COAR 325: Botanical Drawing

This book offers creative painting tips and accessible advice, providing both practical information and inspiration.

A guide to drawing popular botanicals with ink and then adding watercolour on top for a contemporary, dynamic illustration.

Tips for rendering leaves, flowers, berries, and branches both accurately and beautifully, Includes a brief history of the art form, guidance on developing observational skills for this genre, key botanical terms and concepts, and the differences among botanical illustration, botanical art, and flower painting.

This major work, first published in 1950, is still considered the classic book on the subject. It provides a comprehensive survey of plant portrayals across over three thousand years.

This book explores the evolution and interchanges of these illustrations since the mid-fifteenth century, how they have been used to communicate scientific ideas about plants, and how views of botanical imagery change.

A selection of botanical illustrations from the rare book collection at Dumbarton Oaks.