The Best Botanical Art Books

Book Reviews: Creating botanical art

Making a Mark reviews......: Book Review: The Art of Botanical Painting

A definitive and practical guide to creating botanical art. This book is the basic text book used by the SBA's Distance Learning Diploma Course

An essential book for all artists contemplating the SBA's Diploma Course. An excellent introduction to botanical art for all experienced artists interested in developing their knowledge of and skills in botanical art

Making a Mark: The Society of Botanical Artists is 21!

Last year I bought Margaret Stevens' excellent book and practical instruction guide "The Art of Botanical Painting" (produced in association with the SBA) without realising that this is now set as the basic text for the Diploma course. It's a truly comprehensive and very impressive volume covering.....

Making a Mark: NEW: The Botanical Palette: Colour for the Botanical Painter

The Botanical Palette, subtitled 'colour for the botanical painter', by the Society of Botanical Artists in association with Margaret Stevens. Published on 1st October 2007 by Harper Collins

It provides a very authoritative and helpful guide to this topic - and will doubtless be welcomed by all those seeking to develop and improve the quality of their botanical art.

Making a Mark reviews......: Book Review: Botanical Illustration

A Manual for those who like their botanical illustration with a strong botanical and practical slant. It includes an introduction to basic botany; preparation of plant material for drawing; use of pencil, watercolour, coloured pencil and pen and ink. Also included are suggested topics for further study; how to correct mistakes and finishing touches. Includes over two hundred colour illustrations by over fifty artists on 192 pages

An excellent manual for anybody who wants to learn more about botanical illustration - very detailed and very helpful. Very well illustrated in terms of both the range and the quality of reproduction

Making a Mark: Flowers in Art: what's on my bookshelves?

I love books about flowers in art and floral art-making. This post sets out the candidates for a book review this month.

Making a Mark reviews......: New botanical art books for 2010

I'm very happy that I'm being sent some new botanical art books to review. It seems as if botanical art is maybe holding its own in the current economic climate after all judging by the number of new publications

5 new botanical art books for 2010

Making a Mark reviews......: Book Review: Botany for the Artist

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I value the fact this book is written by an artist, writer and lecturer who is an expert in drawing and communicating rather than a botanical artist. It means she brings a fresh and expert eye to the challenge of how to draw plants from a botanical perspective and an excellent approach to communicating the key messages. The quality of the text and illustrations is first class and the whole book provides a fresh perspective on botany for the artist while losing none of the fundamental and enduring truths of what's required of botanical illustration.

Making a Mark reviews......: Book Review: Botanical Sketchbook

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED This book provides a masterclass for all aspiring botanical artists and is highly recommended. It will become an essential buy for all students of the Society of Botanical Artist's Diploma in Botanical illustration. It's also a recommended buy for all other aspiring botanical art students and artists and many of their tutors. It provides an excellent benchmark for the standard of botanical illustration and painting which can be achieved by an exceptional student. It also tells the story of how such excellence can be developed - through much practice and intelligent use of the botanical sketchbook.

Read an interview with the author of Botanical Sketchbook - A Making A Mark Interview with Mary Ann Scott

Making a Mark reviews......: Book review: Botanical Painting with Coloured Pencils

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for coloured pencil artists. This is the first ever book written by an RHS gold medal winning artist to deal in depth with the execution of botanical art in coloured pencils to exhibition standard. It's an invaluable guide to those wanting to develop their skills in using coloured pencils for botanical art. It's also an extremely useful resource for all coloured pencil artists wanting to achieve the very high standards of execution achieved by both Ann Swan and her students.

Book Reviews: Compendia of Botanical Art

Making a Mark: Treasures of Botanical Art - a recommended read

Treasures of Botanical Art by Shirley Sherwood and Martyn Rix has been published by Kew Publishing to mark the inaugural exhibition of the The Shirley Sherwood Gallery in Kew Gardens, the first gallery in the world to be dedicated to year round exhibitions of botanical art.

Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: The Painter's Garden

I have been delighting all month in reading - very slowly - "The Painter's Garden" a monumental catalogue of nearly 400 pages produced by Sabine Schulz and published by Hatje Cantz. I'd go so far as to say I've been enjoying it that much that I've been slowing down to avoid finishing it.

Making a Mark: Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History

The strapline for the exhibition "Amazing Rare Things" is The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery. You can order and buy the exhibition catalogue from the Royal Collection online shop (or Amazon)

Making a Mark reviews......: Book Review: The Art of Plant Evolution

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED This book emphasises the scientific aspects of botanical art and provides all botanical art lovers with a comprehensive education in the botany of plant groups and families alongside numerous excellent examples of botanical art.

