Posted in botanical art, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, Reference, Technology, tagged apps, books, ebooks, field guide, Tips & Tools on April 15, 2013 | 1 Comment »
There are many apps on the market that enable naturalists to explore the great outdoors without carrying a backpack full of books. Even large traditional references such as The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California are now available as easy-to-carry ebooks.
What type of interactive field guides or apps have you used to learn about plants? Did you find them to be user-friendly or simply too frustrating to use?
Share your experiences below in the Comment box.
Posted in botanical art, Education, Learning Opportunities, Photography, Reference, tagged photography, postcards, printing, Tips & Tools on March 20, 2013 | 12 Comments »
A fellow artist has a question for you…
I am thinking ahead to the 2013 holiday season and would like to create some postcard sets for gifts. Does anyone have any good references as to sizes? I’d love to create squares. Do you have any advice about photographing images for printing? Where to purchase the blank cards? Best type of printing? Where to have them printed? I am planning a small run of boxed or bagged sets, maybe only 50-100 sets to start. Thank you.
Do you create your own stationery? What have you learned through your experiences of making your own cards? Share your experiences below.
Posted in botanical art, botanical illustration, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, nature, Photography, Reference, tagged botany, Digital Learning Day, photography, teaching & learning, technology on February 15, 2013 |
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, the event for which February is probably best known. Today I propose that there is a bigger and better event in February. This event is Digital Learning Day. A new national movement, the second annual Digital Learning Day was celebrated just last week. This national campaign celebrates “education champions who seek to engage students, celebrate and empower teachers, and create a healthy learning environment, personalized for every child.”
Allow me to stray just a bit from the usual drawing-specific topics covered in this column. I am not straying too far, really, as today’s featured activity can be implemented as a clever way of encouraging the collection of quality reference photographs — resources valued highly by all botanical artists and natural science illustrators.
Meet Wendy Walker-Livingston. Drawing upon her fond memories of scavenger hunts at summer camp, science teacher Wendy Walker-Livingston created a scavenger hunt about plants in which learning is reinforced through field work and technology. She describes her 21st-century scavenger hunt in the article, Botanical Scavenger Hunt.
Walker-Livingston’s field adventure is exactly what you’d expect a scavenger hunt to be — a mad dash with list in-hand and a sprint to the finish line.
What is different about Walker-Livingston’s scavenger hunt is that participants are not collecting objects. Instead, what they are collecting are images. In this case, images of 16 key plant characteristics used in plant identification (Walker-Livingston, 2009) that were collected using digital cameras and cell phones. Today, of course, you can add iPods and tablets to this list of image-capturing devices.
When conducting this activity, Walker-Livingston (2009) prepares students for their scavenger hunt by first introducing them to botanical terminology, plant morphology, plant classification and dichotomous keys. When distributing the list for the scavenger hunt, she tells students they have 50 minutes to collect photographs of the characteristics on their list and 10 minutes to download their images.
The day (or two) after the scavenger hunt, each student team is given 60 minutes to create a 3-minute multimedia presentation that includes a narrated description of the images they collected.
Walker-Livingston (2009) says her activity has been successful on many levels. Students love the activity, the multimedia project helps students verbalize their new knowledge and the project successfully addresses the various ways learners interact with the world, ways Howard Gardner describes in his theory of multiple intelligences.
Walker-Livingston’s Botanical Scavenger Hunt is easy to add to your teaching toolbox. This article can be purchased online for 99¢ from the NSTA store.
Literature Cited
Walker-Livingston, Wendy. 2009. Botanical scavenger hunt. Science Scope. 32(6): 31-34.
Related
Posted in botanical art, botanical art books, botanical illustration, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, Reference, Special Announcements, Special Events, tagged botanical art, botanical illustration, cookbook, field guide, Kickstarter, plant identification on January 29, 2013 |
Botanical artist Wendy Hollender and clinical herbalist Dina Falconi have created a cookbook that is also an illustrated field guide to wild plants. They have completed three years of writing, drawing, designing and recipe testing and are now ready to self-publish their book!
