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The Botanical Palette: Color for the Botanical Painter
From the creators of The Art of Botanical Painting, here is the essential guide to achieving perfect color in your paintings
The Botanical Palette, published in association with the Society of Botanical Artists, is the first instructional guide to focus entirely on the art of color in botanical painting. Each chapter in the book looks at a specific color, providing expert advice on how to achieve the right color in both painting and colored pencil work. The detailed step-by-step demonstrations reveal exactly how each flower painting is built up, from the initial stages to the finished illustration.
>The Botanical Palette also includes special project features in several of the demonstrations. Each project offers a simplified drawing of the finished work that students can trace and use as the basis for their own painting. By using this basic model, they will be able to focus more closely on achieving accurate color portrayal.
In addition to beautiful botanical paintings throughout, a superb gallery of paintings by members of the Society completes the book and provides additional inspiration. Featured artists include: Valerie Baines, Susan Christopher-Coulson, Brigette Daniel, Paul Fennell, Susan Hillier, Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara McGirr, Vicky Mappin, Susan Martin, Kay Rees-Davies, Margaret Stevens, Ann Swan, Sandra Wall Armitage, Brenda Watts, and Janet Wood.
The Botanical Palette, published in association with the Society of Botanical Artists, is the first instructional guide to focus entirely on the art of color in botanical painting. Each chapter in the book looks at a specific color, providing expert advice on how to achieve the right color in both painting and colored pencil work. The detailed step-by-step demonstrations reveal exactly how each flower painting is built up, from the initial stages to the finished illustration.
>The Botanical Palette also includes special project features in several of the demonstrations. Each project offers a simplified drawing of the finished work that students can trace and use as the basis for their own painting. By using this basic model, they will be able to focus more closely on achieving accurate color portrayal.
In addition to beautiful botanical paintings throughout, a superb gallery of paintings by members of the Society completes the book and provides additional inspiration. Featured artists include: Valerie Baines, Susan Christopher-Coulson, Brigette Daniel, Paul Fennell, Susan Hillier, Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara McGirr, Vicky Mappin, Susan Martin, Kay Rees-Davies, Margaret Stevens, Ann Swan, Sandra Wall Armitage, Brenda Watts, and Janet Wood.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 10, 2020
I admire the organisation that has gone into producing this book. Obviously not easy to shepherd a series of paintings through a group of individual artists...each with their own foibles and preferences and come up with a coherent and logical book at the end of the process.
Margaret Stevens is obviously a well organised person and probably has some "clout" as the president of the Botanical Artist's Association. And has ...more or less pulled off the feat of delivering a book on botanical painting with a heavy emphasis on colour and the palette used to achieve this. Maybe not completely successful, because, to my eye, anyway, the gallery section at the end has far superior works to the "worked-up" examples in the main part of the book. (Indicating that we've been slightly shortchanged by being taken through somewhat more "pedestrian" works).
In some ways the book promises more than it delivers because when I skimmed though the book, prior to buying, I saw the range of palettes presented for each painting and assumed that they would be closely linked in the instruction. Whilst there is an attempt to do this I feel it fails. I'd far prefer to see the kind of worksheet that we see on p62 of "Botanical Illustration Course: with the Eden Project" by Rosie Martin...with all the false attempts and the testing of colours and re-working etc to get the right colour mix. Or, I'd like to see the colour mixes linked in directly to the painting at the various stages....rather than just having wordy descriptions such as "Brenda added a mixture of thin cadmium Yellow with a tinge of Permanent sap green .....allowing a hint of Permanent Rose to shine through". I guess, you get the general idea but I'd far prefer to see the mixed colour alongside the main painting illustrating just this technique.
Easy to criticise but really it's a very helpful book. Margaret approaches the colours in a systematic way from White to yellow, green blue, purple red, brown and black and works through individual examples of flowers with each of these colours. Though to be more direct, she has recorded the work of a range of individual artists as they paint the various examples. A great way to produce a book like this .....outsourcing the main toil. And there are a couple of coloured pencil artist featured as well...though no pastels.
