Like gardening itself, the field of Botanical Illustration dates back to ancient times and is a combination of both art and science. Surviving examples of ancient botanical drawings include detailed sketches of plants dating to 1500 BCE found on Egyptian temple walls. Until the advent of the camera, microscope and other instruments used for copying and storing information, botanical drawings served all manner of purpose for the fields of Botany, Medicine, Pathology and Geography among others. Early botanical drawings served as teaching tools for students of these fields and drawings were often compiled into “herbals” or collections cataloguing the medicinal uses of plants. Today, Botanical Illustration continues as marriage between art and science and is becoming increasingly interesting to gardeners. Classes in Botanical Illustration specifically for gardeners are offered at display and botanic gardens, nurseries, and herbaria around the region. Photo: Susan Bazell in her studio.
Susan Bazell is a Botanical Illustrator who lives and works in Paradise. While she says she is not a “professional botanical artist,” Susan’s work can be seen in several books, including the newly released Cacti, Agaves and Yuccas of California and Nevada (Stephen Ingram, Cachuma Press, 2008), Conifers of California (Ronald M. Lanner, Cachuma Press, 2002), and The Life of an Oak (Glenn Keator, Heyday Books, 1998), among others. Photo: Books in which the work of Susan Bazell appears.
While Susan is not an intense gardener per se (she is working with friend John Whittlesey on the design and installation of a new, native plant garden as I write), her studio leaves no question about her intense appreciation of plants. When we first met, she struck me as either a naturalist with an artist’s eye or an artist with a naturalist’s heart – I now know she is both. Besides her art, Susan is an active member and volunteer for the California Native Plant Society, the Chico State Herbarium and Friends of Bidwell Park in Chico. Photo: Plant specimen on display in Susan’s studio.
“I became interested in botanical illustration because I love plants!” Susan told me when we met. While still working full-time as an applied social science researcher, she began taking extension classes in botanical illustration at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from “a wonderful teacher and communicator, Andrea Moyer. She was very good at demonstrating what made a good botanical drawing.” Plant observation and drawing were a cathartic escape from the “crazy work hours” and pressures of academia. At the time, Susan and her husband were living in the Bay area. He was also a native plant enthusiast and an avid and accomplished photographer of the plants they would see on hikes throughout Northern California. “As luck would have it, I met and became friends with a well-known California botanist – Glenn Keator – and he asked me if I would provide the artwork for a book he was working on. Plants of the East Bay Parks (Glenn Keator, Roberts Rinehart Publishing, 1994), was the first of several books on which the two have worked together. Photo: A finished and published water-color botanical of an oak gall by Susan in Life of an Oak.
“Drawing the plants I love definitely adds to my pleasure in the plants. I hike with a hand lens so that if there is a plant whose details I want to see more closely I can get down and look at it up close. “When I am working on a drawing, I often work from a combination of photos, of having seen the plant in its native habitat myself, and then from magnifications. I make several preliminary, rough pencil sketches and eventually end up with a finished drawing or watercolor.” Susan has a large magnifying device, an old microfiche viewer, in her studio for just this purpose. With it, she can look very closely at details in photo slides, including the veining of a leaf, the markings on the face of a tiny flower, or the ridges on seeds or seed pods. You can see this level of detail in Susan’s drawings and designs. Last year she created a sketch of a Spice Bush (Calycanthus occidentalis) seed pod to be printed on to silk scarves for the Northern California Botanist Association: the lines of this remarkably architectural pod are incredibly life-like. The close observation of plants required to create an accurate drawing of them provide quite an education in plant structure and botany: how blossoms are formed, how many petals, sepals, stamens? How are leaves arranged along the stem? All of this information is crucial to painting a plant as well as to identifying and understanding how it grows. Photos: Photo of a Spice Bush seed pod and Susan Bazell’s botanical drawing of it for a scarf design.
And it is, I think, is this close relationship with the plants we love which is heightened and expanded by both botanical illustration and gardening. If we are too busy engaged in gardening itself to take up intense drawing; or, conversely, too busy looking at and drawing plants as artists to take up intense gardening, we at very least can experience that deep respect one has for kindred spirits, and we can be happy knowing that there is a whole other group of people out there that is equally moved by the face of a flower, the shape of a seed, the striations on a leaf. Photo: Susan’s microfiche machine for close-up viewing of slide details.
Interested in pursuing some Botanical Illustration classes? Keep your eyes open for the upcoming events or classes from the resources linked below:
Northern California Society of Botanical Artists: www.ncalsba.org/events/?cat=8
Chico State Herbarium, CSU Chico: May 16th, 2009, Botanical Illustration with Judy McCrary 10 am – 4 pm Holt Hall, CSU Chico. $40. For more info: www.csuchico.edu/biol/Herb/Events.html
The McConnell Arboretum and Gardens at Turtle Bay Exploration Park: Regularly hosts botanical illustration classes in the gardens. More Info: www.turtlebay.org
UC Davis Arboretum: Regularly host botanical illustration classes in the gardens. For more info: http://arboretum.ucdavis.edu
Finally, many good books are available on the subject of Botanical Illustration and its history. One newer release of interest is:
Botanical Illustration Course, with the Eden Project (Rosie Martin, Meriel Thurstan; Sterling Publishing Co., 2006). Photo: A botanical drawing of a cactus drawn by Susan for her most recent publication: The Cacti, Agaves, and Yuccas of California and Nevada.
In a North State Garden is a radio- and web-based outreach program of the Gateway Science Museum – Exploring the Natural History of the North State, based in Chico, CA. In a North State Garden celebrates the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region, and is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell – all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, Saturday mornings at 7:34 PST and Sunday morning at 8:34 PST. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is positively North State.