Five days ago they launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for production and printing expenses. Autographed first edition copies of their new book are available for only $38. This new title is expected to ship in June. It will be a hardcover book with an estimated 210 pages and 64 color pages. Visit Foraging & Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook to view pages from this wonderful new cookbook.
As of this morning, they have 237 backers and have raised 58% of the project goal. Their project will be funded only if they reach their funding goal by Sunday March 10, 2013 at 12 pm EDT.
Would you like to help Dina and Wendy publish their informative cookbook and illustrated field guide? Contributions begin at $1.
Visit their Kickstarter page to learn more.
Related
Botanical Drawing in Color
Posted in botanical art, botanical art books, botanical illustration, Education, gardening, general botany, Learning Opportunities, nature, Reference, Special Announcements, tagged art, books, botanical art, bulbs, collectible, flowers, Holland, Netherlands, tulips on January 18, 2013 |
Published in conjunction with the 5th anniversary of the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. This collectors edition brings into focus bulb and tuber crops available in the Netherlands. Drawing and painting the bulbs required studious and patient documentation over several growing seasons. This book contains a selection of the collection created by the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. Twenty-seven species of bulb and tuber crops are presented in twenty-five watercolor paintings and two graphite drawings.
Blooming Bulbs can be purchased for $20 (incl. shipping) directly from the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. Contact Anita Walsmit Sachs for more information.
Visit the website of the Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. Here you will find information about classes, be able to view members’ artwork, browse an archive of past newsletters and browse links to interesting websites.
Citation
Dutch Society of Botanical Artists. 2012. Bloeiende bollen (Blooming Bulbs). Foreward by Gert-Pieter Nijssen. Introduction by Anita Walsmit Sachs.
Posted in botanical art, botanical illustration, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, natural science illustration, Reference, tagged botany, Chicago, education, nature, Plants, teaching & learning on December 14, 2012 |
Image courtesy of Kathleen Garness. All rights reserved
Kathleen: I have become passionate about the need for natural areas restoration since joining the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plants of Concern rare plant monitoring program in 2001. Plants of Concern (POC) uses a nationally-acclaimed systematic scientific protocol that records data about the species, its associates, threats to the population and land management history. Right now I am responsible for monitoring about 40 populations of 26 rare species at ten different sites in four counties in our region, reporting our findings to the Chicago Botanic Garden and the landowners.
Why? Our rare, and even common, native species are being crowded out by non-native shrubs such as European buckthorn and herbaceous plants such as garlic mustard and teasel. Because of this, we are losing our valuable pollinators, and if we allow this trend to continue it will have disastrous economic and nutritional impacts on our well being, not to mention the tragic loss of so much of our botanical natural heritage.
Several years ago I had been asked to consider “adopting” one of my monitoring sites, Grainger Woods, since it did not have a steward, and they hoped that restoration efforts would be able to keep it nearly pristine. Two years ago we achieved the highest level of natural areas protection afforded by the state. Now, over half of the site is an Illinois dedicated nature preserve. Grainger Woods has over 300 species of plants and is an important bird study area for Lake County IL, because the rare red-headed woodpecker has been known to nest there. One Saturday morning every month, in addition to our POC work (which may involve one or more extensive surveys per season per species and site) we clear the area of invasive non-native trees, shrubs or herbaceous plants.
While the Chicago region is arguably the nation’s leader in natural areas restoration, our biennial Wild Things conference draws well over a thousand attendees from the region. Many volunteers lack a depth of botanical knowledge that, a hundred years ago, used to be an essential part of every high school curriculum. But now, this knowledge is in danger of being lost entirely. And many site managers and stewards don’t have the time to train their volunteers about the finer points of plant taxonomy, even if they felt it would be valuable. So one of the region’s leaders, Barbara Birmingham, a retired science teacher, has been trying to address that deficit by offering monthly field botany classes at her site every year for the past three years. She asked me to assist her in developing new materials, and since each month she focused on a different common plant family, and would be using these materials in coming years, I felt this was a worthwhile use of my skills and time.
