If you're going to do botanical illustration, you need to know how to paint leaves. This step by step blog shows how Lizzie approaches illustrating a leaf.

Some years ago, I wrote “Jessica Todd Harper has a painter’s eye, an artist’s soul, and a photographer’s intuition, and when these three qualities combine, you get images that are sumptuous, rarefied, and exquisite.” Needless to say, I am a big fan and happy to share not only a new body of work, but a

The other week, I went on a foraging expedition with Adele Nozedar who wrote The Hedgerow Handbook and The Garden Forager (both of which I illustrated). She mentioned that plantain is better for treating nettle stings than the traditional favourite, dock. Ribwort plantain Plantago lanceolata This led to a lively discussion on Twitter where other possible “cures” for stings were offered. Helping a sting: […]

For what it's worth, the rumor making rounds that Harper Zilmer and Maddox Batson are dating is false. OK. We

British Garden Birds

I was recently commissioned to do an entomological illustration of the Seven-spotted ladybird Coccinella septempunctata for a birthday gift. Gathering reference As always, the first step is to assemble your reference. I use as wide of a range of reference as I can; this decreases the chance of “copying” mistakes, and helps show the main features to […]

Pre-writing skills for your young ones are so easy to implement just by introducing shapes! Try these 10 free shape tracing worksheets to help children prep for essential drawing and writing skills!

Natural History science sciart Illustration of the Wild marjoram Origanum vulgare

One of my favorite artists of all time is Charley Harper – his style was incredibly simple and clean while at the same time impressively precise at portraying birds and wildlife accurately. The famous quote by Charley Harper is “I don’t count the feathers in the wings; I just count the number of wings”. He might not have counted feathers, but he obviously paid close attention to detail. His bird depictions were good enough to now represent one of the most famous bird institutions in the World. If you are familiar with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology their relatively new logo depicts one of Charley’s birds, a yellow-bellied sapsucker. When my wife and I first started talking about how we were going to decorate our nursery she showed me a picture of a nursery wall mural she liked. The design she showed me was of a tree painted in white on a number of pink canvases that were then fitted together like a puzzle on the wall. I agreed to attempt such a project as long as I could make use of the theme “Eastern Deciduous Forest” – she agreed. From the start I knew that I wanted to attempt this project in the style of Charley Harper. I started by going to the art store and noting all of the different sizes of pre-stretched canvases that they had and then I made a bunch of note cards to scale and measured my son’s room to determine how much space I had to work with. I laid out a bunch of options and quickly picked one that included 10 different canvases. At this point I was excited about the start of the project and did not think about how long it was going to take. I bought my first canvas primed it with the paint we used to paint the room and started at the bottom. Once the bottom was done I jumped to the top only because I was excited to do the great blue heron – the fawn at the base of the tree and the heron at the top are still my favorite two pieces of the project. Next I bought all of the rest of the canvases, painted them blue and then put all of them on the wall so I could sketch the tree on the rest of the pieces. Then one by one I painted them. I left a blue “frame” around each one because I knew I would never get the tree lines perfectly lined up and wanted to set each apart from each other. I started this project in March before my son was born – he was born in July and I finished in February – so it took almost a year to complete. After attempting to recreate Charley Harper’s style and even more or less copy some of his birds onto my tree – I don’t know how he did it. As hard as I tried I could not get as clean of lines as he did. His work is amazing! He was an incredible artist and I will not attempt another project like this any time soon. Here is my tribute to Charley Harper.

Step by step explanation and tutorial on painting a watercolour sketchbook study of a Nasturtium flower and leaf by Lizzie Harper

Africa is the world’s second largest continent. It is tremendously rich – full of history, wildlife and culture. There is something very exotic and exciting about African animals. Kids …

Natural History science sciart Illustration of the Wild garlic Allium ursinum

Hogweed comparison looks at the differences between two similar species, Persian hogweed Heracleum persicum and Giant hogweed Heracleum mantegazzianum

I was recently commissioned to do an entomological illustration of the Seven-spotted ladybird Coccinella septempunctata for a birthday gift. Gathering reference As always, the first step is to assemble your reference. I use as wide of a range of reference as I can; this decreases the chance of “copying” mistakes, and helps show the main features to […]

Barbecue by Australian Women's Weekly

This week, first grade will be starting a Charley Harper inspired artwork! He was an American artist who simplified nature into basic shapes, in a style which he called "Minimal Realism". You can learn more about Mr. Harper and view more of his works at his gallery website. After looking at examples of Mr. Harper's work, we will start on our own! We used blue Tru-Ray construction paper for the background 90lb Sax Multimedia paper for the birch trees Red Tru-ray paper Black tempera paint Cardboard Pencils, & Sharpie makers First we'll create the look of bark for our birch trees, by adding black paint to our white paper. We will use cardboard lightly dipped in black paint and drag it across the paper to achieve this effect. After the black paint had dried some, we can cut out the trees and place them on the background. I think while we're waiting for the black to dry, I'll have the children use Q-tips to paint white dots in the background for snow. Next, we'll add the cardinals! We'll use simple shapes like teardrops, half of an oval, crescents, and triangles to create the body parts of the birds. They do not have to create the same exact birds I did. Some of these shapes could be quite the challenge for some. If they just want to do teardrops and triangles, then they can do just that! After we have our birds glued on, we'll create their iconic black masks, and add their beaks. I used black and yellow orange Tru-Ray paper to do so. I notice that when the birds are looking straight at you, Mr. Harper used a "U" shape for the beak, and the mask. So, that's what I used too! If they just want to cut out triangles, they can just do triangles! I added eyes with a Sharpie marker, after I glued the mask, and beak on. Can't wait to see what 1st grade will do with theirs! Stay tuned for some awesome art! Thanks to The Colors of My Day for the inspiration too! “Lauren Stacey is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.”

Created by Shangai Lily http://shangailily.deviantart.com/ Symbolic Self-Portrait Project Summary Students are to fi...