Anita Walsmit Sachs is the director of the art department and a scientific illustrator at the National Herbarium in the Netherlands at the University of Leiden. Ten years ago, Anita started teaching botanical art classes at the university’s botanical garden. During the next four years, enrollment in her classes grew. In 2006, Anita and some of her students formed the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. Now 136 members strong, the Society will celebrate its seventh anniversary in April.
The focus of Anita’s work as a scientific illustrator is to visualize botanical information. Integrating information observed in dried plant specimens with the verbal instructions from botanists with whom she works, Anita creates line drawings in pen and ink that contain more information than could ever fit in a color photograph.
Please welcome Anita Walsmit Sachs, our special guest for January.
ArtPlantae: How did you become a scientific illustrator?
Anita: Dear Tania, many thanks for inviting me as artist of the month for January 2013. It is my birthday month!
I became a scientific illustrator by happy coincidence. My education was at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, I am trained there as a fashion designer and worked in that field several years as an artist and as a teacher of design and fashion history. Afterwards I became a still life painter in oil paint and was quite successful. By that time we had a house in the middle of France where I taught landscape painting for 8 years to people vacationing from the Netherlands. What I taught were active holiday workshops.
Sometimes I would feel rather lonely in my studio in Holland, so I would go out with a friend to draw and paint in the botanical garden at Leiden University once a week. It was a lot of fun and very educational!
While painting garden scenes and plants, I met the horticulturist, the technical director of the garden. She suggested that I visit the scientific illustrator of the National Herbarium, located in the Bio Science Park at the edge of the city. I took her advice and met Jan van Os. He showed me his drawings and the plant material he worked on and I was really very impressed by the beauty of his drawings. I had no idea that this kind of work still existed. I had only seen these kind of drawings in old biology books and flora’s. I asked him if he could teach me and so I became an apprentice.
When his colleague retired I was asked to fill-in the vacant position. First I was in doubt because I was used to a life of freedom as an artist. But then I thought I would give it a try.
Working at the herbarium has brought much pleasure for more than 12 years now.
Around the same time, I started to participate in botanical painting workshops in England that were taught by Ann Farrer and Gillian Barlow at the Chelsea Physic Garden. I also came in contact with the Society of Botanical Artists in London and participated in several of their shows and worked as a tutor in the Distant Learning Course.
Later I met Anne-Marie Evans, of whom I had heard a lot about. I met her at one of the ASBA shows and asked her if I could join her classes, which I have done now for several years.
Anne-Marie invited me to participate in the Highgrove Florilegium of HRH Prince Charles. My two paintings of a double white lilac, Seringa vulgaris ‘Madame Lemoine’ and Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’ are included in the second volume of the Highgrove Florilegium.
I was so lucky to be able to introduce the Highgrove Florilegium in the Netherlands at Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the first and oldest museum founded in 1784. I introduced the florilegium during the exhibition Vorstelijk Tuinieren (Royal Gardening). The exhibition lasted 3 months and had an amazing number of visitors. I am very grateful to Anne-Marie Evans for giving me the opportunity to join the florilegium, as this has had a great impact on botanical art in the Netherlands. Before this exhibition, people over here were not in the least interested and I met the same resistance Coral Guest describes in her interview.
My fashion background is very helpful for my scientific work. I learned to make patterns for dresses and drawing a flat pattern for three-dimensional use is not that far removed from turning a three-dimensional plant into a drawing on a flat surface.
The scientific part of my training, even though I work with mostly dried specimens, is very helpful for my botanical watercolor painting because I’ve learned to look really well at plant material. I am very happy to be able to play in both fields.
Being a scientific and botanical illustrator, and painter, gives me enormous joy as I have a life full of distraction that involves meeting many different kinds of people such as scientists, artists, breeders, floral designers, and other interesting people. Accuracy and a sharp eye and passion are the essential tools of the scientific illustrator!
ArtPlantae: During the scientific illustration class I took from you this past Fall, you mentioned that you are training your successor. Your successor is a very lucky person! Not all up-and-coming illustrators are this fortunate.
What advice do you have for young scientific illustrators looking for work at gardens, herbaria, museums or laboratories? What type of work experiences should they have before they can be considered for an illustrator position at an herbarium or research facility?
Anita: My advice to young scientific illustrators is to try to join a herbarium or museum and offer to help with illustrating or other relevant jobs as a volunteer. By doing this, an organization’s staff gets to know them and they get to know the staff, and when there is a position available the staff will think of them as a possible person to fill the job.
Young illustrators should also enlarge their network through the Internet and in real-life by participating in conventions, meetings and workshops.
My advice is also to work hard and be helpful and try to find niches where they can develop things on their own. The best way to learn the tricks of the trade of scientific drawing is, in my opinion, to be trained in a situation where a student works with a master.
ArtPlantae: In the article your wrote for the December 2012 issue of The Botanical Artist – Journal of the American Society of Botanical Artists, you mentioned you work with scientists whose research is dedicated to the plants of southeast Asia. Does any aspect of your research include plants described by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius in The Ambonese Herbal? The manuscript used to print The Ambonese Herbal is located in the library at the University of Leiden. Have you ever seen this historic text?
Anita:
The scientists of our herbarium work at the Flora Malesiana so plants described by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius must have passed my hands. In the library of the herbarium I have seen a copy of the books, which was very impressive. Also the story of his life is very impressive, his constant perseverance and dedication to his passion.
