Category: Online Courses
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Composition Quick Guide
Pleasing compositions rarely happen by accident. We arrange the components until we are satisfied. How do you know you’ve found your final arrangement? It may feel like a gut instinct, like you’re not sure exactly why, but something about it just looks “right.” Here is a free composition quick guide to help you create … Continued
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4 Steps to Start Your Seasonal Sketchbook: Winter
In winter, the exposed twigs and branches on a tree offer important information about a tree’s structure and identifying characteristics. Leaf arrangement and leaf scars are studied easily on these exposed branches, and often dormant buds, dried bracts, seed pods, nuts, dried berries, and capsules are present too. Observing these details can help you understand … Continued
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5 Warm-Up Exercises to Stretch your Drawing Muscles
5 Warm-Up Exercises to Stretch your Drawing Muscles What do artists and athletes have in common? They both use their bodies as instruments to perform enjoyable activities. To keep their instruments in tip-top shape, they often stretch their muscles before they begin. Botanical drawing can take a loooong time, and you may not … Continued
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The Practice of Botanical Drawing: Ideas for Expanding Lessons
The Practice of Botanical Drawing Lessons are a guide to build on. Expand each lesson with new and different subjects! Watch this video to get advice from Wendy. We know that masters aren’t made overnight, and that consistent practice is the key to success. Think of my books as a template. I show you … Continued
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Sketching Summer: Ideas & Botanical Definitions
The Practice of Botanical Drawing started as a year-long Challenge, prompting students to track a tree or woody shrub of their choice through all its stages for a year. The final product becomes a “Sketchbook of the Seasons,” with + color and tonal drawings + herbarium components, and + journal documentation from 1-2 trees … Continued
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Perspective & Measuring: Illusions Revealed
What is the “secret” to realistic botanical illustrations? Accurate measuring from your unique viewpoint! As something tilts away from us, its physical form does not change, but our perception of it does. Botanical illustrations convey depth through the illusion we create based on our perception of the subject. If you were doing a technical drawing, … Continued
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Advantages of Taking a Botanical Illustration Course Online
Nature is our greatest teacher, whether we strive for scientific accuracy as professional botanical illustrators, enjoy creating for the beauty of decoration, or are curious and creative nature admirers who find relaxation in capturing nature’s magnificence. While many great artists are self-taught, learning from talented teachers of botanical illustration is the best way … Continued
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Student Success Stories
For more than 5 years, Draw Botanical has fostered a community of 200+ artists (of all skill levels) sharing a love of creating botanical art. We don’t just teach botanical drawing. We encourage slowing down, exploring plants on a micro level (almost as if you were an insect!), and prioritizing your JOY! Especially in … Continued
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Practicing Peaches
I love to pick my subject fresh from the tree because it gives me the chance to connect with the plant and its habitat. Experiencing the intimate parts of the plant help me to plan interesting and informative compositions that can tell a “story” about a particular plant. Let’s try this now with a peach! … Continued
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Suggested Supplies List
Outlined below are all the tools you need to be prepared to attend a Draw Botanical workshop. Please note that the listed products are what we recommend, but you can follow along with any supplies you have (your result may just end up looking a little different). Our lessons are about a combination of fundamental … Continued
