British Wildflowers Exhibition: Easton Walled Gardens 2020

Before the country went into lockdown, I participated in a small exhibition of British flowering plants at Easton Walled Gardens, Grantham. My intention was to publish this short piece at the time of the exhibition but between flooding and pandemics I kind of forgot and never finished this post. So, several weeks after the event here it is. I've chosen just a few of the 14 works works to discuss the stories behind the paintings..... there are so many more that I wanted to paint. I suspect this may be the last exhibition I'll be participating in for a while but looking on the bright side, now is the time to paint!
My daughter Polly and good friend Dawn Wright also took part in the exhibition. For my part, all of my works were on vellum, here's a small selection. I'll add a slideshow later of all my works.

Scottish Bluebell orHarebell, Campanula rotundifolia (Campanulaceae) on Kelmscott vellum. I found this plant growing in a wall in Grantown on Spey in NE Scotland. it was hanging on to the wall by a little tuft of moss that must have been retaining enough moisture for life support(see below). I've always loved this flower ever since I first set eyes on it when I arrived in Scotland in the late 1980's. The little bells nodded at the roadside as we drove by and I can recall stopping to see it. Its a difficult colour to achieve on vellum because of the creamy colour of the substrate. Cobalt blue with a touch of quinacridone magenta was the key ingredient. I'm now growing from seed for the garden this year. 

It's surprising what a bit of moss will support! The Scottish Bluebell is quite long flowering plant, it provides food of pollinating bees after many other summer flowers have bloomed. There is a strong association with hares and these flowers, hence the name, it was believed in folklore, that witches transformed into hares, using the flowers in spells for their transformation.  Many people also believed fairies lived in patches of harebells and if you happened to walk through such a patch, this could result in the fairies casting a spell, which is why it's also known as Dead Man's Bells! This painting seemed to take forever, painting on vellum is a slow process at the best of times but has the added benefit of paint being  easily removed if it's not going to plant....as a result some days, I ended up with less than I started with.

The harebell flowers are so small, papery and delicate to paint it was a real challenge, so I decided to paint a larger version of just one flower. I wouldn't normally do this but it seemed like I needed a closer view of these little flowers and it made a nice addition to the painting of the whole plant.

Carfully adding soft layers of colour, larger areas of colour are more difficult on vellum because its's easy to lift the previous layer if too much water is used, dry brush work is essential.

Scaled up flower x3 on Kelmscott, almost finished

The second subject is also from Scotland, Linnaea borealis, the Twinflower, I've written a blog about this one before, but here are the little paintings.  This is one of out smallest flowers,  so a again I painted a larger study of the flowers. The Twinflower is in the Caprifoliaceae family, better know for Honeysuckle, which seems slightly surprising. It's a creeping plant that forms giant clonal mats of flowers as shown in the video below. It was a favourite of Carl Linnaeus and was named after him. It's and is found boreal pine forests, hence the second part of the name, it can also be found in birch and heather but needs sufficient shade to do well. It occurs in many other northern hemisphere countries, where it is abundant but in Scotland it is rare and associated with the remnants of the old Caledonian pine forests.

Beginnings using the sketchbook studies made in Scotland

The Twinflower painting is on goatskin Kelmscott which is mounted on a heavyweight board prepared by William Cowley, the only remaining vellum maker in the UK. I wanted to show this plant in its simplest form, showing the tiny twin headed flowers and creeping stems and tiny toothed leaves. In the UK this flower is only found in Scotland. It has had a difficult time existing with humans, land clearance up to the 1930's meant that populations of the plants became too isolated for pollinators to cross-pollinate, as a result the population was reduced to around 50 sites and the genetic diversity reduced. Looking at the video you might think it's a healthy population but the plant is actually a giant clone which makes it vulnerable. To add to the challenge of survival,  it only produces one seed per flower, so should any disease or environmental change occur the entire clone will could be lost. Scottish Natural Heritage and Plant Life have been working to reintroduce the plant and the good news is that it's working but is an ongoing challenge.  

Enlarged study of single flower stem on Kelmscott vellum, with the characteristic two nodding bell flowers ( x2.5). The plant is covered in small sticky hairs and when the single seed develops it is also covered in these hairs,  the seed sticks to passing animals who unknowingly disperse it to new sites in the forest. 

The giant clonal plant spreads across the forest floor and the fills the air with sweet perfume.  