As the project evolved, we realized this could be useful region-wide, so I enlisted the help of many local scientists and stewards, emailing them the pages for their comments, according to their area of specialty. Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plant Conservation Manager of Regional Floristics, Susanne Masi, who co-authored The Sunflower Family in the Upper Midwest, edited the Asteraceae pages; Stephen Packard, director of Audubon Chicago Region and Kenneth Robertson from the Illinois Natural History Survey, contributed to the Rosaceae; and many others contributed to the rest of the series. John Balaban, one of the original Cook County North Branch stewards, and Rebecca Collings provided dedicated support from the Field Museum of Natural History here in Chicago. We are more than halfway through the project, having completed fourteen of the twenty-six most common plant families here. (Rebecca and I first become acquainted when I was asked by their botanist Bil Alverson to assist with Keys to Nature Orchids.
The Field Museum provided the template, which was consistent with the other Rapid Color Guides they had already developed. We worked together as a team to come up with the design and content for each page, which I wrote and illustrated. We chose species that restoration volunteers might easily come across, as well as a few that are invasive or of special concern, to watch out for and report. Since we have so much biodiversity in our region, it was hard to choose, and for that I was very grateful for the team approach. Some of the families, such as the gentians and arums, were able to be completed in one page — the others were just an overview. We also wanted to suggest some of the important ecological relationships plants have to animals and used Milkweed Metropolis as that one example.
ArtPlantae: What are the goals of this project? How do the project sponsors – The Field Museum – plan to use this information?
Kathleen: We will be promoting the pages next February during the
Wild Things Conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Field Museum will be giving their ecology students the pages as handouts this next field season, and providing the link to the pages so that folks can also access them via mobile technology such as smartphones or digital tablets. Stewards will be able to use them as handouts in their field botany walks and restoration instructions, too.
And I feel a clarification is in order here – by no means are they intended to replace field guides or taxonomic keys. Rather, they are a quick visual way for folks new to natural areas exploration or restoration to begin to familiarize themselves with botany basics, not feel so intimidated by the diversity our area offers, and maybe eventually purchase a field guide such as Peterson’s or Newcomb’s. So they are intended to complement the use of field guides, providing a quick visual identification to family; from there an unknown plant can hopefully be keyed to species using a field guide or an online resource such as the USDA PLANTS Database or Flora of North America. The page set also includes a short glossary.
ArtPlantae: Do you envision other uses for this guide?
Kathleen: We have shown them to regional scouting program leaders and
Image courtesy of Kathleen Garness. All rights reserved
ArtPlantae: You have mentioned in the past that there needs to be a grassroots effort to help people “make the connection between plants and well-being.” From what you’ve observed through your work with the public, where would be a good place to start?
Kathleen: Well, we’re hoping these materials will begin to assist with this! For the last twenty years or so, there has been a groundswell of interest in natural areas restoration, organic gardening, urban horticulture, even beekeeping, not just regionally or nationally, but worldwide. Well before this, the Midwest was blessed with being the epicenter of the ecology movement, through the pioneering work of famous naturalist Robert Kennicott, who worked for the Smithsonian Institution and was a founder of the Chicago Academy of Sciences; Stephen Forbes, who was the first head of the Illinois Natural History Survey; Henry Chandler Cowles, University of Chicago, today considered the father of ‘dynamic ecology’; Aldo Leopold; and the tireless May Theilgaard Watts, who was one of Morton Arboretum’s most famous naturalists. These intrepid naturalists got out into the field every day, marveled at the wonders of nature, made careful observations, and inspired several generations that followed. So this generation, I feel, is standing on the shoulders of giants, and we need to keep the momentum going – we need to get folks outside, to have them experience the beauty of nature firsthand on a regular basis, but also provide them the tools to really SEE and appreciate what they are looking at. That is the goal of my current botanical illustration work and I see no proper end to it. I hope artists and naturalists in other regions see the value in this and do it for their communities too.
ArtPlantae: You are working on another project in which economic botany and ornamental horticulture are the focus. What are the educational objectives of this project?
Kathleen: The Oak Park Conservatory, where I am Artist-in-Residence until November 2013, has also engaged me to make similar materials about the plants in their tropical greenhouses. So far I have completed two sets – cacao and poinsettias – of the eight sets commissioned, and am now starting on the cacti and succulents. These are not family pages per se because each set’s scope is broader than just one family. I also interact with the Conservatory visitors, show them how a botanical artist works, chat about the various collections if they’re interested, and will hopefully complete my tenure there with an exhibit of new watercolors!
ArtPlantae: You are doing wonderful work, Kathleen. Thank you for spending time with us this week.
More About the Field Guide
The pages of Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region are standard 8.5″ x 11″ pages and fit easily into a 3-ring binder. Since they are a standard size, the pages are also easy to laminate. Users of this guide may be interested in creating their own color-coding system while learning the features of each plant family (similar to what is used in Botany Illustrated).
Featured in this guide are the following plant families:
A glossary of botanical terms is also included with the guide.
The guide Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region is available online for free.
I really enjoy my work as a volunteer natural areas steward for Grainger Woods. My two passions – preserving habitat and documenting native species – seem to feed off each other. In 2008 my colleague Pat Hayes and I were surprised with a Chicago Wilderness Grassroots Conservation Leadership Award for our work in developing educational materials for youth as part of the national Leave No Child Inside initiative.
What feels like an eon ago, I served as board member and president of the historic Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, and am still currently active in several local and national arts organizations. One of my most exciting opportunities, though, was the acceptance of one of my paintings into the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens, London, as part of Losing Paradise? Endangered Plants Here and Around the World and in the 2011 edition of Smithsonian in Your Classroom.
I am the mother of one son, Ian Halliday, who encouraged me in this work by buying me a Wacom tablet one year for Christmas when he saw me laboring over my other avocation, the illustrations for the Little Gospels, published by Liturgy Training Publications for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd curriculum. I still have to figure out how the Master’s in Religious Education and 20+ years teaching Sunday school figures into the artist side of me, but it all seems to fit somehow!
Posted in botanical illustration, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, natural science illustration, Reference, tagged art, biological illustration, pen & ink, science, scientific illustration, teaching & learning on November 23, 2012 |
Pen and ink illustrations of plants are found most often in field guides. They convey a great deal of information and are attractive works of art, even though being a “work of art” might not be their primary purpose.
Learning how to draw in pen and ink can be a challenge. Figuring out how to make marks in the proper order to create the intended effect takes some thought. After all, ink is so, so …… permanent.
One can easily find a nice selection of instructional books about working in pen and ink. Resources dedicated to drawing in the sciences, however, are a little more difficult to find but they are out there. Take for example Biological Illustration: A Guide to Drawing for Reproduction by Claire Dalby and D. H. Dalby.
This 14-page paper is a helpful introduction to drawing in pen and ink. Don’t let its age (32 years) cause you to doubt the value of the information it has. While today there may be more convenient pen and ink tools at our disposal, not to mention technologically nifty ways of creating pen and ink-like drawings with apps, nothing beats learning from people with years of experience behind them.
In their paper, Dalby & Dalby (1980) address many interesting topics. Topics such as creating diagrammatic and naturalistic images, working from dried or preserved material, and reproducing line drawings for publication. They include in their paper a 9-page guide to drawing in black and white where they discuss: dots, lines and tones; pure line drawing; tone; dots; hatching; artificial tones and tints; pens; pencils; brushes; paper; spare paper; ink; white paint; light boxes and tracing tables; linen testers and proportional dividers. I think you will find the section about hatching of particular interest. In this section, Dalby & Dalby (1980) present the fruit of the opium poppy drawn seven different ways. Here you can learn how line drawing, stippling, hatching and a combination of dots and lines can affect the appearance of a specimen.
I think you will also enjoy the troubleshooting section in which they address drawing challenges. Here Dalby & Dalby (1980) offer suggestions about how to create smooth surfaces, thin subjects, hairy subjects, small subjects, complicated subjects with too much detail, colored subjects, spirals, and intricate symmetrical subjects.
Another helpful section is the one in which the authors address printing techniques and their limitations. In this section, they provide invaluable insight that will help you plan line drawings for publication.
This paper is a wonderful addition to any drawing library. It is available online for free from the Field Studies Council. Click on the link below and scroll down to Volume 5, Number 2.
Literature Cited
Dalby, Claire and D.H. Dalby. 1980. Biological illustration: A guide to drawing for reproduction. Field Studies 5(2):307-321. Web. <http://www.field-studies-council.org/fieldstudies/date.htm> [accessed 20 November 2012]
Posted in Education, Reference, tagged animals, arts, books, caldecott award winning books, children, environment, illustration, teaching and learning on November 16, 2012 |
Children’s picture books contain more illustrations of built environments than natural environments.
This is the finding of Williams et al. (2012) in The Human-Environment Dialog in Award-winning Children’s Picture Book.
J. Allen Williams Jr., Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Palmer, Philip Schwadel and Deanna Meyler evaluated 296 Caldecott award-winning books to investigate how the environment was portrayed in children’s book illustrations. Williams et al. (2012) evaluated titles winning the award between 1938 – 2008 and explain they chose to study Caldecott winners because the American Library Association considers these titles to have the best illustrations and because these titles are circulated widely among libraries. The authors explain they chose to study illustrations in children’s books specifically because they “play an important role in childhood socialization” (Williams, et al. 2012). The Caldecott award was first issued in 1938 (Williams, et al. 2012).
During their investigation of 70 years’ worth of titles, the authors evaluated 8,067 images. When evaluating images, Williams et al. (2012) recorded the following:
Here is a summary of the main findings resulting from the authors’ statistical analysis of illustrations:
You might be asking yourself, “What made negative images ‘negative’? “
Illustrations were coded as negative if they mostly showed “unpleasant or potentially dangerous natural conditions” or served “as critical commentary on environmental problems” (Williams, et al. 2012).
In discussing the findings above (and many others), Williams et al. (2012) conclude that children’s understanding and appreciation of nature is not being nurtured through the children’s books they studied. Neither is children’s understanding of the role human’s play in the environment.
The authors are concerned about illustrations in children’s books because children’s books reflect what is going on in society (Williams, et al. 2012). The authors hypothesize that two factors may be contributing to they way the environment is presented in children’s books: 1) the public’s indifference towards environmental issues and 2) the public’s declining exposure to natural environments. They make a strong case for both in their paper citing independent research and Gallup poll data. To read more about their analysis of these issues and to view a full account of their findings, download a copy of their article. It is available online for free.
Literature Cited
Williams, J.Allen and Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Palmer, Philip Schwadel and Deanna Meyler. 2012. The human-environment dialog in award-winning children’s picture books. Sociological Inquiry. 82(1): 145-159
Posted in botanical art, botanical art books, botanical illustration, Education, Learning Opportunities, Reference, Watercolor, tagged botanical art, botanical illustration, drawing, flowers, Mariella Baldwin, painting, Plants on November 7, 2012 |
If you’re new to botanical art, you have many resources at your disposal to help you find your way. There are websites, tutorials, professional organizations, certificate programs, classes and of course, books! Many more than what existed 15 years ago. I have had the good fortune to share many books on this site and today I have the pleasure of sharing one more.
Botanical Painting by Mariella Baldwin is a rich resource for those who have a growing interest in learning how to paint plants.
In her introduction, Mariella explains she wrote her book to show people how to paint plants without fear. While she does not stress a technical, scientific approach to drawing and painting plants, Botanical Painting is definitely not a book about expressive flower painting. Far from it. It is a book about drawing with accuracy and painting for pleasure.
The thoughtful and patient conversation Mariella has with readers who lack prior painting experience made a big impression on me. Mariella clearly cares about connecting with her readers and provides confidence-building advice at just the right moments during the drawing and painting process. Always supportive, Mariella is respectful of the path each individual takes to a finished painting.