Did I learn much? Not really. I'm currently trying to paint a dandelion inflorescence ....with the while silky bulbous head being blown away...and having trouble with the white inflorescence against the white paper. Thought I might get a few tips in the white section here but the best she says is that it's really important to get the grey tones right...or words to that effect.....and try your own grey mixes.
Overall, quite a useful book ...though I feel it could have been better. Four and a half stars from me.
Margaret Stevens is obviously a well organised person and probably has some "clout" as the president of the Botanical Artist's Association. And has ...more or less pulled off the feat of delivering a book on botanical painting with a heavy emphasis on colour and the palette used to achieve this. Maybe not completely successful, because, to my eye, anyway, the gallery section at the end has far superior works to the "worked-up" examples in the main part of the book. (Indicating that we've been slightly shortchanged by being taken through somewhat more "pedestrian" works).
In some ways the book promises more than it delivers because when I skimmed though the book, prior to buying, I saw the range of palettes presented for each painting and assumed that they would be closely linked in the instruction. Whilst there is an attempt to do this I feel it fails. I'd far prefer to see the kind of worksheet that we see on p62 of "Botanical Illustration Course: with the Eden Project" by Rosie Martin...with all the false attempts and the testing of colours and re-working etc to get the right colour mix. Or, I'd like to see the colour mixes linked in directly to the painting at the various stages....rather than just having wordy descriptions such as "Brenda added a mixture of thin cadmium Yellow with a tinge of Permanent sap green .....allowing a hint of Permanent Rose to shine through". I guess, you get the general idea but I'd far prefer to see the mixed colour alongside the main painting illustrating just this technique.
Easy to criticise but really it's a very helpful book. Margaret approaches the colours in a systematic way from White to yellow, green blue, purple red, brown and black and works through individual examples of flowers with each of these colours. Though to be more direct, she has recorded the work of a range of individual artists as they paint the various examples. A great way to produce a book like this .....outsourcing the main toil. And there are a couple of coloured pencil artist featured as well...though no pastels.
Did I learn much? Not really. I'm currently trying to paint a dandelion inflorescence ....with the while silky bulbous head being blown away...and having trouble with the white inflorescence against the white paper. Thought I might get a few tips in the white section here but the best she says is that it's really important to get the grey tones right...or words to that effect.....and try your own grey mixes.
Overall, quite a useful book ...though I feel it could have been better. Four and a half stars from me.
February 20, 2026
Extremely helpful take on color as it applies to botanical illustration. There are eight projects, which include simplified ink drawings that you can trace and then charts of which colors to use when copying the originals. The artists give demonstrations of their working methods. In addition to watercolors, there are five demonstrations of colored-pencil use. The book is rounded out with charts of color comparisons between manufacturers and a gallery of paintings by Society of Botanical Artists members.
May 7, 2021
What a lovely book for the botanical artist! I tried some of the exercises and found them helpful. It is difficult to sample all of them due in part to the watercolor colors requested--I have tubes, a good block set and 2 cheap sets, but still not all the colors.
Good discussions of transparent v opaque colors and how to use that quality. I will purchase a copy of this so that I can try all the exercises at my own pace.
Good discussions of transparent v opaque colors and how to use that quality. I will purchase a copy of this so that I can try all the exercises at my own pace.
April 28, 2020
good reference for botanical painting
February 22, 2017
A beautiful book. I particularly liked it for the descriptions of the painting processes of each artist and the pictures showing the steps they used to achieve the finished piece. There was some very good advice about composition, which areas of a sample to draw first and how to create effects such as blooms on fruit, all of which I found really useful (I am relatively new to botanical painting). I thought it a bit of a shame though that the book seems to encourage the use of fugitive colours that are likely to fade over time, when there are more permanent solutions available.
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July 8, 2009This isn't really a book to read from cover-to-cover. It's a book that explains how to achieve the colors and drawings with watercolors. There are sample projects for each color. After checking this from my library, I see I need to find more by Margaret Stevens, in particular the prequel to this, "Art of Botanical Painting".
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews