical illustration through graphite, coloured pencil, inks and watercolour.
Materials and what to bring
Saturday: Drawing paper, boards, pencils, rubbers, tortillons and a selection of basic coloured pencils will be provided.
If you have your own coloured pencil set, you are very welcome to bring it, as a wider range of colours will give you greater choice and help you achieve richer results.
Sunday: Watercolour paper, basic watercolour sets, brushes, paper towels and water pots will be provided.
If you have your own watercolour paints and brushes, please bring them along, as you will generally achieve the best results working with your own familiar set.
Saturday lunch: Please bring your own lunch.
Sunday lunch: There is a weekly Sunday farmers’ market right on our doorstep, providing plenty of options for lunch during the break, or you are welcome to bring lunch with you.