Novice botanical illustrators will appreciate Mariella’s thoughtful instruction about how to begin a
Click to enlarge, image courtesy Crowood Press
When it comes to painting, beginners are shown how to turn the painting process into manageable tasks. The instructions Mariella provides for her practice techniques are as clear as her instructions for the “official” painting steps she outlines. Throughout, photographs of her own sketches and painting studies support the written text.
Some of the topics Mariella addresses in her book are:
Click to enlarge, image courtesy Crowood Press
Want to learn more about
Botanical Painting?
Posted in botanical art, botanical illustration, Education, Learning Opportunities, Photography, Reference, Special Announcements, tagged Adobe Photoshop Elements, art, ebook, guide, scanning, tutorial on October 31, 2012 | 2 Comments »
New ebook by Mindy Lighthipe
5″ x 7″
8″ x 10″
Drawings and painting in these sizes are easy to scan at home on a desktop scanner on a scanning surface that is
8.5″ x 11″. But what do you do with the rest of your work that is not only larger than this surface, but larger than your entire scanner?
Thanks to technology and natural science illustrator, Mindy Lighthipe, there is now a short practical guide to scanning your artwork.
Scan YOUR Art is a 17-page guide in which Mindy demonstrates how to scan a 11″ x 14″ painting using nothing more than your computer, your scanner, your printer and Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.0.
Mindy walks you through the process carefully and includes screenshots of each step so you can follow along as you replicate each step at home.
Mindy provides “how to” information such as:
Mindy also provides information about printing companies and an online resource through which you can learn all the ins and outs of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.0.
Scan YOUR Art is available as an ebook and can be purchased for $1.99.
Posted in botanical illustration, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, Reference, tagged botany, curriculum, Plants, science education, visual literacy on June 15, 2012 |
Ask and they will see.
In What Do You See?, professors Julianne Maner Coleman and M. Jenice “Dee” Goldston explain how to implement questioning strategies to enhance visual literacy in students.
What is visual literacy?
Visual literacy has to do with the ability to interpret the diagrams, charts, tables and illustrations that accompany text. Science textbooks contain many photographs, graphics and scientific illustrations. But do readers really understand them? Do they even look at them? Do teachers spend time discussing them?
After reviewing the teacher’s guide to a popular K-6 science textbook series, Coleman and Goldston (2011) concluded that teachers were probably not spending much time discussing the diagrams in their science textbooks. During their review, they found that the teacher’s guide provided little instruction about how to incorporate textbook diagrams into conversations about content. In their paper, Coleman and Goldston (2011) offer a solution to this problem and show how teachers can use “purposeful questions” (Coleman and Goldston, 2011) to enhance visual literacy and student learning.
The authors present their solution in a vignette in which a 4th grade teacher guides her student’s review of a plant cell diagram. The diagram students analyze is a cutaway diagram showing the structure of a plant cell and its contents. In the vignette presented by Coleman and Goldston (2011), the teacher guides her students’ review of the cell by asking questions such as:
These questions spark much discussion about what the students see in the cutaway diagram. It becomes clear that students understand the authors of their textbook included this particular diagram because they wanted students to learn what plant cells look like and what’s inside of them.
Because of their teacher’s thoughtful questioning, students make insightful observations about how the artist used a line to mark the cell’s edges and used different colors to make it look three dimensional. The teacher supports her students’ observations by explaining how artists use shading, lines and other techniques to present information that is otherwise not easy to see (Coleman & Goldston, 2011).
In the vignette, this conversation is followed by an activity in which students use microscopes to observe onion cells, Elodea cells, and then compare these live cells to the diagram in their book.
In What Do You See?, the dialogue between the teacher and her students is written out in detail and clearly demonstrates how purposeful questioning can support student understanding of diagrams and other graphics used in science textbooks.
In their paper, Coleman and Goldston (2011) provide three tools teachers can use to enhance the visual literacy of their students. These tools are:
What Do You See? is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in visual literacy and the role images play in science education.
This paper can be purchased online (99¢) from the National Science Teachers Association. Alternatively, you can search for a copy of this article at your local college library.
Literature Cited
Coleman, Julianne Maner and M. Jenice “Dee” Goldston. 2011. What do you see? Science and Children. 49(1): 42-47.
