Press and the Media

Radio Interviews

• Interview about Sir John St. Aubyn on BBC Radio Devon in 2008
  

Exhibitions  

• From Darwin to Digital (press release Botanical Illustration under the microscope) in 2009:

• Sir John St. Aubyn - the secret life of a collector in 2010- 2012:

Press

Things Really Do Tend To Happen In Threes

Tulips all in a row... (a watercolour painting in progress)

I was going to go for a walk today, but that hasn't happened! I have made a cake though, cleaned my part of the house on our cleaning rota and done a bit of painting. So here's the latest for you... If I am honest I'd rather have more leaves on the page, but in essence these are just study pages while I experiement with colour and tone. If the piece is ok in the end, then that's an added bonus and I'll try and get it into the SBA exhibition... If not, then I learned a lot in the process.

 Close up on one of the Tulip Flowers

 Close up on one of the Tulip Petals

Tomorrow I am going to try and work out how to upload audio files onto blogger. I have tried lots of times already, but it just isn't working.  I am also looking into loading up some videos for you all. Watch this space!

Botanical Illustration

Tulipa species - a painting in progress

Today I am going to be painting, but here is a snap shot of the piece as I did do some work on it last week and didn't post anything. I am working from photographs a lot at the moment and I am desperate to do some painting from life*.  I'm starting to think about a painting holiday for after Christmas, it'll consist of a week off work and lots of sitting in Kew's glasshouses. There doesn't seem to be much growing out of my window at the moment so I will have to go under glass. However, there are things growing on my window sill! Cindy and Phil both have flower heads on them! I am so pleased with myself - I see this as a huge achievement as my dad can never get his orchids to flower. Sadly, Milly passed away this month after battling with baggy leaves for 10 months. I think the climate just wasn't right for her in my room.

 Phil (left) and Cindy's (right) flower buds

*In the winter I do work mainly from photographs and herbarium material. In the summer I work more from real life and use photographs towards the end of the piece to check my shadows. If I worked full time as an illustrator I'd definitely paint directly from the subject a lot more, but with a full time job I find I have to squeeze in bits of painting here and there and the process is more drawn out, by which time a lot of subject material would have gone 'over'.  This is one of the reasons why I at first tended to depict leaves and seeds more than flowers and fruit, but since completing the SBA course I have started exploring new subject matter. It's also why I used to work predominately in ink more than paint, again - something else which has changed since I completed my SBA course.

FLS Certificate

So a lovely parcel arrived in the post for me this week - it was full of magazines and newsletters. Yes, it was from the Linnean Society and hidden between the pages was my election certificate all wrapped up in a nice plastic sleeve. Another one for my collection! I am very pleased about this piece of paper and hope that it will lead to new things. I want to really take part in the Linnean Society as a whole and try to get a dialogue going between natural scientists and natural history illustrators by increasing the number of illustration based talks and articles in their lecture theatre and newsletters. It would also be nice to have small exhibitions... but of course one step at a time!

I was planing on posting some recent photographs of my paintings today. I did do some more painting on Monstera problema last night, as well as on Three Times Over, but alas I forgot to take a picture. The rain here is also pretty dismal (nice fine drizzle added to a very short day length = perpetual dark), so the daylight isn't very good to take pictures anyway (I was hoping for a bright morning and it didn't come). So I will post some new images on Saturday or Monday. I am enjoying my routine of painting for a couple of hours every night and recommend it to all! It was Gael Sellwood who told me that it is the best way to do things when you have a full time job to contend with - wise words. She also said it's good to have a business plan - again  - wise words!

Other news... I had a nice rally of emails with Shevaun Doherty this week - she seems to be very busy setting up the new Irish Society of Botanical Illustrators. This is really exciting news and I am so pleased that she has taken the plunge to set this up. It must be taking a lot of her time sorting out all the admin, but I think it will be worth it. I also contacted Mervi to ask if she could add a 'follow this blog' button on the Denver Botanic Gardens blog - hopefully this will make it easier for everyone to follow the latest news from Denver.

TTFN

New Book on Rory McEwen

Just found the information on Kew's upcoming publication on Rory McEwen:

Least you get an idea of pricing now and the ISBN numbers...

A New Wedding Gift - second post

 

So I managed to get quite a lot of work completed over the last week on this piece. Train journeys have helped! I think this piece will be completed over the Christmas period, so this probably is the fastest piece of embroidery I have ever done! Just trying to work out what I want to put in the alternate green diamonds. Does anyone have any ideas? Something to do with love would be good. I am going to put the Tunisian and German flags in the composition, and some flowers in the corners and two love birds at the bottom.

Detail on one of the corners

 Detail on the signature corner

A New Wedding Gift

So I have done the impossible and started another sampler! This one is for a wedding in July, so I am well ahead of the game. As you can probably tell the beautiful couple are German! They have just moved out to Tunsia and are busy preparing for their wedding.

So I've tried to make this piece of sewing a bit easier than the last wedding sampler I did. So far so good.  I have also done another impossible thing of gaining an i-phone (people who know me well will confirm that I am generally against such devices). Henry got his new iphone 5 this week and has given me his old iphone 3GS which I actually prefer as a model. So this blog post has been half written on the iphone (hence the bad pictures). This is great as it means I can post when I am in the East of London. The only irritating thing is that the app for Google Blogger is rubbish and I have to polish off what I am doing on Henry's computer. Never mind - hopefully Google will sort themselves out soon.

