Posted in botanical art, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, Reference, Technology, tagged field guide, books, ebooks, apps, 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, tagged books, ebooks, photography, teaching & learning, trees on April 12, 2013 |
If we all approached drawing as a means of fixing a memory as opposed to creating a work of art, we’d do more of it and see more as a result.
– Nancy Ross Hugo
If you want to spend time getting to know trees, begin your journey with
Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees by author and educator, Nancy Ross Hugo, and photographer Robert Llewellyn. Together they lure readers out of their reading chairs and take them outside to look at trees in a new way.
Hugo and Llewellyn accomplish this through their discussion of thirteen viewing strategies and by teaching readers how to look at leaves, flowers, cones, fruit, buds, leaf scars, bark and twigs. Llewellyn’s informative and beautiful photographs support Hugo’s text and helps readers zero in on the details they need to see.
This same attention to detail is applied to the tree profiles featured in the book. You don’t have to get too far with even the first tree profile to realize you’ve looked at trees all wrong and that you’ve taken them for granted.
As you know, we’re focusing on technology this month and how technology can be taken outdoors. Seeing Trees is a great example of how technology can be used to enhance our understanding of plants. Hugo and Llewellyn’s book is more than a print book. It is available in ebook format and as an interactive book. It is the interactive format I will focus on today.
The interactive version of Seeing Trees is available through Inkling, a Web-based service that is transforming how readers interact with books. They have eliminated the “book” part and focus on how users view and consume content on iPads, iPhones, MACs and PCs.
When visiting Inkling’s website, the first thing you’ll notice is that you can buy the individual chapters of a book for as little as $1.99. The second thing you’ll notice is that the books are interactive and much more than simply a print book in a digital format. The types of interactive components vary among books. In the case of Seeing Trees, readers will find images they can enlarge, words they can highlight and define, and will enjoy the ability to conduct an in-depth search around a specific word. In the introduction section of the Inkling version, there is also a video about how the book was made and how Llewellyn’s approach to photographing this book was inspired by the botanical illustrators of long ago.
Other interactive features of Seeing Trees include:
While the trees in this book are common to the East Coast, this does not take away from its effectiveness as a tool for seeing. The viewing strategies Hugo and Llewellyn recommend can be applied to any tree (and any plant) regardless of one’s geographic location.
The Inkling edition of Seeing Trees is available for $16.99. The chapter price for this title is $4.99 per chapter.
Literature Cited
Hugo, Ross Nancy. 2011. Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees.
Photography by Robert Llewellyn. Portland: Timber Press.
Also See
Posted in ArtPlantae Books, botanical art, botanical art books, botanical illustration, Education, Learning Opportunities, Special Announcements, tagged ASBA, Bartram, books, botanical art, catalogs, exhibition, Philadelphia on April 10, 2013 |
Buy guide, $5
This 20-page booklet includes drawings and paintings by: Maryann Roper, Lizzie Sanders, Bobbi Angell, John Bartram, William Bartram, Beverly Duncan, Catherine Watters, Betsy Rogers-Knox, Wendy Cortesi, Lara Call Gastinger, Karen Kluglein, Dick Rauh, Joan Lavigueur Geyer, Judith Simon, Maria Cecilia Freeman, Derek Norman and Diane McElwain.
Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps is now on view at Bartram’s Garden Gallery in Philadelphia, PA through May 24, 2013. It will be on view at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, FL from September 19 – December 30, 2013 and then travel to the Cherokee Garden Library at Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, GA (March 17 – June 17, 2014) and the North Carolina Botanical Garden at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where it will be on view
August 30 – November 2, 2014.
This exhibition guide, as well as ASBA exhibition catalogs, can be purchased online at ArtPlantaeBooks.com.
Posted in botanical art, botanical illustration, Cookbooks, Education, gardening, Learning Opportunities, Special Announcements, Special Events, tagged books, botanical art, exhibition, horticulture, library, washington on April 5, 2013 |
Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists, a chapter of the American Society of Botanical Artists, will open a month-long exhibition and sale at the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture’s Miller Library this evening.
The exhibition by Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists will feature original paintings by 13 artists. Prints and cards will be available for purchase. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, May 4, the date of the Master Gardener plant sale at the Center for Urban Horticulture. A portion of proceeds from all sales will benefit the library.
This event will be held in conjunction with the 8th Annual Garden Lover’s Book Sale Preview Party, a wine and cheese event featuring hundreds of gardening books and cookbooks. Doesn’t this sound like fun?
To purchase tickets for tonight’s book sale and preview party, contact the library.
The annual book sale will be open to the public tomorrow from 9 AM – 3 PM (free admission).
Posted in ArtPlantae Books, botanical art, Special Announcements, tagged books, free shipping on March 27, 2013 |
Free Shipping Specials
The new Free Shipping category features items that qualify for free shipping. The selection of items in this category will change frequently, so check this new section often.