ArtPlantae: You work with watercolor, pen and ink and oil. Are your oil paintings as detailed as your watercolor paintings? Or is oil a medium you use to create more spontaneous and expressive art?
Anita: Lately I have not made many oil paintings. My oil paintings are very detailed, the subject is mostly nature-related, for instance bird nests and eggs, autumn leaves and so on.
I enjoy painting items from nature in still life because I love to create textures and details.
I really love the 17th century flower paintings and tried to make one myself. Now I am very sorry that I sold the painting and have no digital picture of it.
Dear Anita-
It was a pleasure to read about your work. I have been looking for botanical art in oil workshops for a few years. Your work is beautiful and how inspiring it must be to paint in the Netherlands! Dutch 17th c. painting is of incomparable detail and epitomizes art, in my opinion. I enjoy attempting to paint after DeHeem and also admire Rachel Ruysch’s florals. Thank you for your work and thank you to Art Plantae for introducing us to you.
ArtPlantae: When one comes across an interesting plant in the field, is without a hand lens and has barely 30 minutes to jot down notes about their plant, what type of visual information should one record in order to aid identification back in their studio or lab?
Anita: When you are in the field and meet an interesting plant, you can do one of two things — forget about it or try to describe the plant with words being as detailed as possible.
Describe how it grows, the length of the stem, the way the leaves are attached to the plant and what the leaves are doing. Describe the veins of the leaves, the flowers, the shape of the calyx and corolla, the number of sepals, petals and stamen there are and the shape of the anthers.
A few quick sketches showing the connections of leaves and flowers and other floral details must be included. A note about the color would also be nice.
Dear Anita
How exciting to read about you and your work here on the ArtPlantae-website. I admire your work and also your focus on education and teaching botanical illustration. In Belgium and The Netherlands there are relatively few people teaching botanical watercolours/illustration so I feel very lucky I could join your classes at the Hortus in Leiden twice so far.
I am trained as a botanist so careful observation of plant features feels comfortable. Color theory, however, is more distant and color mixing happens more or less intuitive to reach the desired color.
What is your advice to make progress in color mixing for non-art-students?
Looking forward to the winter course in Febr.
Dear Suzy,
Many thanks for your question.
Color mixing indeed seems to be a problem for many people. Mostly one gets muddy colors, which can be useful, but it is nice to master the mixing and get the color you want instead using the trial-and-error method.
Redouté (1759-1840), the famous French botanical painter, says that there are different ways to come to the same color. So many roads lead to Rome ( a Dutch saying). Personally I do not like all the color mixing books, though in my classes I use the method of Michael Wilcox, as he explains quite well what color mixing is all about. In his book “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green” (page 33), the color bias wheel explains very well about what colors to use to get the color you need. The rest is just practice.
I hope this answer helps you. Very best wishes, Anita
ArtPlantae: Drawing in ink can be a little intimidating. What general rules should one follow when drawing a plant in ink? For example, when it comes time to lay down ink, should leaves be inked before the stem? Petals before reproductive parts? Roots before stems? In short, should what’s up front be inked before what’s in back?
Anita: After tracing the habit of the plant and drawing all the details asked for by the scientist, I gather all the items and arrange them in my format of 24 cm x 36 cm, taking much care with the composition. Because I do not work with a computer and everything is done by hand, I try to avoid overlaps. This is because later on, after the drawing has been scanned, some elements of the drawing may be re-used in another format.
I always place the habit in such a way that it plays the main role in my design and place the details around it in the most logical way. To me it is very important that the drawing is clear and reads well.
Then I trace my composition on Schoellershammer 300 gram paper and start to ink.
First I do the main stem, inking the right side more heavily than the left side, the light side. The leaves are inked the same way, with the right side receiving a thicker line than the left side.
ArtPlantae: The Dutch Society of Botanical Artists introduces new audiences to botanical art. How does it reach out to new audiences? Does the Society make use of social media? Which social media channels seem to work the best for the group?
Anita: The Dutch Society of Botanical Artists (Botanisch Kunstenaars Nederland) was founded in 2006. I became aware of the societies in England and America and was really shocked that in a country like mine, the Netherlands with its long history of flower painting and where there are so many breeders and flowers and where plants cost almost nothing, there was not such a society.
I founded the society with some of my star pupils and with colleague Jan van Os.
We have an annual members’ exhibition and some of the shows have a theme like “Siebolds Flower Garden”. This was a show where the members of the society painted plants that were introduced to Europe by Philip Franz von Siebold, a medical doctor who worked for the Dutch government on the Isle of Deshima in Japan. He had a great interest in the ethnografica (cultural art) and biology of Japan and sent many specimen to the Netherlands.
This exhibit traveled to four different locations, including the place of birth of Von Siebold in Germany. Working with the Japan Museum in Leiden, we published a booklet about the drawings and von Siebold. This booklet is sold out now.
This spring we organized an exhibition about blooming bulbs together with a famous bulb breeder, who offered us the
Huys Dever, Lisse. Photo credit: Fnorp from nl [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)] from Wikimedia Commons.
plant material. The exhibit took place in spring in the middle of the bulb fields in bloom in a donjon called ‘t Huys Dever.
The society also organizes many courses and workshops and presentations. We also have a website and a online newspaper.
Concerning social media, we are a bit slow. One of our members founded Botanical Artists Forum a closed group of artists. I think LinkedIn would be very good to participate in and we are working on that.