Off for a walk today with Henry... The sun is shining and I have the weekend off. So will log in tomorrow with other news. Have a super day!

The Wedding Sampler

 

 Close up on the boarder - there will be hearts in all the green diamonds

Number two of three

Botanical illustrations of Tulips in progress (Tulipa sp.)

I was very disciplined last night when I got home from work. I had some cashews and opened my mail and then went straight upstairs to my room and got on with this painting. My 'plan' to increase my production has got off on a good start. I decided to start the tulip on the left yesterday, as the one in the middle is annoying me and I want to get an over all idea of how the composition will look. To be honest I am just playing around at the moment.

I had a lovely day in the gallery at Kew yesterday - met up with Jacqui Pestell (you can find her on Twitter) and her group from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and gave them a little tour of the gallery. I have to say I find the courses that RBGE offer are (in my view) the best institutional courses in the country. It's a brilliant programme and the classroom they work in is fabulous and well lit. I'd like to go back up north one day and complete one of their workshops.

Making a start on the other petals...

Sunset over my house last night:

Boris and Polly have been re-located

This week has been a busy one so far. I posted Boris and Polly the other day and hopefully they now have a new owner. It was sad to see them go, but I am keen to clear the way for new work and clinging onto older pieces isn't a very good idea in my world. I need to keep some bits back though - for exhibitions - but I felt that Boris was not suitable material for the SBA exhibition this Spring and if I get a slot in the gallery I've approached in Richmond, I'd rather use new works.  So yes - Boris as gone and so has Polly. The good news is that I have got limited edition prints of Boris available, which you can get here.

 Boris the Broccoli, Watercolour, 2012

I have been busy tidying my room and trying to sort out all my Bare Necessities by logging everything in a spreadsheet - it takes most of my time these days, but I am over half way through my 12 month measuring period which is the good news. My room did pong a bit the other day because I got a bit behind! This isn't very nice, but it is an incentive to not get behind in my data entry.  I just have lots of birthday cards and wrapping paper to do now - the non-smelly stuff.  I am not sure how I am going to work out how much wood pulp has been used on all this cardboard packaging, but I am sure I'll find a way and then I can get cracking on with the painting itself.

 Diana and me outside the Temperate House, Kew

I had a lovely walk around Kew Gardens on Wednesday with my housemates. Although I work here I don't do long walks around the gardens that often. I know the temperate house rather well because it is close to the gallery! It's always a treat bringing friends into the gardens and showing them around.  

  Three Times Over, work in progress

Lastly, I did manage to get in an hour's worth of work on 'Three Times Over' on my day off, which is better than nothing. I am intending to do some work tonight before Henry pops over and have made a schedule to help me knuckle down. It's been a bit rubbish this year with my artwork and I am keen to get going. Changes at home and with my health are the contributing factors to this, but I feel I have come out the other side and am determined to become more productive. Watch this space.

Handmade envelopes

Been busy making envelopes today out of old magazines. I quite like these types of envelope - they have a real 'feel good' factor about them. I think household bills should come in envelopes like this to soften the blow.

I went for a walk around Kew this morning with my housemates. It's looking gorgeous at the moment - very Autumnal and empty. There's nothing quite like having Kew Gardens to yourself!  I am about to try and do some painting now. Rather delayed but better late than never.

Yogi Lion update

A work in progress... Yogi Lion is a sampler being sewn in half cross stitch to speed it up a little...

One more pose to go... and the lotus flower has begun to grow...

Three more letters...

So I am back in my daily rhythm again after a week of birthday celebrations. It has been rather full-on, but very fun. It just happened that a lot of my old friends and family were in town this week, probably for half term, and that gave me the option of catching up with a lot of them. Some of the friends I went to see on Thursday night I hadn't seen for 12 years! 

The upshot of all this socialising is that it has been a very quiet week on the work front. I have managed to get some sewing done on Yogi Lion however, as there have been many tube and train rides. I have also had the time to reflect on what I am trying to achieve with my life. Something that often happens on a) my birthday b) when I go home c) when I am not distracting myself with work.

Me with one glove on and one glove off next to a 

St. Aubyn plinth at the Linnean Society of London

The week began with a fantastic letter from the Linnean Society saying that I had been voted in as a Fellow! This is something I have wanted for a long time. When I worked in Plymouth in the city museum I researched an 18th Century collector called Sir John St. Aubyn and it was then when I first got involved with the Society. He himself was a Fellow and his herbarium contained a few specimens that were originally part of Sir James Edward Smith's collection (he founded the Society). The touring exhibition I made about his natural history collection at the end of my contract toured to the Linnean Society of London two years ago as part of its journey. I am sure all this work helped with my nomination! As my principle interests I have listed 'the history of natural history, botany, botanical art, curation, geology'.

So now I am looking for the letters E, G, H, I, J, K, N, O, Q, R, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z to be added after my name! I think X Y and Z will prove to be problematic!