The next plant is from the same family and is Honeysuckle, otherwise known as Woodbine, unlike the Twinflower it is common just about everywhere, the native version, Lonicera periclymenum, is widespread and found in hedgerows and woodland but there are many other species of honeysuckle that have become naturalised.

Honeysuckle flower, bud and fruit cycle on natural veiny vellum, using the vellum markings as part of the composition  can be effective. It's often necessary to use some 'body colour' on darker vellum - just a touch of opaque white is mixed with colour and used on the flower edges and filaments to make them 'pop' off the surface. 

Honeysuckle has a heady perfume at night, which pollinating moths, such as the Elephant Hawk Moth love but honeysuckle upports many insects, such as the White Admiral butterfly and of course many bees, but only a long tongued insect can reach the deep nectaries in the flower tube. Birds love the red berries in autumn and all round, it's a great plant for wildlife. This one grows outside my window so it was easy to access.

In plant folklore its long been associated with fidelity and young women were forbidden to bring the flowers into the house. Apparently it was believed that honeysuckle made the dream of their true love and stimulated risqué dreams! But having honeysuckle growing around the door was common and grown to prevent evil spirit from entering whilst bringing good fortune to the inhabitants.

An older study page of Honeysuckle, which I've painted many times.  

The Honeysuckle was a bit of an ad-hoc composition and I let the vellum guide me with no particular plan. I chose the focal point flower of the twining flower stem first and took it form there, the vellum was large enough to add more, I added the berries, then decided to sketch some additional stems onto tracing paper to see how they looked before taking the plunge. I don't often work this way but it's  nice to have a more organic approach to painting sometimes ... a 'see what happens' approach without being overly precious.

Rough scribbled ideas! In the end I decided to go for the trio of stems as a composition because  it created a square format and avoided the 'X'  shapes in the crossing stems that can be distracting from the focal point, I felt that the veins described the habit of the stems without over complicating it. I often scrawl ideas onto tracing paper in this way - it gives me  a rough idea of what works and what doesn't. 

The last one for this post is Primula vulgaris, I painted this some years ago on Kelmscott  (see below) and was always curious to know how it would looks on dark veiny vellum, so I repeated the painting with some alterations on a very dark veiny vellum. I wasn't sure if the pale lemon flowers would work so well on a dark surface but thought I'd give it a try. I used quite a lot of the opaque Lemon Yellow Nickel Titanate, which I'd also used on my previous painting, but it's important to maintain some of the substrate showing through because there's nothing worse than overly heavy painting on vellum, which kills the luminosity - it's a fine balance of 'how much' is enough on vellum.

I put cobalt blue under the leaves in the background and also on those with stronger highlights, surprisingly this creates the appearance of distance or highlights  depending on how its used. I kept quite a lot of the vellum showing through the colour as I liked this effect. The roots were very easy to paint almost created by the veins in the surface.

The image starts to emerge and you can see the effect where  the opaque colour is used on the flower petals

Finished painting on dark vellum above 2020 and below the original painting 2012 on Kelmscott. Two very different looks. Obviously I didn't have the plant for the second painting, neither did I have the original painting but I did still have photographs, studies and several other plants to work with,  so it wasn't so difficult to repeat....now spot the difference! 

The exhibition was due to to open for Easton's Snowdrop week on the15th February, alas the high winds and floods put a stop to that on the first day and weather proved to be a bit of a challenge that week! Easton Walled Gardens is a beautiful venue to exhibit at, I spent a few daysin the Coach House painting. The exhibition ran until the 15th March and we took it down at the beginning of the social distancing. It was pretty much the last time we left the house.

A painting day in the Coach House gallery, where the light is wonderful.

Snowdrops week! the sun came out eventually and all was good! 

Photographing and Editing Botanical Artwork

Being able to share work digitally is important for an artist, whether on websites, blogs, social media or for exhibition submission -  the quality of the image should always be accurate and true to the original. However photographing botanical artwork is notoriously difficult and can yield some pretty poor results, with loss of fine detail and grey uneven backgrounds. Even with the best photo editing software - a bad photo will always be a bad photo. We can of course always get a professional to do it but it's pretty costly so that means getting to grips with the camera.  I'm definitely no photographer but have recently found that with reasonably small investment and some perseverance it is possible to take fairly clean sharp photographs which are certainly good enough for recording my work. They may be of some use apologies for the 'wordiness'!

Photographing artwork in my small work space. Two softbox lamps, a DSLR entry level camera, tripod and a vertical surface to support the work does the job! You will also need some basic editing software, I use Photoshop Elements 13

Print Quality

This post is not about print quality images but discusses digital images only. If I need images photographing or scanning for a print always use a professional with a good colour correction is service. Computer monitors are not generally calibrated for viewing print so what you see on screen differs from what comes out of the printer, and home printers and scanners are not up to a professional standard job - so my advice is get a pro to do it! Make sure that they are a member of the Fine Art Guild if you are in the UK.

Scan or Photograph

Personally I prefer photographs for capturing images at home. I have found most scanners tat I have used to be 'lossy' at the top and bottom end and do not give a good enough impression of your work, scanning work on vellum or very fine work is virtually impossible on a home scanner.

Digital Image Submissions for Exhibitions or Web Quality Images
These days most exhibition submissions are initially sent online, this can save a lot of time and money but it is vital to have accurate images of your work. Images requirements usually have specific dimensions or should be the same as the original in dimension and a minimum of 300 dpi. They tend to be very large files e.g. 10 MB or more, so check that your email is capable of sending large files there are other ways of sending these large files, such as Dropbox. Sending a poor quality image is likely to result in automatic rejection. I tend to use a professional service for some jobs but find that I can now actually photograph high resolution images myself with a little effort.
Web based images do not need to be of the same quality but the initial photograph should still be of the same high quality. Web images are sized to 72 dpi and the dimensions are much smaller too, say a 400 x 500 pixels image for a web page entry will do. Keeping images as small file sizes means that they load quicker and there is less chance of your image being printed out....at 72dpi the image looks good on screen but is low resolution for print.
It's worth spending some time to get it right - after all it's just part of the job. A photograph taken under different conditions can give totally misleading representation of your work, as shown below.

On the left: This is the first photograph I attempted using the new lamps, although it still needed a little editing, it had a slight yellow cast and darker at the top but it's clear to see how much better it is than the dreadful photo on the right, The photograph was a RAW file was taken using the set up and equipment described in this post and edited using Photoshop Elements, it was saved as a JPEG here, I have a life size 300 dpi version a web sized 72 dpi version ( shown here ). On the right a poor quality photograph taken in uneven natural day light on a dull day ( admittedly an extreme example!). It's easy to see the difference, the image is grainy, grey/blue and and has uneven light, the colour is completely wrong! It is possible to take reasonable images in natural daylight but in general they are not up to standard. I tried to edit the image but it was a lost cause. The left hand image also maintains the natural colour of the paper unlike many 'Photo-shopped' images which have an unnatural white background yet the image itself is darker then it should be so has a hard edge compared to the original.An example of the stark 'over-photoshopped' image below, close inspection will reveal small missing bits and ragged edges.

Unnatural! Photograph taken in natural light on a tripod. The original was too dark so I attempted to edit it in Photoshop. The result is completely inaccurate colour and hard edges cause by using the Photoshop Magic Wand facility to grab the image and clean the background, this always leaves the image too dark and bold compared to the original, also because botanical work has some soft edges it can leave white gaps! It's a complete misrepresentation of the work. Scroll to the bottom of the post for the final image.

Equipment  and Software for Photographing Work

Doesn't have to cost the earth but but you will have to spend something. You will also need photo editing programme. Don't be scared of  Photo editing because you only need to know a few moves, such as image size, crop and editing such as colour and levels. I'll deal with the editing in a separate post.

Using Photoshop Elements to edit your images isn't so difficult if you have a decent photograph to start with, I use only a few functions, Edit ( for cropping) Image ( for sizing) and Enhance ( for colours and levels). These functions will do most of the work

So what to buy and how much will it cost? ( assuming that you have a computer)

A decent DSLR camera - this can cost a lot but an entry level camera is good enough e.g. Nikon or Canon. I use the Nikon D3200 or Canon 100D ( my daughters) , cost about £350 -£400  I also have an older Sony and they're all good enough to do the job. 

Tripod -  £50 plus. Obviously the more you spend the better in terms of stability 

Two soft box lamps for diffused lighting - £60 - £100

Soft Box lamp - a cover goes over the front and diffuses the light.It folds away into a bag for storage. The large bulbs are 5500K ( Kelvins)  which simulates natural white daylight. Lower K bulbs give a yellow light and higher K bulbs a blue light. They also have a CRI or colour rendering index of over 90 which is essential for accurate colour.

Photographic grey card- not essential but can be handy 

Memory card for the camera for transferring images - you will need a decent sized card as the files are large, such as the compact flash card, San Disk I use a 64 GB or 128GB card, cost around £20 to £40. Check compatibility with your camera, some only take smaller cards.

