Mind me asking about what makes particular plants more difficult to render than others? I understand intricate plants with a million tiny, detailed flowers, but why seaweed or orchids?
So the basic Premise of Botanical Illustration (and any scientific illustration, really but my expertise is in botany* so we’re gonna talk about that mostly) is that when you’re drawing anyone thing you’re actually trying to draw two things:
1. The Plant Itself, with all it’s lovely little details.** (rendering)2. Some kind of concept ABOUT that plant- it’s life cycle, it’s underlying anatomy, it’s cultural impact, what happens when you spray it with these very specific chemicals, how it’s naughty bits work, how it rots, etc. (research)
So the difficulties you face when doing an illustration can be broken into Rendering and Research Problems. Some examples of each:
Rendering:
Subjet has a particularly complex and/or distinctive pattern/texture, which will take forever to render accurately.
Subject is a color that is difficult to render in conventionally available pigments (RIP Faber-Castell #139)
Subject is Very Large and must be either drawn huge to capture appropriate level of detail, or scaled down and risk losing detail. (A professor declared that the hallmark fo great illustrations is that they look as good at 30 feet as they do at 3 inches***)
Subject is Very Small and must be scaled up for viewing, which is mentally easier but will probably involve a microscope or maginifer and those things never quite work right and will give you a migraine.
Subject has an unusual or complex body plan that better be drafted and rendered exactly right or it’s going to look awful (Pineapples, lichens, cacti, dandelinons)
subject looks nearly identical to another species except for one minisule detail that has to be right and that you need to lampshade for identification purposes without it looking unnatural (GRASSES)
subject is SHINY, IRIDESENT, or FUCKING WET, all of which are different things that will look wrong if you don’t render them right.
You’re allergic to the fucking subject (orchids, weirdly)
Subject is some ungodly combination of all of the above. (seaweeds)
Resreach problems:
Subject is an endangered species and you need to be friends with the curator at a botanical garden to actually see one (wolllemi pine)
Subject can only be found in the wild, in another state, halfway up the mountain, or in similarly inacessible region
Subject only exists as a dessicated, slightly crushed specimen
Subject is banned due to being on Schedule 1 and you need to get a federal clearence to actually look at one (Cannabis)
There are a total of three (3) publications on your plant and they’re all written by the same guy who frankly, sucks.
Subject has many papers written about it, mostly by grad students who were half out of thier minds on stress and caffiene and frequently contradict each other. (Corn, oak trees)
Subject is, in fact, completely batshit insane (corn, lichens)
there are diagrams of your subject’s life cycle, but the professor LITERALLY drew them in crayon and it’s the formentioned guy who sucks so his paper doesn’t actually explain the diagram, so you have to call him and make him explain and listen to him eat nachos the whole time. (seaweeds)
So that’s kind of a breakdown on some of the problems that make some subjects more difficult than others, but seaweeds in particular present a lot of diffculties.
*Every botanical illustrator I know has also got a hand in mycology, entomology, ecology, ornithology chemistry and microbiology at this point because we’re all obsessive maniacs but my point stands.
**If you’re doing JUST #1 that’s Botanical Art (sometimes called Botanical portraiture) which is a completely valid and absolutely lovely form of art but the challenges of BI are somewhat different.
***The way you accomplish this is by really excelelnt composition and value managment for large scale, then obscenely fine renering up close. There’s a reason most BI people only put out three or four works a year.
