Botanical ART COURSES
Workshops and Painting Classes
Hazel West-Sherring offers Botanical Art Courses, which combine an understanding of basic botany with inspiring, instructive tuition in drawing and painting techniques.
Art Courses by Hazel
What?
Hazel’s popular botanical art courses study native trees, plants, flowers and fruits in season. Plant material from her own garden, as well as from the Kent countryside, provide students with a constantly appealing programme, throughout the year. Subjects such as the velvet nature of bearded iris, the simple form of an apple, the wonders of building a leaf library, the complexity of a multi-petal rose, and the beauty of spring flowering bulbs.
How?
On each course, an understanding of the basic botany of the plant subject, together with instructive discussion of suggested drawing and painting techniques, prepares the student for the focus on patient observational drawing practice. Together with Hazels own prepared examples and clear demonstrations, research material and reference, the student is assured confident results.
Who?
The art courses mix beginners with more experienced painters. Numbers are kept deliberately small ensuring maximum individual tuition.
Where?
Hazel has been teaching watercolour for many years from her studio. More recently she has built up a large following for the inspiring and instructive courses run at nearby Goodnestone Park, Doddington Place and Godinton House. Courses are offered as residential if required.
When?
Please phone or email Hazel to request current programme and to make bookings.
Skills for Botanical Art Courses
Botanical painting requires great skill and attention to detail. A successful botanical water-colourist must combine accurate observation, meticulous brushwork and clever colour mixing. Attendees of
the courses are normally observant, patient and passionate about the colours and forms of nature. Botanical knowledge or at least familiarity with the subject matter helps too! Through your art, you must appeal to all the senses; implying taste, touch and smell through the use of texture and colour.
Do The Courses teach Art or Illustration?
The very term botanical art is often considered a contradiction in terms. Botany is the scientific study of plant life, art its opposite, concerned with the senses and emotions. One is empirical and definitive, the other immeasurable and subjective. Some question whether
the courses are even art classes at all; A botanical illustrator is required to produce a faithful representation of a plant specimen for scientific identification purposes only. A botanical artist can enhance a well-executed and accurate flat rendering of a botanical specimen and inject depth. Thus the image is lifted out of the constraints of scientific analysis and into the dynamic world of plant portraiture, producing a captivating work of art.
The Origins – Where Art Meets Science
Before the invention of the camera, there was a need to accurately document new natural discoveries. Dried and pressed samples could never accurately capture the colours and context of the plant in its natural environment. For this reason, botanical illustration is still one of the principal methods by which plants are recognised and published in scientific journals.
Well Known Amateurs
One well-known amateur botanist, Beatrix Potter, focused mainly on insects, animals and fungi of Britain, before illustrating her children’s books. Marianne North, a Victorian amateur botanical artist, left Britain in search of new discoveries. She painted over 800 pictures depicting her travels, now housed at The Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, who recently commissioned and bought several of Hazel’s works.