Software, Photoshop Elements 13 for editing, cleaning and sizing the image  - the latest version is 13 but previous versions will do the same this cost approx £85 as a bundle with Premiere (Movie editing software). Make sure it's compatible with your operating system

Total spend was under £650, so it soon pays for itself when considering that a hi resolution digital photo approx A1 from a photographer costs in the region of £80

What are the best camera settings? 
All cameras are slightly different but the settings are the same, referring to the manual will enable you to easily find these settings

• Aperture set to A - this will keep the aperture locked, as shown below
  

Set to A on the dial

• F stop should be set to f8 - f11 for more focus in the image. This is usually operated by a dial on the back and will change on the display screen 

Set between f8 and f11 by using the dial usually located top right

• ISO set to100 - this lower setting reduces 'noise' or graininess. ISO is the sensitivity to light.

Set the ISO  to 100 via the main menu for camera settings

• Shoot in 'RAW and JPEG' - RAW gives most digital information and JPEG is a compressed smaller file.

Set the Image to RAW and JPEG

• White balance - you can use the preset  Auto, daylight etc

The Set up

• The work should be fixed flat  to a vertical surface , such as a plain or neutral coloured wall/ greycard. I fix mine to a large piece of MDF on an either a desk or standing easel. It should not lean backwards. As shown in image at top of page.

• The centre of the image should be the same height as the camera - measure this. 

• The camera lens should be perpendicular to the image 

• Make sure the camera and tripod are level

• The distance of the camera - not too close as this will distort the image - you can use the zoom. You need to be able to view the whole image - don't worry about the surrounding extra space- this can be cropped later

• Position the two softball lamps at 45 degree angles from the work - so approx half way between the artwork and the camera on either side of the work.

• Do not have any other light entering the room, close the blinds

• Set the camera to timer to avoid camera shake

Set up from above: Camera directly in front of artwork and lamps at 45 degrees.

Shooting

• Turn on the soft ball lamps

• Looking through the camera viewfinder, the image of the work should sit comfortably inside the viewing frame when shooting, there will be surrounding space. Don't worry about this it can be cropped later. 

•  Fine tune the focus manually or with auto focus

• Use the timer, to avoid camera shake

•  Take lots of shots! Leave the camera set up in place just in case you need to do it again. 

Viewing the Photographs

Once you have your images you can put them onto the computer and view them by putting the memory card into the computer. Some new cameras have wifi so can be transferred direct.

File format 

There will be two formats on the memory card the RAW file and the JPEG. A RAW file is unprocessed digital data, so not compressed, it's a larger file but allows more scope post editing, especially with colour correction, which is all important with artwork. The RAW image will be grey looking but this is the better format particularly for the high resolution image. By contrast the JPEG is a smaller file and brighter on screen, which seems more appealing however every time the image is edited it loses quality, so if you adjust it several times it is compressed each time and the quality lessens. Once you have finished editing you can save a file as a JPEG.  The smaller JPEGs may be useful for web images etc. but the RAW files can be reduced in size and converted to JPEGs later. 

Colour space 

With regard to colour space management  ( the range of colours displayed in camera, monitor and printers)  your settings should be consistent. Use either sRGB for on screen images or Adobe RGB, which is better for print and higher resolution images. If your camera only offers sRGB then use the same in Photoshop for consistency. A RAW image does not have a profile so you can set it in Photoshop to by going to 'edit >colour settings' 

The monitor should also be colour calibrated, what you see on screen can look very different on different monitors, but you need to ensure what you are seeing are the actual colours, there are also various software and devices for this or in windows ( use the correct version of windows)

Editing 

View the files in any file viewing software and select what looks like the best and most in focus image from you shots 

The file will be large blow it up to view by using zoom to 100% or use the 'ctr' '+' keyboard shortcut and scroll around the image.

When you have decided on a contender open the RAW file in Photoshop you can also save your file. You can now begin editing.

Final low resolution image after editing,  saved using the Photoshop ' Save for Web' facility

Apologies if this is a bit of a dull post but hopefully it's useful reference though. I usually write posts based on my own experience - so what I wanted to know but nobody ever told me! and wish I'd been able to find similar info years ago without all the hard work....... I've still much to learn but thought I'd share it.  More to follow at a later date on what you need to know in Photoshop and watermarking your image for online.

My next post will be back to painting and also one coming up on the sketchbook in Indonesia and Australia