Botanical Illustration in Pen and Ink – Kew Online Course

About this course

Welcome to this online course from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, brought to you in partnership with David and Charles. You are about to embark on a journey into botanical illustration – a very enjoyable art form that requires attention to detail, focussing your attention on the astounding variation found in nature. Pen and ink is often the medium chosen for documenting new species of flowering plants – everything is drawn to scale to show the characteristics of the plant. In this course, we’ll use a stargazer lily as it’s a large flower with robust structures that are visible to the naked eye. These captivating flowers are loved and admired for their wonderfully large and colourful blooms with prominent spots and a distinctly heady fragrance. You will be led step-by-step through the process of drawing the lily, starting with basic botany and careful observation of the flower. We’ll use precise measurements to guide our drawing to create an accurate representation.As an online course, this learning experience allows you to follow at your own pace – enjoy the process and you will enjoy the results! You can watch each section as many times as you need, and you can pause at any point to focus on your work before moving on.

Course objectives

• develop a foundational knowledge of botanical illustration
• cultivate attention to detail through focused observation
• learn to represent plant characteristics accurately