Book Reviews: Historical Botanical Art

my book reviews on Making A Mark

Making a Mark: Book Review - 1001 Plant and floral illustrations from early herbals

1001 Plant and Floral Illustrations: From Early Herbals (Dover Pictorial Archive Series) - Richard G Hatton
In reality there's very little text and an awful lot of engravings and illustrations used in early herbals. I find the herbals to be very attractive in their simplicity......I think I can now well understand why William Morris was such a fan of herbals. I'm also trying to remember which other artists liked and collected herbals - and Monet and Mackintosh spring to mind

Making a Mark: Flowers in Art: William Morris - herbals, flowers and making patterns

This post identifies William Morris's use of herbals and sources.

Making a Mark: Plant Motifs and Art #3

One of the books I bought was "The Flowers of William Morris" by Derek Baker published for the centennial....What I found extremely interesting, apart from the images of hand drawn designs where you can clearly see the process from pencil sketch more cetain deign lines through pen to colour washes, was that William Morris apparently also studied the flowers of Islamic art - and in particular the tulip - at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington.

Making a Mark: Book Review: Besler's Book of Flowers and Plants

Besler's Book of Flowers and Plants: 73 Full-Color Plates from Hortus Eystettensis, 1613
(Dover Pictorial Archive Series) - by Basilius Besler
In my opinion, this is the sort of book which will appeal to a real fan of the history of botanical art. It's certainly very interesting from the point of view of studying classical portrayals of plants and flowers. I also found it really interesting to see the difference between the woodcuts seen in the book reviewed yesterday and how the nature of the illustrations changed as they started to use (1) copper engraving and (2) colour.

Making a Mark: Book Review: Merian's Antique Botanical Prints

Merian's Antique Botanical Prints CD-ROM and Book (Pictorial Archives) by Maria Sibylla Merian and published by Dover Publications
All the engravings in the Merian book are taken from Erucarum Ortus, Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis published in Amsterdam in 1718. This was a book published by her daughter after Merian's death and concerns the transformation of caterpillars in butterflies - and the plants associated with that process en route. The book is literally crawling with caterpillars

Making a Mark: Flowers in Art... and Charles Rennie Mackintosh

"Mackintosh Flower Drawings" by Pamela Robertson and published by the Hunterian Art Gallery. I managed to get hold of a very good second hand copy using Amazon. It was first produced as a catalogue in 1988 to accompany an exhibition of Mackintosh's flower drawings held at the Hunterian Art Gallery - as its contribution to Glasgow's Garden Festival. It contains large images and detailed notes of all the flowers in the collection.

Book Reviews: Contemporary Botanical Art

my book reviews on Making A Mark

Making a Mark: Volume 1 of The Highgrove Florilegium is published

The Highgrove Florilegium (Volume 1) published on behalf of the Prince of Wales by Alecto Publications. Painting and horticulture are two major interests of the Prince of Wales which are combined in The Highgrove Florilegium. This started as a project in 2000 to mark the Prince's achievements in his garden and to provide a historical record of the plants. The first volume was published this week after six years work - in his 60th birthday year.

In this post I'm looking at

* the definition of a Florilegium,
* the publication of the first volume of the Highgrove Florilegium
* Historical Florilegia
* Contemporary Florilegia in the making

Making a Mark: Flowers in Art...and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RA RSA

The Royal Academy Masterclass book "Elizabeth Blackadder".
This book is a total bargain at £4. For anybody interested in her work, I very much recommend you buy this book as it's rich in content and comment by the artist - it very much lives up to the notion of a masterclass. Plus of course it has a lot of illustrations of her work - including close-ups of her painting as the work progresses.

Making a Mark: Georgia O'Keeffe Month: Learning about Notan #1

I'm trying to get to grips with Notan - using "Composition" the book by Arthur Wesley Dow, first published in 1899, which was Georgia O'Keeffe's bible when she went through the same process.

Making a Mark: Georgia O'Keeffe month: Two white irises (and three buds)

As you know I've been hunting down useful books for my Georgia O'Keeffe month. On Friday, I bought "Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections (Volume 2)" by Barbara Buhler Lynes at Kew Gardens. Having now had a chance to look through this book - which is the right way to describe a book which is mainly full page plates of colour images of her work - I've come to a few conclusions.