| Fruit & Vegetable Portraits Reviewed by Dione M. Coumbe |
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Written by Administrator
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By Billy Showell Pub. 2009 Search Press Ltd. 128 pp inc. index **** / 4
This one of the more beautiful books published in the past year. From the first page to the last, the extraordinary work of Billy Showell leaps off the page.
Kew Gardens in Kensington London, England is Mecca for botanical illustrations and in the past decade they have acknowledged the treasure of artworks they have in their collections by opening galleries full of wonderful contributions, some by famous artists and some that pre-date Kew. Billy Showell’s work will make a worthy addition to this ever expanding collection. Art of this type can best be described as organic architecture, as much care is taken in constructing an illustration, similarly to preparing blueprints and structural drawings. A serious illustrator is well equipped with dividers and compasses, rulers, tape measures, microscopes and magnifying glasses. Wherever possible each artwork is created, life size, to the observed. They create a pallet of colours, taken from a live subject, before even commencing the first drawing. The techniques employed to create the art are practiced constantly and with modern additions to tools available and colours, a new freshness and liveliness has evolved. In this book Billy Showell explains in detail how to create an accomplished illustration from beginning to end. There are chapters devoted to what you need, how to draw, composition, colour, tones, microscopes, magnifying glasses and much else besides. A step by step guide for various types of projects leaves no room for error. This is not for the faint in heart. To complete a picture to even a moderately good standard requires strict discipline, the more complex taking weeks to complete in relatively small bursts. Concentration needs to be absolute to get it right and that can be very tiring. Any class tutor, worth their salt, will not accept anything less than perfection, so this is the standard to aim for, whether trained or not. I have yet to meet any botanical illustration artist who is satisfied with their work even when to anyone else it appears to have reached the ‘perfect’ standard. Billy Showell has a website at http://www.billyshowell.co.uk/ which is well worth visiting to see her work and outstanding resumé. She originally started her career in fashion design and then switched in the early ‘90’s. Since then she’s been awarded five Certificates of Botanical Merit from the Society of Botanical Artists and published other books beside this one, travelled the world teaching and has set up her own teaching studio in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. In September this year she’ll be giving classes at the ASAB Conference in Pittsburg, PA. Dione M Coumbe has been known internationally in the literary world for a couple of decades. Author, journalist, book reviewer and book editor she has contributed to several magazines and websites during her career mainly in UK, Canada and the USA. Her subjects are mainly law, politics, history, philosophy, biographies, art, crafts and any fiction excluding children's. Recently she's returned to her artistic roots and is working on several projects, both fact and fiction, involving illustrated text. Want more – go see Google or visit www.coumbebooks.co.uk
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Botanical Illustration has come a very long way from the monks in the scriptorium over a thousand years ago putting together their pharmacopeias. Interest in this as a specific art form grew particularly during the 18th Century and was given a huge boost by Charles Darwin who, not content with providing mankind with The Origin of the Species was also an accomplished botanist. His work published in Insectivorous Plants still holds up well today.