All items qualifying for free shipping will be sent via USPS Standard Post or the most economical shipping option available. This free shipping offer applies only to orders sent to an address within the contiguous United States. Please allow extra time for delivery.
Are you viewing this on a mobile device? Visit the mobile store.
Posted in ArtPlantae Books, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, tagged books, Kobo, PDF, pencil, sketchbook, Winsor & Newton on February 22, 2013 |
Click to download
I had one of those “Hey, I didn’t know this was here” moments this week. Lost in the shuffle of all that zips across the computer screen is a resource I haven’t spent much time digging into.
My discovery?
Books about drawing in pencil!
The best thing about them is that they are as much about history as they are art, they’re free, and they’re available as downloadable PDFs.
The notable discovery of the week is
Pencil Studies by Charles Rowbotham. Published in the late 1800′s, Pencil Studies was one of the handbooks published by Winsor & Newton. This book, along with 32 others, was published as a series of drawing books written and illustrated by individual artists. Rowbotham’s handbook about pencil studies was Number 2 in the series. Other handbooks addressed topics such as landscape painting, marine painting, portrait painting, miniature painting, flower painting, figure drawing, murals, ornamental art, wood engraving, etching, perspective, illumination and even the art of botanical drawing (I haven’t found this one yet).
In his handbook, Rowbotham discusses how to create foliage using pencil strokes and explains to readers how he created the four pencil sketches in his handbook. His explanations are concise and delightfully eloquent in that 17th century way. Rowbotham explains how a broken stem can be created using a few “sharp touches” instead of through the deliberate placement of a line. He explains how dirt walking paths need only be hinted at, and how grass can come from
“a few decided and effective touches”.
He also demonstrates the power of negative space and dark values while creating tree canopies, dense foliage, foreground plants, background plants and other landscape elements for readers.
Equally interesting, and somewhat entertaining, is the Winsor & Newton ad for drawing pencils. During this time, Winsor & Newton sold six kinds of pencils, each serving a specific purpose. The penny drawing pencil was for office or school use. The twopenny drawing pencil was for “artists and professors of eminence”. The threepenny drawing pencil was for architects and draughtsmen. The fourpenny drawing pencil was “warranted perfectly free from Grit”. The fivepenny drawing pencil was of “high quality in color, smoothness, and ready erasure”, while the sixpenny drawing pencil was manufactured with the “finest Lead”, was grit-free, contained “a larger quantity of Lead than usual”, and produced a “good volume of color”.
(Note: Lead pencils don’t really have lead in them. They are graphite and clay.)
Of course my discovery of Rowbotham’s handbook changed the course of my afternoon. More searching uncovered other treasures, all free and available as PDFs. Before I leave you with a list of only a few of my discoveries, I would like to share a quote I found in the book, Pencil Sketching from Nature (1906):
The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are master of the pen and the brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is both,
and will draw a line with the precision of the one, and the gradation of the other. — Ruskin
My Discoveries:
Disclosure: ArtPlantae is a partner of Kobo Books
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, tagged books, botanical art, Coral Guest, drawing, painting, Watercolor on December 12, 2012 |
Image courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing and Coral Guest. All rights reserved
Coral’s book, Painting Flowers in Watercolour: A Naturalist Approach is no longer in print and is only available as a used book. I asked Coral if she has plans to write another book.
She replied:
“At this moment in time there are no plans to produce a second edition or a new instructional book. I feel that the book was of its time, and although now outdated in various ways…”
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, Special Announcements, tagged books, Botanical Artists for Educa, raffle on October 31, 2012 |
Bonnie S. Driggers
Botanical Artists for Education & The Environment
And the winner is…
On Sunday, October 28, Botanical Artists for Education & The Environment (BAEE) held a reception at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, Virginia. Author and teacher Anne-Marie Evans drew the winning ticket in the raffle for a copy of her book, An Approach to Botanical Painting. The lucky winner was Jerry of Bethesda, Maryland who is very happy to have won. He said, “I’ve never won anything before.”
BAEE greatly appreciates all of you who purchased tickets. The money earned will go to support the publication of our book, American Botanical Paintings: Native Plants of the Mid-Atlantic.
Posted in botanical art, botanical illustration, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, tagged books, botany, field guide, wildflowers on September 7, 2012 |
Our conversation with book artist, Shawn Sheehy continues…
ArtPlantae: You created a pop-up field guide of North American wildflowers highlighting twelve genera and twelve plant families. Where did the idea for a field guide originate? Why did you decide upon these specific plants for the field guide?
Shawn: I first developed these studies as content for my wildflowers workshop, which I launched in the interest of reaching workshop populations outside of the book arts community. Several months later I bound them together into the field guide–and thought it would be fun (and add literary value) to add additional context to the blooms by writing and including the essay on the “Language of Flowers.”
