Natural History Artists and Techniques

We've had such a lovely time learning from John Muir Laws that when that Natural History Illustration course asked people to share their local naturalist-artists that I thought I'd make a list, so that I can browse through them at my leisure. I'm hoping that some of them will also have teaching materials to look through, like he does. But just browsing their art would be fun, too.

Otto Wilhelm Thomé (1840-1925) - Cologne, Germany
Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa
Jeannette Fournier - New Hampshire artist
Kathleen Marie Garness - Chicago Orchid artist
Jan Prentice - Connecticut
William D. Berry - from California, but did sketches in Alaska
Hye Woo Shin - from South Korea; I like her tree drawings
Lary Zach - Wildlife artist from Iowa
Angela Vaculik - artist from Ontario, Candad

Another resource recommended by the course is this set of measuring techniques. I've looked at one, and though I haven't had a chance to do any of the things they suggest, it looks like a good and useful exercise.









I love this quote that they included from DaVinci:

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"Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship . . . There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance; the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are."
-Leonardo da Vinci

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My first attempt at doing the homework for this course was a bird. Should have been a landscape... oops. But it's the best drawing I've done to date, so I'm still feeling pretty successful. I'm hoping to do some more with this, and to collect some more of the instructions to continue to work on after the course is finished, so that I can continue to improve. It's pretty exciting to see my work improving as much as it is.