Hello my readers! In this latest installment of Arielle's Audubon Scientific Illustration Blog, I want to discuss my journey illustrating inanimate specimens during class.
First, I got practice with shading and lines by replicating a professional pine cone drawing by a botanical artist. To be frank, this exercise proved to be quite challenging as there are many, many components of the drawing to be replicated. It was also very time consuming. I attempted to recreate as many of the fine details of the pine cone as much as possible, and thus, it was quite difficult. However, I am very pleased with the results, although I only drew a small section of the ovulate cone.
(using an HB Papermate mechanical pencil to render the pine cone)
(illustration of a pine cone by Sarah Simblet (right); final rendering (below)
(Pinus maximartenzli)
Next, I worked on illustrating ball moss. As Ann Swan (2010) suggests in her book, I drew out the composition size I would be working with - that way none of the specimen would be cut out due to running out of paper space. This served me well. Additionally, as Swan (2010) advises for botanical illustration, I made my drawing true to scale/size. Illustrating the ball mass was both frustrating and enjoyable. I loved that I was able to recreate a live specimen on a 2D space with the actual specimen in front of me, as I was sitting at a desk. I do admit drawing in the field was a bit difficult with last week’s project in the Arboretum since I didn’t have a hard, inanimate surface in which to illustrate. Drawing the ball moss gave me experience with perspective, as some of the plant’s tendrils would be drawn in the foreground, while other tendrils would be drawn in the background. My challenge was to accurately depict perspective. I attempted to make tendrils in the background thinner than those in the foreground. I will admit that drawing the plant took a lot longer than I had expected.
(Measuring out the size of the composition)
(Tillandsia recurvata)
Colors used:
Prismacolor Premier:
- Apple Green
-Dark Green
-White
-Sienna Brown
-Dark Brown
- Canary Yellow
Drawing the ball moss, I definitely learned about ball moss (or rather airplant) anatomy. In fact, I realized in recreating this particular specimen, that I had owned a ball moss plant last year, although I never knew ball mosses were air plants. Which is surprising for me given that I’ve seen dozens of ball mosses on trees around campus. Ball mosses do not require soil, nor do they have roots. Rather, their anatomy consists of holdfasts which anchor it to the surface it grows on. That’s why some of the specimens in class were attached to branches of a tree. Okay, that’s enough talk on ball moss, let’s talk about the shell I drew.
I drew a shell from a candy cane snail (or Liguus virgineus). But the thing is I did not know what the species of the shell was when I first illustrated it. I used iNaturalist to help narrow down my options. Also, I had to base my drawing of the shell from a reference photo since I ran out of time in class to sketch out the subject. This would be my first time ever drawing a shell in my life, so it was definitely a new experience for me. I used the stippling technique for this particular illustration, as I am not the best at drawing curvilinear lines and I thought the stippling technique would give me good flexibility. I wanted to use colored pens to color the shell, but I did not possess a yellow pen (one of the stripe colors) and therefore, I opted to use my Prismacolor Premier colored pencils.
(using Prismacolor Premier white colored pencil to blend the colors)
Colors used:
Prismacolor Premier:
- White
-Spanish Orange
-Poppy red
-Orange
-Light Cerulean Blue
- Violet Blue
-Peach
-Tuscan Red
- Pink
(final rendering!)
From drawing the candy cane snail shell, I never realized how colorful snail shells could be. This one had a variety of different colors. I also got good practice with the stippling technique as well, which was great. The shell itself had a porcelain texture and appearance to it, with the colorful stripes. Now I wonder what the snail who inhabited the shell looked like.
Overall, while my experience drawing the three specimens was a bit of a struggle, I ultimately am glad with the way the illustrations came out.
(669 words)
Work Cited
Swan, Ann. Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils. B.E.S. Publishing, 2010.
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